Ellen McCarthy is an award-winning feature writer for the Style section of The Washington Post. She joined the Post in 2000 and wrote about business, technology, arts, and entertainment before launching the paper’s On Love section in 2009. She has interviewed hundreds of couples and written extensively about weddings and relationships. Her first book, The Real Thing: Lessons on Love and Life from a Wedding Reporter’s Notebook, is the culmination of that work.One of McCarthy's six favorite books about weddings and marriage, as shared at The Week magazine:
Pride and Prejudice by Jane AustenRead about the other books on the list.
The book that taught me that wit and intellect are every bit as attractive as physical beauty. We spend most of Jane Austen's classic watching Elizabeth Bennet spar with Mr. Darcy, even as she unwillingly falls in love with him.
Pride and Prejudice also appears on the Telegraph's list of the ten greatest put-downs in literature, Rebecca Jane Stokes' list of ten fictional families you might enjoy more than the one you'll actually spend the holidays with, Melissa Albert's lists of five fictional characters who deserved better, [fifteen of the] romantic leads (and wannabes) of Austen’s brilliant books and recommended reading for eight villains, Molly Schoemann-McCann's list of ten fictional men who have ruined real live romance, Emma Donoghue's list of five favorite unconventional fictional families, Amelia Schonbek's list of five approachable must-read classics, Jane Stokes's top ten list of the hottest men in required reading, Gwyneth Rees's top ten list of books about siblings, the Observer's list of the ten best fictional mothers, Paula Byrne's list of the ten best Jane Austen characters, Robert McCrum's list of the top ten opening lines of novels in the English language, a top ten list of literary lessons in love, Simon Mason's top ten list of fictional families, Cathy Cassidy's top ten list of stories about sisters, Paul Murray's top ten list of wicked clerics, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best housekeepers in fiction, ten great novels with terrible original titles, and ten of the best visits to Brighton in literature, Luke Leitch's top ten list of the most successful literary sequels ever, and is one of the top ten works of literature according to Norman Mailer. Richard Price has never read it, but it is the book Mary Gordon cares most about sharing with her children.
The Page 99 Test: Pride and Prejudice.
--Marshal Zeringue