Tainted Love: An Anti-Valentine’s Day Bookshelf

If your last experience with the Bronte sisters was snoozing through high school English class, you are in for a major surprise. Emily Bronte’s legend of the doomed love between lonely teenagers Catherine and Heathcliff makes the protagonists of Twilight look well-adjusted. This 1847 novel is not only one of the greatest creepy reads of all time, it’s also a brilliant reality check. Even your worst love affair wasn’t this messed up.... Told from multiple points of view, and alternating between flashback, letters and present-day first person point of view, Wuthering Heights’ narrative form is practically post-modern. So not only did Bronte emphasize "goth" in the gothic, her work has influenced contemporary writers from Margaret Atwood to the authoress of the aforementioned little-known blood-sucker series.

I first picked this one up in an airport bookstore, deep into Big Love withdrawal (and, yes, I know the show is not representative of the current state of the world’s fastest growing religion, but who can resist the power of Chloe Sevigny’s long braid?). In David Ebershoff’s multi-narrated novel, the author contrasts the life of Anne Eliza Young, estranged wife of Mormon leader Brigham Young, with that of Jordan Scott, a... runaway teen from a contemporary polygamous compound, and Kelly Dee, a LDS feminist grad student determined to unearth the "truth" about her prophet. While 19th Wife may not be as guilty a pleasure as HBO, it’s an equally convincing deterrent to checking the "Open Relationship" option on Facebook. Plus, there’s all that important history and stuff.

Every few years, I go on a Tales of the City binge, rereading all six volumes in one glorious swoop, immersing myself in the lives and loves of such unforgettable and hilarious characters as goodie-two-shoes Mary Anne Singleton, out-and-proud Michael Tolliver, and Anna Madrigal — Russian Hill’s grooviest landlady. The series is both a deliciously non-guilty pleasure, and also sobering reminder. We all need friends as much as we do lovers, and... no matter what we do to try to stave off changes, our lives never stand still.

Maupin began writing Tales as a serialized column in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1976. It was the perfect time and place for such a project. The city by the bay was the center of a huge cultural shift: the gay rights movement, the waning days of the hippies, clashes between high society and Berkeley radicals and a range of lurid scandals and strange occurrences, from Patty Hearst’s kidnapping to the Jonestown massacre. The author’s incomparably sharp eye and equally sharp wit — and his sympathy for all manner of lost souls — makes this one of the most cheering books ever written. As this version is abridged, consider it a pitch to join of the best cults ever. Your Kool-Aid is ready.

Our protagonist narrator, Kathy, is a young woman in an alternate-reality present-day United Kingdom. Most of the book takes place in flashback, as Kathy reflects on her life thus far, and especially her years at a rural orphanage/boarding school. While Never Let Me Go may sound like an almost too-typical coming of age story, it’s not — nor is it remotely a conventional romance. Instead, this stark piece of speculative fiction examines... what it means to be human. It’s difficult to explain more without ruining the genuinely strange futuristic story line. Suffice to say that the answer is, as the gushiest songs always say, love, love, love.

The classic pulp novel from the writer who invented noir. Cain’s thriller about an adulterous romance between drifter Frank and short-order waitress Cora epitomizes post-war California’s unexpected freedoms — and their consequences. Of course, the lovers’ passion is too hot not to cool, especially once Cora’s husband, Nick, is out of the way. At first, it may seem like miscasting that Stanley Tucci, one of the seemingly nicest guy actors in the... biz, as the reader of such dark material. Yet, his clipped and sympathetic voice turns out to be a perfect match for Cain’s prose. Frank on Cora: "She got up to get the potatoes. Her dress fell open for a second, so I could see her leg. When she gave me the potatoes, I couldn’t eat." Take that, Hallmark.

You think your most recent ex was full of herself? She’s got nothing on the exquisite Master Gray, the most malevolent narcissist ever committed to paper. Even after many re-readings, I always forget just how wonderfully repulsive and irresistible this slim volume is. But the story of a man who stays forever young, even as his painted likeness grows hideously decrepit, is also tragic, especially when viewed through the lens of the... author’s own life. I always wonder what Oscar Wilde’s feelings would be to learn that this novel is his most famous legacy — after his own heart-breaking biography. No doubt, he’d have a beautiful and brilliant quip at the ready, which would be its own tragedy, of sorts.