For me Valentine’s Day is not just about celebrating romantic love but also about friendship. I have an amazing group of girlfriends (had lunch with this girl today) and now I have found a lot of kindreds via the book blog world.

So I wish you all a Happy Valentine’s Day and here’s a little poem for you:

I wish I could remember the first day.
First hour, first moment of your meeting me;
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or winter for aught I can say.
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom yet for many a May.
If only I could recollect it! Such
A day of days! I let it come and go
As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow.
It seemed to mean so little, meant so much!
If only now I could recall that touch,
First touch of hand in hand! – Did one but know!

~ The First Day by Christina Rossetti

Some of the titles come from you, my blog friends, others from Booksense or from the B&N Discover New Writers Series. It doesn’t matter that I have toppling stacks of to be read books, there are always new books making it on my list for one day.

Here are the latest books that I’m adding to my wishlist:

• The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa. From a blurb: Hauntingly spare, beautiful, and twisted, The Diving Pool is a disquieting and at times darkly humorous collection of novellas about normal people who suddenly discover their own dark possibilities.
• Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski. From the Publisher: A daring, spellbinding tale of anthropologists, missionaries, demon possession, sexual taboos, murder, and an obsessed young reporter named Mischa Berlinski
• The Opposite of Love by Julie Buxbaum. From the Publisher: Buxbaum’s debut is a welcome addition to the having-it-all genre.
• Gardens of Water by Alan Drew. From a blurb: In a small village outside Istanbul, Sinan, a struggling Kurdish grocer, hears an odd and ominous rumbling. In the rush of destruction that follows, his first thought is for his young son, buried beneath the earthquake’s debris — then for his wife and daughter. It is an impulse that will torment him for years to come.
• Shame in the Blood by Tetsuo Miura. This novel is considered one of the finest contemporary love stories in all of modern Japanese literature.
• My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead by Jeffrey Eugenides. “When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler.”
• A Person of Interest by Susan Choi. The cover of this one got my attention.
• The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. From a blurb: This novel takes us back to the time of the Indian epic The Mahabharat—a time that is half-history, half-myth, and wholly magical.

What do you think?