A review by fuzzygazelle
All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks

emotional hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced

4.0

A really insightful look to the place of love in society, and a really hopeful look at incorporating love into one's daily life. The framing of love as a conscious action one takes, a choice, is really interesting and forced me to consider my own actions, and take accountability for some of my own emotions on the topic. The range of considering love at the societal and individual level makes hooks' analysis very comprehensive. I also find reading about hooks' life very interesting, and while I don't align with all her spiritual beliefs, I still thought I got something out of reading her perspective on spirituality to incorporate into my own practice. At some points I felt as though some of the words put too much emphasis on generalising some groups of people (though not all the time, sometimes it did work more as a genuine critique of behaviours) and I do feel as though hooks at some points uses too broad of brush strokes to make her points that it comes across as overly naive or optimistic, even if you do accept that the book is intending to be hopeful. Even still, I do think the optimism is welcome in a world where as hooks discusses, we tend to default to cynicism and scepticism on the topic of love if we have been hurt by it before. Definitely recommend if you're looking to see a refreshing perspective on love, and how we can incorporate an approach to living guided by it.
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