Beauty description in novels?

[laklak77]

Can you recommend me some books that include detailed and many description of beauty(of a lover etc.) i am preparing a report that compare the variable "beauty" conception in relation with culture and ethnicity

i will be very glad if you can help

[MoreCowbell]

I can't think of a specific thing but Alice Hoffman's books usually include that sort of thing, and actually done well. If I were you, I would go through the short descriptions of the ones that involve love, several of them do. Actually, one to check is The Ice Queen, which I just finished, and also one called Second Nature. Practical Magic might be good, when Gillian first sees Jimmy.

[MoreCowbell]

White Oleander by Janet Fitch is also definitely another one to try.

[Scott]

I feel that inner beauty, personal physical beauty and the lack thereof are themes in Jane Eyre, a book I really enjoyed reading.

[Moderation note: Thread moved to "General" section because all threads in the "Reviews, Recommendations and Warnings" section must be limited to one book or series per thread, as stated in the forum rules for that section.]

[DATo]

I have resurrected this post from the year 2009 because I think it is a fascinating question. Beauty is a VERY hard thing to describe because it cannot be qualified or quantified ... it is among the most subjective of human opinions.

To DESCRIBE beauty is, in my opinion, a task that very few authors can accomplish successfully to a broad audience of opinion.

I would like to revive this thread by asking for any contributions by the forum community of descriptions of "beauty" that you may have come across in your reading: altering the OP slightly by including beauty with regard to ANY subject.

Here is one I found long ago written by someone who, though capable, I would not ordinarily have credited with such a poetic observation:

If we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which
compensates for all its bullying vagaries - the ice-storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top - ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold-the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence.

- Mark Twain