Essays in Love

The best way I can describe it is a hyper-examination of love and what it means, the process of meeting someone and falling in love and possibly falling out of love. It was beautifully written, had great and artistic metaphors, and beautiful insights on the art of loving someone. Some notes from the audiobook: - The word love can not describe that which we feel sometimes, which is why we may have doubts as to what exactly it is we are feeling. - In the wrong hands, intimate words and moments given to someone with the promise of secrecy can be converted to a common currency, a rumor to be spread. - I loved her body for the promise of who she was - We may be under the illusion we call love, but if we can find someone that is under the same illusion, we create a happy symbiosis. - Lovers depart from the regular language and nature of conversation in their discourse, instead basing it on the story that they are weaving together - we call ourselves the same names although we are like trees and change with the seasons. We couldn't have a new name for a tree for every season and in the same way we do not change our names even though the person we are now may be unrecognizable from who we were just a few weeks ago. - Chloe and I acknowledge that love's light doesn't always burn with the same furiosity. It is ok to not like your lover so much today and like them a little more later. Most of our issues with our lovers are just merely us projecting what has happened at the office. Great little book

as a seventeen year old girl who is just now experiencing romantic love for the first time ever, this book really helped me understand the way relationships work and my psyche and the psyche of the boy i like and it was just a really educative and informative book which somehow still managed to keep from being plotless and boring while teaching important lessons… i especially loved the concept of mixing the novelistic elements with those of essays and theory :)

Timeless romance

"Because in resolving our need to love, we do not always succeed in resolving our need to long."

"However brave, the stoic was in the end a coward at the point of perhaps the highest reality, at the moment of love."

This was such an interesting book. Alain de Botton is an absolute dream of an author, I am certain. The mix between philosophical essay and fictional prose was such a great way to tell the tale of Chloe and the narrator's relationship. As always, de Botton makes me think about relationships and about love in a whole new light.