All About Love by bell hooks Review

I’m not really sure why I picked this up after reading The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks and not really enjoying that either. I guess I am a victim of FOMO above all else.

Ultimately, the same qualms I held about The Will to Change was present in this book and more. At least the former was about a lesser spoken about topic, the patriarchy and how we all contribute in one way or another. I valued it more so because there is not a lot of discussion about it in the market and I commended hooks for the venture into the idea. But we’ve heard all there is to hear about love at this point, to write another book where that is the sole topic is a difficult one to execute but I trusted that hooks would give some form of insight that is new or interesting, given that this has been one of the most popular books on the market lately. I even saw in a widely popular bookstore that this has been their best seller for weeks. 

While the topic is universal and everyone can relate to wanting love that is healthy and lasting in their lives, it is unfortunately also a large con in this book; The subject matter is way too broad and complex to fully grasp and cover in this extremely short amount of pages. Although I’m sure it isn’t meant to deep dive or solve all of our problems and answer all our questions on the subject, the title “All About Love” felt extremely misleading. This was not “all about love” it was more like “love but from a single persons perspective and discussed briefly and shallowly and in a not very insightful way.” hooks reiterates many aspects of love that many of us are already familiar with, and doesn’t provide anything to supplement it. I don’t really understand what was trying to be achieved in the book besides some random personal narrative commentary about love that doesn’t go beyond the surface alongside anecdotal advice if it can even be called that, and when it does attempt to go beyond the surface, it feels rather performative in its self assumed impact on the reader rather than actually impactful. 

Overall, I hope to see more developed and complex theorizing about the subject of love in our modern society and how public views on the subject affect romantic, familial, and interpersonal love, whether it be negative or positive in the book market. I suppose I'll continue my search.