On Love, by Alain de Botton: **7/8

This was a very interesting and mostly rewarding book. I didn't always relate to the protagonist's stories, what he offered as fact didn't always register with me, but I reveled in the constancy of these theories about personal relations. As an amateur life/relationship-theorist myself, I found his way of thinking very true and honest, if not always spot-on.

Basically, the plot centers on this guy's relationship highs and lows, with intricate detail given to the protagonist's state of mind. In extremely analytical fashion, the author pays special attention to almost every possible relationship signal - the first kiss, looks in a crowd, whatever. It's the kind of pointless stuff that I like to analyze myself, and it's a thrill to read someone equally as analytical, a rarity for sure. When the character is dead-on, which is most of the time, the book is fantastic. The only problem that I have with the book, and the only thing holding it back from more superior ratings, is that the character seems misguided at times in his assessment of these relationship struggles. Unfortunately, these instances make it harder to relate to the main character, and somewhat invalidate his opinions about relationships in general. (He makes some bad choices on a couple of occasions.) Overall, though, the sheer number of impressive observations about relationships make this book more than simply worthwhile, but also quite a valuable resource for any analytical mind when thinking of love. The three quotes I've listed a good examples of the kinds of observations appearing throughout the novel.

Quotes:
pg. 22 #6 - "The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of the beloved who does not call."

pg. 35 #6 - "A silence with an unattractive person implies they are the boring one. A silence with an attractive one leaves you certain it is you who are impossibly dull."

pg. 41 #18 - "My lie, as shameful as it was unavoidable, alerted me to a distinction between two kinds of lying: lying in order to escape and lying in order to be loved."
(summer 1999)

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