Rating: 
Summary: All About Everyone
Review: If you're looking for a self-help book that offers all the answers to questions you have about love this isn't it. "All About Love" is a cultural examination of what love is and what it means in our society. I love bell hooks because she doesn't pretend to have all the answers, or any for that matter. That's what makes her a good philosopher. This book makes you reflect on how you have been taught to love and how you define it. One point hooks talks about is that people assume they know real love because they've always loved a certain way. Is it working for you? For some people-yes, for some people it isn't. This book is a starting point toward answering that question.(well, it was for me anyway.)Interestingly, several people I know (scholars none the less) have scoffed at the idea of this book of love. If your mindset going into reading this is is "who does bell hooks think she is telling me about love, I already know love" then save your time reading this because you aren't ready for the lesson.
Rating: 
Summary: All about Bell Hooks' personal problems
Review: In writing this book, the author seems to be airing her ownpersonal difficulties with interpersonal relationships andself-acceptance. Rather than acknowledging that this is her *very personal* take on love and relationships, she becomes a self-appointed expert on love... With amazing self-righteousness, she decides what should be everyone's definition of love, dictates universal goals for interpersonal relationships, and pontificates on how everyone should act, regardless of personal, cultural, or historical backgrounds! The book is covered with a thin coat of psudoacademic style (citing other very good authors, which is the book's saving grace), while the author parades her own personal pain, biases and political agenda. Hooks twists her own definitions and makes exceptions to her own moral dictums in order to fit her political points, ending up with political correctness at its worse, and looking like a caricature of the stereotypical Black feminist leftist man-hating academician... Better to stick to the authors whose works she cites!
Rating: 
Summary: Surface Love
Review: 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:
Summary: quiet fire
Review: My hope for the new millennium was that more people became aware of the writings of bell hooks. She helps us to lift off those rose colored glasses we seem to wear on our minds about current social issues that plague the american culture. Her current writing explores why our culture has leaned toward narrissism and excessive materialism...the lack of love in our lives. Her vision is simple and clean for this book, which makes it easier to understand her passion on the subject of love and the lack of it. She offers new ways to think about love for ourselves, our families and american humanity. Ms. hooks is a critical thinker who challenges us to rethink how to give and receive love in our lives.
Rating:
Summary: Brave
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A courageous book that should be widely read
Review: There aren't many public discussions of love in America outside of popular culture -- movies, music, books, magazines -- but there should be, because lack of an expansive understanding of and capacity for love is behind much that is wrong in our society. When bell hooks noticed that the world she was living in "was no longer open to love" and that "lovelessness had become the order of the day," she decided to write about it. "I began thinking and writing about love when I heard cynicism instead of hope in the voices of young and old," she says. The result is a book that's a refreshing change from relationship advice books that completely overlook the cultural context of love -- the ways in which love is difficult for both men and women, but especially for women, in a patriarchal culture; the ways in which a more expansive understanding of love is sorely needed to set things right in a country run by fear. hooks begins by addressing the pervasive confusion about what love is, defining it as M. Scott Peck does: "The will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." The chapters in which hooks names "the ways we are seduced away from love" read as a litany of soul-corroding cultural norms. There is, most fundamentally, injustice to children in dysfunctional families in a culture where family dysfunction is normalized. Then there's the increasing prevalence of lying in public and private transactions alike, most recently exemplified in the Enron scandal and the priest-pedophile scandal in the Catholic Church. There's the cultural obsession with power and domination instead of a love ethic. (hooks pulls no punches when she states: "An overall cultural embrace of a love ethic would mean that we would all oppose much of the public policy conservatives condone and support.") There's also the vast and unending greed encouraged by a consumerist society. And last but not least, there's our collective fear of and at the same time worship of death. (What else could explain the great popularity of movies saturated with violence, such as "Lord of the Rings"?) Then there are the chapters where hooks explores the importance of self-love, the reality of divine love, the crucial role played by friendships and communities, the role of romantic love in helping us resolve and transform family-of-origin wounds if approached consciously, the real healing power of true love, and the yearning for love that lies behind the popular fascination with angels. The only topic I found missing from her comprehensive look at love is biophilia, that love of nature named by Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson. I'm coming to realize that any concept of intimacy with our particular place on earth is sorely absent from most American lives, imperiling our planet's health as well as our own. Throughout the book, it's hooks's personal revelations that make what she says credible and that especially strike a chord in me. I found in her a sister spirit. Just my age, she could be describing my relationship history when she describes her own. And herein lies my biggest quibble with the book: wishing to avoid the kind of disappointments in relationships with men I've had in the past, I want to believe that I can find satisfying love with a male, but the many generalizations hooks makes about men in our culture make me wonder. I fear she may be right when she says that "most men feel that they receive love and therefore know what it feels like to be loved; women often feel we are in a constant state of yearning, wanting love but not receiving it" (p. xx). According to hooks, many, if not most, men under patriarchy tell lies "to avoid confrontation or taking responsibility for inappropriate behavior" (p. 36), "use psychological terrorism as a way to subordinate women" (p. 41), "are especially inclined to see love as something they should receive without expending effort . . . . [and] do not want to do the work that love demands" (p. 114), are usually prevented by sexist thinking from "acknowledging their longing for love or their acceptance of a female as their guide on love's path" (p. 156), "are convinced that their erotic longing indicates who they should, and can, love . . . . [and] tend to be more concerned about sexual performance and sexual satisfaction than whether they are capable of giving and receiving love" (pp. 174, 176), and "choose relationships in which they can be emotionally withholding when they feel like it but still receive love from someone else. . . . [and ultimately] choose power over love" (p. 187). Hmmm. Men, what do you say to this? Can you deny it? "Profound changes in the way we think and act must take place if we are to create a loving culture," writes hooks. I, for one, would welcome those changes and am working on making them in myself. Despite being marred by unfortunate typos ("Living by a Love Ethnic" [viii], "perfect love casts our fear" [220]), this is a courageous and important book that should be read widely and taken to heart.
Rating:
Summary: One of the most important books I ever read
Review: This book describes different types of love and touches on love's relationship to social justice and feminism. It helped me affirm my conviction that the many forms of love need to be examined more closely and taken more seriously in scholarship and in life itself. Truly eye opening.
Rating: 
Summary: Confirmed Some Of My Own Thoughts About Love
Review: To some degree it felt like I was reading my own thoughts. I noticed that bell hooks and I have read some of the same books. Plus like her I came from a dysfunctional family. Also like her I have done some work trying to heal the wounds that were inflicted both in childhood and adulthood. It's a never ceasing 'life assignment', to heal myself though love. I've learned over time you can make your own family, that romantic love isn't the most important love and to be able to receive love you must love yourself first. I also liked she had a few thoughts on love for me to ponder, a fresh perspective. I recommend this book for anyone who are trying to make sense of their lives because they feel unloved or unloveable. She gives good information on what love is and what it's not. She rejects the American culture of what love is and I agree with her that we are moving toward a more violent, death culture since the late seventies. I have decided not to watch or read anymore negitive programs, movies, books, or magazines. Also to cut back on the news. I can only change myself, not the world (but we can work with organizations that promote healthy world changes). I believe in the transformative nature of love and that's what this book is about.
Rating:
Summary: Yes, It is about love
Review: WOW I just finished all about love. What an inspiring book. We are are yearning to be loved and to give love. I'm ordering 10 more copies for friends. What better way to say I love you than with this book. A must read.
|
