What No Bridget Jones?

[faustus]

The top twenty love stories as voted for by 2000 readers in research commissioned by UKTV Drama. I've read six... The Guardian had a special offer on a pile of Du Mauriers, but I'm not sure if I'd really get beyond Rebecca and "The Birds".

1 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë, 1847

2 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen, 1813

3 Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare, 1597

4 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë, 1847

5 Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell, 1936

6 The English Patient Michael Ondaatje, 1992

7 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier, 1938

8 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak, 1957

9 Lady Chatterley's Lover DH Lawrence, 1928

10 Far from The Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy, 1874

11 = My Fair Lady Alan Jay Lerner, 1956

The African Queen CS Forester, 1935 [seen the movie!]

13 The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

14 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen, 1811

15 = The Way We Were Arthur Laurents, 1972

War and Peace Leo Tolstoy, 1865

17 Frenchman's Creek Daphne du Maurier, 1942

18 Persuasion Jane Austen, 1818

19 Take a Girl Like You Kingsley Amis, 1960

20 Daniel Deronda George Eliot, 1876

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2145906,00.html

But: Tears, missed heartbeats and almost-fatal misunderstandings also helped plots to win top ranking, although happy endings - summed up by Jane Eyre's "Reader, I married him" - were considered essential. Forty per cent of women read romantic novels to feel better, 15% for nostalgic reasons and 10% to compensate for their own less highly-coloured love lives.

I'm not convinced all of these have happy endings - and are those percentages exclusive or overlapping (Nostalgia might make you feel better)?

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

I have read 12 and seen two movies. Don't remember much about most of the books.

Only if projectile vomiting is romantic...

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Take a Girl Like You???!!! WTF?
It's noxious. The male lead spends the entire book trying to get the female lead into bed, and finally succeeds because she's too drunk to prevent him, in fact barely conscious by that stage: something that even his male friends think is pretty poor behaviour. And she stays with him.

I wouldn't describe either Daniel Deronda or The Great Gatsby as a romance in the Mills and Boon-y sense.

I've 'read' 16 of these (poss the only person to have read the book of The African Queen?), except not entirely clear if film or book is meant in several instances, so 17 if you count the movie of Dr Zhivago.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

happy endings were considered essential

I must have missed the happy ending to Heathcliff and Cathy's affair. Not to mention the flowers and romance at the end of Romeo and Juliet.