All About Love: New Visions
Author: bell hooks
List Price: $13.00
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ISBN: 0060959479
Publisher: Perennial (09 January, 2001)
Sales Rank: 21,310
Average Customer Rating: 4.26 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
essential
I have read and reread this book. I have bought it for friends, given my copies to strangers on the trian who have asked about it, and suggested it to just about everyone i know, from my grandmother to my boyfriend. I truely believe that if everyone on earth read this book that the world would be a better place. Bell Hooks is "hardcore" about her stance on what is and what isn't love. She gives it definition and makes it actually possible to consider a future, or even a present, with love in our lives when we live in a time when love is looked at as impossible by most of us. She attacks our ideas about love. I personally came away from the book with an idea of how to actually go about being a more loving person. I have standards now that I didn't have before. Unlike a previous reviewer said, Bell Hooks bases her ideas of love on responsibility and respect.
I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Surface Love
Love is one of the most widely topics spoken on or about in any language. I saw hooks'title claiming to have a new vision on it, and was rather pleased. In total, however, this book is no different than most of the others I have read. According to hooks in the introduction: be it through practice or theory, we know very little of love. And I was expecting her to at least attempt to give us a working definition. None was provided. Nonetheless, chapter 3 is titled: Be True to Love. And this is only one of the countless wrong steps she took. Since, not only did chapter 1 not set any sort of formidable foundation, but so was two in inconsistency and shallowness. Bell hooks obviously did a lot of research, but it was more in quantity than quality in presentation. I felt like I was reading her droolings. She obviously bit off more than she could chew here. The last three to four chapters are the best ones. She started to get warm then. My grade is D+ bordering on a C-.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Brave
Thankfully, bell hooks is always brave enough to tell it like it is. Love is a verb not a feeling. There is an obvious connection between love as experienced within families and abusive romantic relationships. Read and begin to think critically about these core survival issues.Her observations are wise. Her grasp of history is absolute. Her ideas stimulate intelligent and loving thought, conversation, and action. Read this book.
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