Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston -- My favorite thing about this novel is that I read it in school and in our discussion it quickly became obvious that everyone had a completely different opinion on which man was Janie Crawford's one true love. This one's all about love as life-long journey.

Middlemarch by George Eliot -- Three different central love stories, each very distinct. Everyone has their favorite, and Fred Vincy's struggle to demonstrate his worth to Mary is definitely mine. Not just a great love story, one of the best novels ever written.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton -- Does not qualify for everyone's definition of a "love story," but I think there's something really beautiful and admirable about the central relationship between Newland Archer and his wife May Welland. Her cousin the Countess Olenska shows up and Newland wastes about 400 pages in a cloud of passion and lust but still marries May in the end; they have a very long, happy marriage and several lovely children. Some people hate this ending, but I'm a huge fan of it because it feels very possible, plus, Winona Ryder is May Welland in the film adaptation and I will never not take her side.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- A widow revisits her first love after the death of her husband and the results are beautiful and sad. There is a stillness to this novel that absolutely knocks you to the floor.

Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling -- Because there is no greater literary love than the slow-burning relationship between [SPOILER ALERT] Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. She gives him up to fight the greatest darkness the world has ever known and a part of me was secretly mad that she didn't divorce him before the epilogue scene.

Persuasion by Jane Austen -- Because there has to be a Jane Austen on the list and this one is very quietly the best Jane Austen novel.

Almost everyone on Earth has already read the Harry Potter series, which is fine. I encourage it. But it upsets me greatly when people who haven't read the Harry Potter series dismiss J.K. Rowling as yet another YA author who is too famous for her own good and whose writing career is motivated by a desire to pen the next cash cow franchise. I doubt very much that Rowling ever could have imagined the eventual pop culture saturation of her series, and its popularity in no way diminishes her incredible skills as a writer and storyteller.

The Casual Vacancy, her first non-HP novel (and her only novel for adults (published under her own name)) was so highly anticipated when it was finally published that it was naturally dragged pretty thoroughly by critics. The bad reviews became the only thing anyone knew or remembered about the book, which was especially disappointing to me because I read it and although it was far from perfect (especially the ending, which is pretty rocky), I really enjoyed the experience of reading it. That is to say, it suffers from some bad narrative points and plotlines, but it is incredibly well-written and the character development is stellar. I felt like I could have continued to read about these characters doing really mundane things for hours. It is not the greatest book I've ever read, and it is nowhere near as strong as the HP books, but it really is pretty good and didn't get a fair shake.

Thus, the Robert Galbraith books, aka the J.K. Rowling books published under a pseudonym and very well-reviewed. Thriller/spy novels fall into a distinctly guilty pleasure reading category for me, so I haven't read these yet and I'm waiting for the perfect opportunity, like a long flight, to finally get into them, but everything I've heard about them is overwhelmingly positive.

And for those who just can't get enough of the HP stuff, Rowling recently published a series of short stories on her website Pottermore that expand on existing characters. Along with several spin-off movies she's writing and the Tales of Beedle the Bard (a companion book she published as a fundraiser for her favorite charity), she clearly isn't ready to leave the HP universe behind, which is fine with me.