Romance

Many of us never thought we'd reach 40 single and living alone. But the last census told us that 23 million Americans now live alone, half between 25 and 50. Many single adults raised in the "Ozzie-and-Harriet" era now live confused and benumbed in another: The Twilight Zone of Romance. Sure, activities for "singles" are everywhere. But adult dating today can be a carnival of confusion. The problem isn't simply about who will pick up the dinner check, it's about the lost verities of courtship, civility and compromise, rules that disappeared with Howdy Doody and tailfins on Cadillacs.

The older woman who takes up with a younger man generally has not fared well on the silver screen. She is at best a vehicle for the young man's coming of age - Jennifer O'Neill's lovely war widow in "Summer of '42" - and more often either an object of pity (Cloris Leachman's sex-starved Ruth in "The Last Picture Show") or an out-and-out lecher (Anne Bancroft's Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate"). The object of her affections - or attentions - may be in the relationship for ambition (Frank Sinatra in "Pal Joey," William Holden in "Sunset Boulevard")

Hurt souls find love with a touch of magic and there's laugh-out-loud courtship of opposites in a continuing shifter series as we survey romance reading for the summer. Spellbound Falls By Janet Chapman Jove, $7.99 Olivia Baldwin runs a camp for families in picturesque Spellbound Falls, Maine. A busy widow with a young daughter, she hasn't had time for romance in years, not to mention a lack of any real contenders to catch her eye in the tiny town.

MOST WOMEN like a guy with brains, but maybe not a guy who keeps brains in his hoodie pouch, for snacking. This is just one of the many roadblocks to romance in "Warm Bodies" an inventive zomcom about a zombie (Nicholas Hoult) who can't remember his first name, or forget that he's in love. He falls for a beautiful non-zombie girl (Teresa Palmer), whom he impulsively saves right after killing and partially eating her boyfriend. He keeps her safe and hidden at the zombie-infested airport, holed up in the cabin of an old plane, where he spins vinyl for her and gathers food and blankets.

Since Valentine's Day falls on Monday this year, why not devote the whole weekend to romance? Just hit the video store and fire up the VCR. Here are some suggestions, from classic to offbeat: "Wuthering Heights" (1939) - Laurence Olivier's Heathcliff suffers his whole miserable life pining for Merle Oberon's Cathy. The tacked-on ending suggests heaven may offer what earth never could. "Gone With the Wind" (1939) - Vivien Leigh's Scarlett and Clark Gable's Rhett are married and obsessively drawn to each other, but their tempestuous courtship continues because they never settle down enough to settle in. They're both so strong and Scarlett so unyielding that they're thwarted by her inability to accept just part of all she thinks she wants.

"We're goin' ridin' on the freeway, got love on the inside track. " - Aretha Franklin, "Freeway of Love" The automobile, as several academics have observed, has become a kind of motorized version of the American psyche, a symbol of self-reliance, private adventure and the mobility of a democratic society. Now, increasingly, it is the vehicle to romance. Nowhere is this more evident than in this city where, as author Arthur Miller once wrote, "when a man admits failure, he becomes a pedestrian.

He's fought off aliens, drug lords, the CIA and - ay! - robots. Heck, he even brought George Foreman to his knees. Now, in Hitch, his first romantic comedy since he burst onto the small screen as the Fresh Prince, Philadelphia native son Will Smith finds himself in the battle of the sexes. Smith, the quintessential ladies' man - who's resplendent with his actress wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, on the cover of this month's Essence - plays "date doctor" Alex Hitchens, creating situations to help ordinary guys snag the girls of their dreams.

When Anne Lubeck met Peter Silverberg back in 2003, she was divorced and he was a widower. Things clicked on their first lunch date at a South Jersey restaurant, and after some months a romance was budding. At the time, Peter was living in the single-family home he had shared with his wife, and Anne had begun flirting with the notion of moving from her condominium in Edgewater Park to somewhat larger space. As the romance progressed, and it was clear that marriage was in the offing, Anne became more proactive about moving.

It won't be long now before teens across the globe take to the streets in sackcloth and ashes in mourning over Kristen Stewart's swan dive from media grace. K-Stew, whose romance with Twilight costar Robert Pattinson has helped us keep at bay the horrors of a world engulfed in poverty, war, and famine, admitted this week that she had engaged in what she called a "momentary indiscretion" with her married Snow White and the Huntsman director, Rupert Sanders. The fallout has been shocking: Fans, for the most part teenage girls, have unleashed a fury of disappointment and outrage, a wave of hysteria not seen since Sigmund Freud set up shop in Vienna.

"When companies say they're coming out with software for women, they generally release a cookbook program," says Amy Briggs. "That's sort of denying the intellectual ability of women. " Briggs, 25, is the author of Plundered Hearts (Infocom), the first interactive romance novel. That's right, an all-text romantic story you read and participate in with the help of your computer. It hit the stores early last month. With an adult female audience in mind, Plundered Hearts is also the first interactive fiction software in which the main character is a woman.

