Are you looking for ideas how to spend an unforgettable Valentine’s Day? If you love books, you’ll find inspiration much easier than you think.
When it comes to Valentine’s Day, many people focus their efforts on finding the right gift for the significant other or finding the right place to go out.
In most cases, it would not be enough. Booking a place in the most expensive restaurant may not be enough to impress the person you’ve just fallen in love with.
The right gift handed in the right place is the beginning – yes, important, but just a beginning – of a journey to someone else’s heart. It’s what you say and how you behave that can help this evening become a memorable moment for both of you.
Plus, the Valentine’s Day is not only about romantic dates. On this day, you can share the love with many people, not only the one you love the most. Think about your closest family, relatives, friends, coworkers, and neighbors.
In the list below, you will find ideas that will help you spend the Valentine’s Day the best of ways. The moment you come up with the idea to use the books is the moment you immediately realize you have found the answer.
Valentine’s Day ideas for book lovers
Send a literary valentine
Valentine’s Day is about sharing the love – but not only with the people you have just fallen in love with.
By sending a valentine card to your relatives or book club members, you are showing you think and care about them.
We love the Book Riot’s selection of literary valentines ranging from funny to heart-warming, to thought-provoking.
Not enough time to send the valentine by post? It’s better late than never. You can always send the digital valentine – either by email, messaging app, or through social network – but make sure to find something creative, something that would’t work on paper.
Example? Humorous animated valentine cards with love quotes from the world’s favorite authors. J.K. Rowling, Haruki Murakami, and Edgar Allan Poe are among them.
Create atmosphere with an audiobook
Usually, when you invite someone for a romantic dinner, sensual music is an indispensable part of the mood.
Why not breaking the rule? The same unforgettable ambience can be easily created by an addictive voice of an audiobook narrator. The only thing to do is choose the title you’d love to enjoy together.
You can decide on the audiobook at the beginning of the dinner, buy the digital download at Audible, Kobo, Google Books, or Scribd, and the story will fulfill the room before you finish the first glass of wine.
Light a book-scented candle
There is one more thing you should remember to use at a Valentine’s Day dinner. A candle. Or candles. Or a lot to candles.
Flickering light of a candle brings the entire world to this very moment and creates intimate atmosphere which encourages to open up.
Some candles are better than others. Book nerds around the world have fallen in love with scented candles that smell like books. Light such a candle on Valentine’s Day, and the room will be filled with the scent of a library, a bookshop, or a classic leather-bound book.
Alternatively, you can pick up a candle that’s inspired by literature. Our list of literary candles puts together the scents associated with your favorite books, characters, and authors.
Prepare a literature-themed drink
What kind of wine do you like the most? Are you going to serve it on Valentine’s Day? Don’t you think you could do more than that?
You can make a cocktail you’ve never tried before. It’s something that will make this evening much more memorable than a bottle of your favorite wine. But you can go further than that.
Can you think of a drink you’ve read about in a book? Yes, Gin Rickey from The Great Gatsby. That’s just a start. Any other ideas?
Take a look at the epic chart that lists almost 50 cocktails from literature and movies, complete with recipes. Are you going for Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, or maybe Smoking Bishop?
Re-create a romantic literary scene
What’s your favorite romantic scene from literature? Do you both love it? Why not spending the Valentine’s Day on re-creating it?
You can go big – buy costumes and props, visits exact locations, re-create the scene’s most memorable settings. Full joy guaranteed.
You can, however, just pick up the book the scene comes from, and re-read your favorite passages aloud, and encourage yourselves to make this scene truly yours.
Explore love quotes from literature
What is love? It’s the single hardest thing to describe. The more you love, the less good words you can find to define it.
Let books help you start with the right sequence of words, the words that would make you reveal what’s inside you, your emotions to the person sitting in front of you.
You don’t love someone because they’re perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.
–Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper
Take a look at a collection of the best love quotes from books. You will find passages from books by Jane Austen, André Gide, Roald Dahl, Paulo Coelho, Jodi Picoult, and Elizabeth Gilbert.
Which of these quotes do you love the most? Would your significant other feel the same?
Dive into The Book-Lovers’ Anthology
If you find literature’s favorite love quotes too obvious or straightforward, pick up the book that is perfect for the literary Valentine’s Day – and that you probably don’t know yet.
The book I’m talking about is The Book-Lovers’ Anthology, the fascinating collection of essays and book excerpts that explain, embrace, and express the love for books and reading.
The book was published in 1911. Edited by Robert Maynard Leonard, it collects texts from 250 authors, including Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Voltaire, George Gordon Byron, and Charles Dickens.
We should choose our books as we would our companions, for their sterling and intrinsic merit.
– Charles Caleb Colton
The anthology is in the public domain. It’s available as a free download from multiple websites. In no time, you can have it delivered to your Kindle, Kobo, Nook, or a book-reading app on your tablet.
Prepare a meal inspired by novels
Another idea to make the Valentine’s Day unforgettable is to prepare and eat an exceptional meal. And, as you are both book lovers, let that meal relates to the novel you both read and loved.
Fictitious Dishes is a wonderful album of literature’s most memorable meals. It “serves up a delectable assortment of photographic interpretations of culinary moments from contemporary and classic literature.”
Readers’ favorites are avocado-and-crabmeat salad from Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, and the seductive cupcakes fromThe Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.
Make it a Valentine’s Day & Night
Who would like to end a romantic date early? Make it last as long as possible. Binge-reading is just one of the ideas.
Leave a Reply