All About Love: New Visions - We Loved Your Book So Much We Ate It

Capitainesse Blue reviewed All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks

Fondamental

5 stars

Je suis heureuse d'avoir pu lire cette traduction, et tellement affligée de ne pas avoir eu ce livre entre mes mains il y a de très nombreuses années... Genre au tout début de mon apprentissage féministe et relationnel amoureux. Je me serais épargné bien des errances et des souffrances inutiles au pays des livres de développement personnels foireux et des relations amoureuses patriarcales. Ce livre m'a aidé à y voir beaucoup plus clair, à comprendre enfin ce qui n'allait pas en matière d'amour dans ma vie, et aussi à comprendre mon attrait inaltérable pour l'amitié depuis l'enfance (ce qui étonnait tant de gens autour de moi). C'est un guide très précieux que je compte bien offrir à de nombreux proches.

Optional reviewed All About Love by bell hooks

I don't love all about this

2 stars

I read this at the end of 2023 and never finished my review. I took another look today, skimming through and dipping in at a couple of spots. I liked it much better than when I first read it, which mostly comes down to this mode of reading and my mindset. Like I say in my full review, it's probably best approached for inspiration, not as a non-fiction explainer.

First post after my redesigning my blog, btw. Looks much nicer now, I think 😊

Kurt reviewed All About Love by bell hooks

None

5 stars

I was wondering "what is it with love and our culture ?" (A certain type of) love seems to be everywhere in the media and in social norms, and nowhere in theory and philosophy, and general social sciences. Then I picked up this book, and it helped me articulate a lot of things. For most of the book I just thought "that's it exactly!"

Essential reading.

Fionnáin reviewed All About Love by bell hooks

All about love but hard to like

2 stars

This is a book about love, which begins by promising a different perspective than the common romantic-love angle in similar books. I hoped I would love it, but perhaps it was just the wrong introduction for me to bell hooks' writing. There are moments of brilliance, such as the excellent sixth chapter: Values, which discusses richly and poetically in how social systems influence thoughts on love.

However, most of the writing failed to land. It felt like an attempt to marry academic writing with memoir, with too little rigour for the former and too little reflection for the latter. Narrow personal reflections are given as evidence for problems with love painted with broad brushstrokes, and throughout the book the perspective is very US-centric, never considering love from any non-US or non-western perspective. Repetition also mars most chapters. In the end, the book is a bit too loose and while hooks' …

This is a book about love, which begins by promising a different perspective than the common romantic-love angle in similar books. I hoped I would love it, but perhaps it was just the wrong introduction for me to bell hooks' writing. There are moments of brilliance, such as the excellent sixth chapter: Values, which discusses richly and poetically in how social systems influence thoughts on love.

However, most of the writing failed to land. It felt like an attempt to marry academic writing with memoir, with too little rigour for the former and too little reflection for the latter. Narrow personal reflections are given as evidence for problems with love painted with broad brushstrokes, and throughout the book the perspective is very US-centric, never considering love from any non-US or non-western perspective. Repetition also mars most chapters. In the end, the book is a bit too loose and while hooks' perspective is joyful, loving and admirable, it doesn't translate here into writing that works.

Jason Cosper reviewed All About Love by bell hooks

All Is Full of Love

4 stars

Fucking wild how often she cites Marianne Williamson. Great book tho! Really loosened up my thinking about some things.

loppear reviewed All About Love by bell hooks

excellent positive tone and cultural critique

4 stars

Love is a willful act, to honestly commit and extend yourself to make others' conditions of growth your own. The ways our society portrays love as compatible with domination, selfishness, accumulation, and instant gratification make it harder to recognize and enact meaningful love, but we all have access to loving counter-narratives in community, friendships, religion, self-acceptance, etc.

My first hooks, a deeply well-read commentator pulling in a wide range of threads from 20c writing and her personal experiences.