A crazy little book called Love Story

This post is not a book review per se. Reviewing Love Story would be kind of pointless, right? All of us have read it, or at least seen/heard desi Bollywood reproductions of it. This post is about how people these days love to hate Love Story.
True, there is nothing great about the story. Boy meets girl, they fall in love, marry against their parents' wishes, girl dies leaving the boy heart-broken and possibly emotionally crippled for life (have you read Oliver's Story?). But what makes this book great is the way in which it is written. A very short book by the standards of your standard love stories, the beauty of the book lies in the witty-ass way that it is written. The characters are life-like - they talk like normal college students and not like some cardboard cutouts of Romeo and Juliet. The story too has the possibility and probability of being true. I love the little things that Segal has described - how Jenny would hold on to Oliver's shirt sleeve and not his hand while walking with him. I have found myself doing just the same on many occassions, so I can safely say that the book has left a deep emotional impact on me.
So, lets take for granted that most of you out there reading this will agree that if not the greatest love story ever, Love Story is certainly not crappy. What surprises me is that most of the discussions on Love Story are punctuated by statements like "Crappiest book ever!" and "So unrealistic". I think people forget that the novel was published almost four decades back and was pretty much a trailblazer for all love stories that followed. You should not judge it by the standards of today when the book market is flooded with the likes of Nicholas Sparks and Cecilia Ahern and Nora Roberts. And if you base your opinions on statistics, the novel was the top-selling book for all of 1970 and has been translated into more than 20 languages. Also, the novel was later adapted into a movie which went on to be nominated for seven Oscars.
Like so many other things, I think it has become a fad to dislike Love Story. After all, you certainly don't want people to know that you like sappy love stories and that you bawled like a baby when Oliver hugged his father and cried.