Books: Veteran Cupid’s Assistants

For Paolo and Francesca (Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, V, 137-138), but not only for them.
Apparently, besides being providers of culture, books have always had the power to make people fall in love, create special bonds and stimulate passions. I’m sure that everyone has in mind some famous movie scenes set among the library shelves or in which the spark that makes two people fall in love is a book. Dramas are no exception.
So here is, in no particular order, the list of my favorite romantic scenes where books, more or less incisively, intervene.



Since it’s set in a university, there are inevitably a lot of scenes where books are protagonists, but have you noticed how many of them are romantic scenes? Every scene in which Lee Sun Joon and Kim Yoon Hee study together; their first kiss, coincidentally, in the library; the sweet and funny scene when he put some pieces of paper among the books pages to apologize and to tell her, for the fort time, “I love you” and so on…


Still on the subject “study together” we can also mention Oh Ha Ni and Baek Sung Jo. It’s not like something really happens between them while they’re studying. Oh Ha Ni doesn’t even listen to him, incredulous that such a perfect being is explaining maths to her. The picture that his mother takes, however, while they’re both sleeping on their books, raises quite a few rumors and almost a scandal about their relationship. It must be admitted that school books gave a certain contribution to make the protagonists closer!


At the very beginning the privileged place for the development of Kim Boong Do and Choi Hee Jin love story is the national library. Apart from being theater of the first contacts and kisses, in fact, is also the place where the two of them start to know each other. They discover the cultures and conventions that differentiate them and are immediately fascinated and attracted by each other.

One of the things that makes Secret Garden more romantic, a part from the magical element, is, in my opinion, the constant references to famous books and fairy tales. Especially The Little Mermaid plays an important role to create a bond between Kim Joo Won and Gil Ra Im. They compare themselves to the fairy tale’s protagonists, except for the finale, which Joo Won takes the liberty to change into happy ending. 




In this case they don’t manage to give birth to a love, but books are what, more than anything else, makes Mae Ri e Jung In closer. Their favorite meeting point is a bookstore, where they relax themselves and… can you really read a bookstore’s book without buying them?! However, what can I say about the bookcase that Jung In put in her room when she’s supposed to live with him? On every book he stick a post-it with the plot synthesis and some references to make her think about him. So, even if he didn’t achieve the desired result, he deserves to be at least mentioned for his commitment!


Have you seen any other book-filled scenes in dramas? Or loves brought together through books?