February is the month for romance! If you want to impress your sweetheart this Valentine’s Day, take a few tips from the library!

Flowers

Sometimes – when words cannot adequately express how much you care – you can send sweet messages using the language of flowers! Discover the symbols and myths of different flora with Marina Heilmeyer’s The Language of Flowers or Mandy Kirkby’s A Victorian Flower Dictionary.

Food

Are you looking for some sweet treats that will impress your sweetheart? Whip up something in the kitchen with ideas from Linda Lomelino’s My Sweet Kitchen or get inspired with culinary delights in Yotam Ottolenghi’s book, Sweet: Desserts From London’s Ottolenghi.

Music

Whether you prefer to try out music on a CD or download it from our digital collections, we have a wide selection of music from which to choose! For some of the most romantic music from a variety of artists, try The Ultimate Most Romantic String Music in the Universe or 25 Romantic Classics. From modern pop to retro jazz, we have a options from John Legend’s Love in the Future and Celine Dion’s My Love: Essential Collection to Marvin Gaye’s Love Songs.

Movies

What better time to watch a romantic movie than Valentine’s Day?! We have movies available on CD and others that can be streamed from our digital collection. Classics from yesteryear such as An Affair to Remember or Casablanca are available, as well as modern classics like Titanic. Are you a fan of Sleepless in Seattle? Or is When Harry Met Sally more you style? We also have the movies Ghost, Pretty Woman, The Fault in Our Stars, and much more!

Travel

If you’re thinking of a romantic get-away, check out Peter Guttman’s book Worlds to Imagine: Dream Journeys for Romantic Travelers or Amy Brown’s Backroads & Byways of Texas: Drives, Day Trips & Weekend Excursions. If you can’t get away, but you still want to daydream of romantic places you’d like to visit someday, check out a DVD on Venice, the Caribbean, or Hawaii!

Romantic Reads

As young adults, our thoughts turned to “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…” (Elizabeth Barrett Browning) If words of love for your sweetheart leave you tongue-tied, lean on the poets who are so adept at writing the sonnets that tell our loved ones what we ourselves cannot express!

February is also Library Lovers Month – What better time to recognize romantic fiction’s winners of the RITA Award!

The Golden Medallion Award – later re-named the RITA Award – was established by the Romance Writers of America organization in 1980 to recognize excellence in published romantic fiction. An earlier RITA Award, which was given for outstanding volunteer dedication, was named in honor of Rita Clay Estrada, who founded the RWA organization along with her mother, Rita Gallagher. RITA is now said to stand for “Romance is Treasured Always.”

There are several categories of RITA Awards – Contemporary Romance (long, mid-length, short), Historical Romance (long, short), Mainstream Fiction with a Central Romance, Paranormal Romance, Romance Novella, Romance with Religious or Spiritual Elements, Romantic Suspense, Young Adult Romance, and Best First Book.

Here are a few of the books that have been honored with the RITA Award. Is your favorite author among the winners?