Andrew Rannells

The most popular, provocative, and unforgettable essays from the New York Times "Modern Love" column--now revised and updated, featuring stories from the upcoming anthology series starring Tina Fey, Andy Garcia, Anne Hathaway, Catherine Keener, Dev Patel, and John Slattery.tery.

True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption

Modern Love

Emiley Jones

Sometimes, lying here, I think of this divorce business as something like the flu. The feverish beginnings, as miserable and sweaty as they are, are somehow easier to get through (they are a blur, really) than the many half-well, half-sick days that follow, days when you're not sure what to do. You're too well to lie in bed watching TV but too sick to go out and do all the things well people are expected to do.

Every chapter is an essay by a different writer, which makes it easy to pick up and put down whenever. All stories have very different protagonists (pregnant teen, 80 year old, autistic man, Catholic lesbian) which made for some quirky love/loss stories!  

Jazz j

Modern Love, Revised and Updated (Media Tie-In)

Sohini Roy

so beautiful. i cried several times and will need to buy myself my own copy to physically annotate and tab. i want to reread this a million more times

Ryan 

3.5 stars

some stories were alright (more so uninteresting) and some stories were entertaining for 6-7 pages. i'll try and construct my feeling for each stories within one (or two) emojis. more to come!

Joana da Silva

15th book read while I'm still home because the Covid-19 is still out there.
I love Modern Love and everything about it. I started backwards though - I watched the tv adaptation, listened to the podcast and finally, got to the book.
I was so lost in these stories that I didn't even realize when I got to the last one (which is my favourite one). Everyone needs to read this book because the world needs more love!

linda

I was quite burned-out from reading two books in a row about sexism in Silicon Valley. Even though they were fascinating, I felt mentally and physically exhausted, and frankly, cynical. After reading heavy nonfiction, I tend to gravitate toward stories about love, so this book felt like a natural fit. I’ve always been a big fan of the NYT Modern Love section. They’re good for unwinding after a long day (and dreaming about the boyfriend I would love to have).

This collection of essays was good, but not a standout. I think I enjoyed The Moth’s anthology, All These Wonders, more. I didn’t like how the writers of these NYT stories were predominantly white, urbane, and privileged, but unfortunately, that’s a given for the NYT. This book is divided into four sections: Somewhere Out There, I Think I Love You, Holding on Through the Curves, and Family Matters. I probably liked I Think I Love You the most. Maybe it’s because I crave stories about falling in love, but also because I’ve read better essays about family and loss in the Modern Love column.

It was nice to revisit Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s “You May Want to Marry My Husband,” which I first read after hearing Jason’s TED talk. I also loved Ayelet Waldman’s “Truly, Madly, Guiltily,” which explores the conflict between parental and spousal love. Her writing is clever and brilliant. One of my favorite lines: "If the most erotic form of foreplay to a mother of a small child is, as I’ve heard some women claim, loading the dishwasher or sweeping the floor, then he’s a master of titillation." And this one. "Having found something to usurp me as the sun of his universe does not mean he wants to make love to me any less."

Another favorite was Eve Pell’s “The Race Grows Sweeter Near Its Final Lap,” a story about how she fell in love with her partner, Sam, when she was in her seventies and he in his eighties. It made me think about what really matters, and why. There were so many beautiful lines in that essay.

In my younger years I would have felt competitive, as if his love for her meant less for me. Now I knew differently, and one night I spoke my mind…Sam and I did things younger people do—we ran and raced, we fell in love and traveled and remodeled a house and got married.

In our seventies and eighties, we had been through enough of life’s ups and downs to know who we were, and we had learned to compromise. We knew something about death because we had seen loved ones die. The finish line was drawing closer. Why not have one last blossoming of the heart?

Best use of five hours? Probably not. Faith in humanity restored, yes.

Dani Gale

So many interesting stories about love (romantic, familial, and platonic). Such a nice read, it had me laughing and tearing up at several parts!

Anish Ravipati

I first learned about Modern Love through the Amazon Prime TV show, and then started listening to the podcast, and then saw this book in the window of a Ballard bookstore in Seattle. There are so many stories from the Modern Love column that are included in this collection, and they are all very enjoyable to read. Highly recommend this book.

Paula Gomez

Ruth Parker 

I very rarely give anthologies five stars but this one just grabbed me.
There were some duds of course and I got physically angry at one story but there were some gems I this books that will stick with me for a long time.

Modern Love True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption

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