Happily Ever After, in Life and Literature

Love and Bookstores

Here’s a bit of romance to help you begin your weekly grind. At San Francisco’s Omnivore Books, a young woman found a surprise nestled in the pages of a cook book: an engagement ring. Her boyfriend slipped the ring inside the pages of a book (no, it wasn’t Eat, Pray, Love), and every moment was documented by the store’s Twitter feed.

That’s right. As if more proof was needed of bookstores’ contributions to society, Omnivore live tweeted the proposal. Here are a couple highlights from the prelude to the magic moment: “I have a bottle of whisky ready to crack open. She’s looking at Joy of Cooking. She has no idea how perfect that is for this moment…” and “Now I really have to pee, but I know he wants to use the bathroom soon for his ring-hiding. Arrghh!”

You can read the rest of the coverage (and find out her response) on Culture Feed.

The Last Word

Although we can have high hopes for these literate lovers, not every story has a happy ending — but every story does have an ending.

In a five-alarm spoiler alert, Stylist has compiled the 100 best last lines from books. The list ranges from The Old Man and the Sea to Life of Pi and A Clockwork Orange to The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Among the titles was The Origin of Species, which eloquently sums up, well, everything: “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”

The End.

***
 — Benjamin Samuel is the Online Editor of Electric Literature. In spite of all evidence to the contrary, he stil believes in love and evolution.