I was 13 years old when my family moved from Wilmington to the Main Line - 13 when I began riding the Main Line rails. That first overheated summer I boarded at Bryn Mawr to make my way (eventually) to the Wissahickon Skating Club, dressed (preposterously) in turtlenecks, nubby tights, skating skirts, and sweatpants - enough polyester to keep my pigtails damp as I later practiced axels and scratch spins at the rink. After that I rode the rails for the sake of city adventures, or rode them as a University of Pennsylvania student, or rode them home for holidays from a succession of city apartments.

Q: My teenage son and I have lived alone together ever since his bum of a dad walked out on us five years ago. A couple of months ago, I met someone, and my son is so rude to my boyfriend that I'm afraid it's going to mess things up between us. It got so bad the other day that I told my son that he has to behave or leave. He went in his room and shut the door. He's been avoiding me ever since. I don't like the tension that's in our home now, but I'm not sure what to do about it. Mia: Your poor son. He's had mommy all to himself and now he has to share her with some other guy. Since he can't control you, he's disrespectful to the man you're sleeping with.

MOST WOMEN like a guy with brains, but maybe not a guy who keeps brains in his hoodie pouch, for snacking. This is just one of the many roadblocks to romance in "Warm Bodies" an inventive zomcom about a zombie (Nicholas Hoult) who can't remember his first name, or forget that he's in love. He falls for a beautiful non-zombie girl (Teresa Palmer), whom he impulsively saves right after killing and partially eating her boyfriend. He keeps her safe and hidden at the zombie-infested airport, holed up in the cabin of an old plane, where he spins vinyl for her and gathers food and blankets.

L eSEAN "SHADY" McCOY lived up to his nickname Saturday night when he embarked on a Twitter battle with his baby mama, calling her names and insisting that his followers also harass her on the social-media site. A few hours later, the Eagles running back took down his Twitter page entirely. First, he laughably posted that he was "hacked. " The baby-mama drama all began when McCoy innocently tweeted that he was in Puerto Rico on vacation. This led to a number of replies from @Angelface0330, whose account is still active, about the fact that McCoy is not enough involved with their son, who was born in April, according to the woman named Steph's Twitter profile.

Recent romance releases include a sweet story about struggling newlyweds, a twist on a very familiar theme, and a bittersweet tale of love among Shifters.   Midnight Promises By Sherryl Woods Harlequin Mira, $7.99 paperback Midnight Promises continues the story of single mother Karen Ames and sexy personal trainer Elliott Cruz. We first met them in Woods' Feels Like Family , a previous entry in the Sweet Magnolia series, in which they were secondary characters.

A FEW OF US entertainment writers had just left a Toronto International Film Festival screening of "Hyde Park on Hudson," and we were arguing about the film. How much of the relationship between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Margaret "Daisy" Suckley was true? Was it fair to take liberties with the parts that weren't? My feeling was that there are countless books that traffic in historical fiction. Why was it so taboo for a movie to play around with a historical event?

IT'S OSCAR SEASON - time for another homage to the wonder of movies and the people who make them, people who also, coincidentally, vote for Oscars. This year's model is "Hitchcock," an offbeat romcom featuring Anthony Hopkins as the great director, who's working on his game-changing independent feature "Psycho" while trying to maintain a happy marriage to screenwriter wife Alma (Helen Mirren). The movie has offended film historians, who note that its account of the making of "Psycho" is greatly fabricated.

Blame it on love. After some exquisitely protracted flirtation, roguish mystery writer Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) and keen NYPD homicide detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) are finally exchanging pillow banter in the fifth season of Castle . And ratings for the ABC series (Mondays at 10 p.m.) have never been better (an average of 14.1 million viewers). Or maybe it's not the sex. Because the audience for this intoxicating and unique comedy-romance-crime procedural hybrid has grown every year it's been on the air. In any event, this season strikes its star as different.

If you didn't know it was a memoir, you'd say it was a romance novel. Luisita López Torregrosa's new Before the Rain: A Memoir of Love and Revolution (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 240 pp., $25) has a heady mix of revolution, danger, fearless journalism, and same-sex romance, at a time when it was less open and less accepted, nurtured under pressure of mobs and bullets, a romance spanning years and continents. There's elation and uncertainty, laughter and heartbreak. And poetry in the telling.

I now write in defense of beautifully staged, meticulously lighted, handsomely dressed, genuinely acted, and shrewdly contrived soppiness. I make no apologies. You'll either detest the new musical Love Story , which has all that and more at the Walnut Street Theatre, or you'll give yourself over to stunning manipulation. You may regret it later - you've been played like a soulful cello by a cast of Yo-Yo Mas - but while you're being sucked in you'll be fully in the moment. That's what happened to me. In retrospect, it happened against all odds, in a show that has so much kissing, I wonder about the production's ChapStick bill; that's a stretch at 100 intermissionless minutes; that offers stereotyped characters cut from cardboard; that - like the book it came from - is a jarring mixture of glib repartee, lovey mush, and, finally, overwhelming sadness.