The most recommended books on courtship

Despite the Shakespearian name, Much Ado About Nada is a Persuasion retelling set in the Muslim-Canadian community of Toronto. Nada, a sometimes prickly character, navigates family, friendship, and lost love, while trying to take back control of a wildly successful app she created that was stolen from her. J

alaluddin is as good writing at those early, heady days of young courtship as she is at the sharp pining of a couple finding their way back to each other.

When Darwin proposed the two mechanisms of sexual selection, one was almost immediately embraced by his Victorian contemporaries: male competition. Female choice, on the other hand, had to wait almost 100 years to be fully recognized. This book is an account of the history of female choice and provides fascinating insights into the development of a scientific discipline and how it is intertwined with society. Well written and very accessible, this is a great read.

This is a brilliant book that you will want to read in print—not digitally—because, for every single page of Jane Austen’s classic novel, there is an accompanying page of annotations. This is a great book if you want to dive deeper into Pride and Prejudice. The annotations include pictures of carriages and locations in the novel; historical details that helped me understand property laws, relationships, and societal expectations; definitions and connotations of how words were used in Austen’s time, and much more. It’s written in a very readable style, and you can either read it from start to finish or skip around to your favorite passages.

There is something alluring about the regency era that makes you want to curl your hair and go to a ball. The genre is full of beautiful, well-written books. Lakeshire Park stands out in the crowd thanks to its gentle honesty, delightful prose, and believable romance. Sprinkled with comedic scenes, regency-era details, and a couple you can’t help rooting for! I read this one in one sitting and didn’t want to come back to reality. 

Clement explores the working class environment that produced what we think of as “normal” relations between young men and women.

The commonly used term at the time, “treating,” has disappeared. But in the early 20th century this practice, which shared some features with prostitution, turned a search for fun, gendered scripts, and wage discrepancies between men and women into the general model of what would become the classic practice of dating.

While we can hardly think about couples today without the idea of dating, the practice was new and very edgy in the early 20th century.

Beth Bailey shows how the classic “dating and rating” complex emerged and became not just accepted but expected among middle-class couples. She also takes us through the transition to the “going steady” complex later in the century.

It might seem strange that this outrageous and thoroughly enjoyable comedy wound up on my list of workplace comedies.

In the original version of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet was stuck in a Regency-era comedy of manners. Her only choice of life “careers” was “wife.”

Grahame-Smith has taken Austin’s words and turned this classic upside down by giving her a very important job—Zombie Killer.

It’s a hilarious take on the power of women, and, strangely enough, adding a Zombie apocalypse has made some of the characters’ motivations much more understandable.

Elizabeth’s workplace is her small village in England, and, always on call, she has lots of work to do.

I loved this book, and I think Austin would have, too. It’s my kind of humor.

I personally like this book because there are very few picture books representing two women falling in love and getting married. This book celebrates two women, a courageous maiden who attends a royal party, and while there, she ends up finding love with the princess.

This fairytale is written with themes of acceptance and love. 

Five marriageable girls, a nervy mother, a sarcastic father, a sensible best friend, and a plethora of good-looking young men in uniform and breeches. What’s not to like?

This novel has everything. The story of two people who fall in love with each other in spite of themselves is still as fresh as paint today, and the supporting cast is fantastic. Austen’s writing is pin-sharp, revolutionary, and addictive.

I’ve read the novel hundreds of times, but I never tire of its wit, romance, and perfect plotting. Whether you love a good romance, enjoy digging around in the dusty corners of Regency fiction, or just like seeing a baddie getting their comeuppance, it is universally acknowledged that this is the book for you.

Gaiman’s fairytale-like writing gives it a nostalgic feel I didn’t even know I was looking for, and the idea that stars aren’t just big balls of hot gas, but people? That lines up with the idea that every star is an attendant angel, for me—or older ideas of religions past, that the stars themselves were the “visible gods” of our world, watching over us from the cosmos.

All fiction comes from something someone said before, and it’s one of the things I love most about fantasy. Stardust is one of those books that really just gives you the old-school whimsy and magic and romance that, when you’re trying so hard to think of something never-been-done-before, reminds you that there’s a reason stories like these are called classic.