>>24856912
>protagonist is a boy
>who fell head over heels to a girl
>happy ending
>sweet
A dozen at random. Mostly light-ish; nothing too trashy.
— ‘Lucky Jim’ (Kingsley Amis)
Comic academic setting. Boy meets girl at party, gets off on the wrong foot (he thinks she’s standoffish; in fact she’s just shy). They’re both tied to unpleasant people but it all ends as you hope.
— ‘The White Company’ (Arthur Conan Doyle)
Medieval setting. Young monk has to spend a year out in the world before deciding if he wants to commit to monkdom. He gets a job as a tutor to a nobleman’s daughter and —
— ‘The World of Suzie Wong’ (Richard Mason)
Semi-autobiographical. Englishman in Asia is trying to earn living as painter. He gets a cheap room in a waterfront hotel which turns out to be a brothel. There he meets —
— ‘Lorna Doone’ (R. D. Blackmore)
M.C. is young farmer in Exmoor in 1600s. His father was killed by a local clan of miscreants when he was a boy. He’s pretty easy-going but a vague duty of revenge is in the air. Out exploring, he meets this cute girl . . . Voted ‘favourite novel’ by men at Harvard in 1906, IIRC.
— H. E. Bates, ‘The Darling Buds Of May’
Young tax-inspector is sent to check up on happy-go-lucky rural family. They have this daughter played by Catherine Zeta Jones in her break-out role, so he was doomed from the get-go.
— Rafael Sabatini, ‘Captain Blood’
Doctor is unjustly convicted of treason, sent off to prison colony. Escapes & becomes a PIRATE. Proud local beauty misjudges him but learns the error of her ways.
— ‘His Monkey Wife’ (Richard Collier)
MFF love triangle. Female #1 (MC’s fiancée) is a complete bitch but he’s too clueless to see this. Female #2 is sweet, intelligent, well-read and devoted to him but he constantly overlooks her because she’s a chimpanzee. Fortunately he eventually picks the right one.
— David Copperfield (Charles Dickens)
Comfy if you like your romance slow and you’re prepared to put up with a hero who marries the right girl only after he's tried the wrong one.
— Far From The Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy)
Comfy if you like your romance slow and rural and you’re prepared to put up with a girl who does the right thing only after having tried LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE.
— The Far Pavillions (M. M. Kaye)
Yes, it is ‘white boy meets indian girl’, but she is at least a princess. Also it avoids WHITE PEOPLE BAD which is sort of baked into the DNA of any present-day book with a similar setting.
A couple of plays:
— As You Like It (William Shakespeare)
Everyone likes Rosalind. And Orlando is a fine fellow, even though he does write ‘poetry’ which is even worse than the poetry in /lit/ poetry threads.
— ‘Arms And The Man’ (G. B. Shaw)
Quite light and fun; not too much contrarianism and/or didacticism. Young girl with romantic ideas about soldiers meets a real one who isn’t romantic at all . . .
