Writing Wrongs

February 16, 2007

Courtesy of Book-a-Rama:

From BBC News, the Romance Novelists' Association has chosen the 10 most romantic books of all time.


  1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

  2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

  3. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

  4. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

  5. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

  6. Katherine by Anya Seton

  7. Persuasion by Jane Austen

  8. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

  9. The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

  10. Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier

I�m kind of stoked to see The Thorn Birds on the list. It was our tenth grade �pass around� book. Someone had a copy, I can�t remember who, and we all took turns reading it. Then we all took turns reading certain scenes, because those scenes had � wait for it � s-e-x.

What�s funny is at camp one summer, someone passed me a copy of Flowers in the Attic, under the table, of course, open to a certain passage of course. I remember rolling my eyes and saying, �You�ve got to be kidding me.�

The Thorn Birds was pretty tame comparison, I think, if I remember these things correctly.

I read an interview with Colleen McCullough where she talked about how she�d asked some women what they liked in a book. The majority replied with one that makes them cry buckets of tears.

So. She set out to write a book that would make women cry buckets of tears. Enter The Thorn Birds. And the rest is pretty much huge-bestseller-made-for-TV-mini-series-featuring-Richard-Chamberlain history. There�s probably a lesson in all that, but I�m not listening hard enough.

You know, I haven�t read the book since tenth grade. I�d hate to spoil the pass-it-around under the table glow that I associate with its equally glowing yellow cover:

Some memories shouldn�t be tarnished that way.

Charity Tahmaseb wrote at 12:36 p.m.

|