On love
by Alain De Botton · first published 1993
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2recommended by
2HN commenters
2010–2022first – last mentioned
100% recommend
""The longing for a destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life" we are told at the outset of Alain de Botton's On Love, a hip, charming, and devastatingly witty rumination on the thrills and pitfalls of romantic love.". "The narrator is smitten by Chloe on a Paris-London flight, and by the time they've reached the luggage carousel, he knows he is in love. He loves her chestnut hair and pale nape and watery green eyes, the way she drives a car and eats Chinese food, the gap that makes her teeth Kantian and not Platonic, her views on Heidegger's Being and Time - although he hates her
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…a jumping off point for me studying the subject, the references in that book are really worth reading even if using it as a self-help book can be outright dangerous. Also there is Stendahl’s classic On Love which I find charming.
on “Ask HN: How do I hack love?” ↗Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, R Pirsig Recently each of Alain de Botton's books (Status Anxiety, Pleasures and Sorrows of Work and Essays on Love) had a valuable lesson to teach. Alexander Pope's 'Essay on Criticism' (poem, not a book) was one the first poems that I gleaned something from, and that opened up a whole new library of potential reads.
on “Ask HN: Books that changed your life?” ↗