Reviews tagging 'Suicidal thoughts'

All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks

21 reviews

kaiulanilee's review

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Alcohol, Physical abuse, Death, Drug abuse, Misogyny, Suicidal thoughts, Addiction, Child abuse, Sexual violence, Domestic abuse, Racism, Toxic relationship, Alcoholism, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Grief, and Sexism

cosmic_blooms's review against another edition

challenging reflective medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Sexism, and Child abuse

Moderate: Addiction, Death, Grief, Toxic relationship, Suicidal thoughts, and Physical abuse

Minor: Sexual content and Body shaming

cucumberbro's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective relaxing fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Suicidal thoughts

vixenreader's review

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

The themes are familiar (especially when compared to the years 2000 and 2023), but its perspective on finding love in a society that continues to promote lovelessness is still relevant.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Abandonment, Emotional abuse, Child abuse, Toxic relationship, Death, and Sexism

Moderate: Alcoholism, Physical abuse, Addiction, Hate crime, Religious bigotry, Drug use, Fatphobia, Classism, Injury/Injury detail, Alcohol, Homophobia, and Racism

Minor: Mental illness, Violence, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Suicidal thoughts, and Toxic friendship

Discussions of isolation, homelessness, the negative affects of the mass media, and hopelessness are featured.

keeganrb's review

informative reflective medium-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Sexism, and Domestic abuse

Moderate: Toxic relationship, Child abuse, and Grief

Minor: Emotional abuse, Suicidal thoughts, and Addiction

unsuccessfulbookclub's review

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

Transformative.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexism, Misogyny, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Violence, and Racism

Minor: Suicidal thoughts

mosswood's review against another edition

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

This book began difficult for me, I struggled hearing such expressions of sadness and loss. However, it’s structure is like that of dealing with love itself, it begins to open up fresh possibilities, hope and joy. I was consumed by it, hooks’ writing is truly captivating and so inspiring.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Suicidal thoughts

sommer22's review against another edition

hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.75

this is a deeply insightful book that greatly changed my perception of Love. even as an agnostic, the idea of love as a spiritual practice is greatly moving and motivating, and i feel that everyone would do well to incorporate at least parts of that idea into their lives. the one drawback of this book that i can think of is that it's very of-its-time; written more than twenty years ago, hooks still uses mostly gendered language and frames romantic relationships in a mostly heteronormative way. she does exemplify her sister, who is a lesbian, but this is an exception. however, the ideas in this book are applicable to all relationships between people, and remain salient över twenty years after this book was published.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Domestic abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Emotional abuse, and Racism

corneliusmcstrawberry's review against another edition

hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

3.75

this book is a bit self-help-y but it’s not that bad. previous reviews have noted that bell hooks shames monica lewinsky, and she does, which seemed anti-feminist and insensitive. aside from that, there were moments that really stuck w me and applied to my own life. survivors of abuse may find this book insightful, comforting, and eye-opening, and i’d recommend it to them. there were some points where i found myself skimming on autopilot - reading a 200 page book solely about love becomes a bit monotonous after a while and so i had to take breaks. but bell hooks’ writing style is clear and direct, and as i alluded to earlier, she makes a lot of great points about how love and abuse cannot coexist even though our culture begs to differ in many ways. i’ve seen this book quoted and recommended online a lot, which is why i read it, and indeed it is chock-full of inspiring and thoughtful quotes about love. overall, i liked it. this is not the first of bell hooks’ works that i have read - i read an article of hers titled  ‘women at work’ and i do believe that she deserves the praise she gets for her writings about patriarchy (which, naturally, are prominent in ‘all about love’ too). 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexism and Misogyny

Moderate: Racism, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Grief, Physical abuse, Emotional abuse, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Addiction, Cancer, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, and Death

rieviolet's review against another edition

challenging hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

2.5

I have to say I have mixed feelings about this book. I came into it with maybe too high expectations but at times I really struggled to pick the book up again and keep on reading. In the end, I feel a bit "meh" about it.

On one hand, I really enjoyed some of the author's reflections, for example on the devaluation of friendships in favour of romantic bonds (although I think it was not developed much and a good portion of the book then focused mostly on romantic love) and on the negative effects of patriarchy. 
And I really appreciated the definition of love that hooks included in the book: "the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth".

On the other, some reflections did not resonate with me just as much and I struggled to really absorb them, maybe I needed some more in-depth analysis/comment in certain chapters, rather than just vague and general statements. 
Some other aspects of the book also left me a bit unconvinced , such as:  a framework very much heteronormative and binarist in terms of gender; the sections on work and love; the section critizing  Monica Lewinsky (a very uncomfortable passage to read that I could have done without); the reflections about forgiveness (especially when in relation to queer people, thank you but I'm going to stay very far away from bigoted and hurtful people if I am able to do so, even if they are family members). 

Also some parts of the book just are not for me personally. Whenever religion, biblical scriptures, angels etc. get mentioned I turn into that Mike Wazowski's meme, "Put that thing back where it came from or so help me!". But that is obviously on me and people who are religious and /or spiritual will certainly connect more with those parts. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, Sexism, and Domestic abuse

Moderate: Death, Physical abuse, Lesbophobia, Child abuse, and Grief

Minor: Cancer, Addiction, and Suicidal thoughts