First heard of this author, de Botton from my friend's website (http://moonbbo.com).
She posted some excerpts from the book on her website, and I thought they were cool.
I searched some Korean websites, and he was received very well in Korea.
So, I decided to buy 3 of his books from Half.com - Essays in Love, On Love, and the Romantic Movement.
Who knew that some stupid Americans renamed the book "Essays in Love" as "On Love".
I actually think Essays in Love is more lyrical and romantic than On Love.
So, I ended up with one old and bent-covered UK version of the book (first time in years I read in the UK English other than The Economist and BBC) and this girly-red and like-new US version of the book, which had better font size and paragraph format to read.
But I chose to read the UK version instead, since it was already old and damaged (on some level) copy, so I could read it in any way I want. Or, In my own words, the book was already "raped", so I could treat it anyway I want - I get seriously disturbed and upset when my book gets bent, torn, wet, or get any kinda damages.
Another reason was that I didn't want to go to a cafe and read a red book called On Love.
The book is mainly a reflection of a guy on his love with a woman named Chloe.
Mainly how he rationalize his love, their love, and the breakup.
He borrows words and reasons of several great thinkers and also some from other guys like some shrink in San Francisco throughout his book to justify his reasons in every thought regarding the relationship.
But the plot is very simple and very boring.
To expound more on the previous "summary", the guy meets Chloe, and thinks that they are destined.
(Next paragraph will be a huge spoiler of the book.)
But as every relationship, he finds himself hard to accept love at first.
And when he finally realizes that he "marshmallows" Chloe, he also runs into problems that every couple do in order to cope with each other.
As time goes by, the love meets some more humps and bumps, and when Chloe chose to leave, he goes through a break up that breaks himself down. He considers even extremes for his life, but finds himself making the love with Chloe as a history and moving on - or as the author said, the guy found "I" again after dealing so much with "we".
De Botton spends fancy and philosophical sentences at the beginning and end of each chapter.
If I had not had a break up less than a year ago,
If I had not had any love for reading philosophers and their equivocal words,
I would think that this book is a cheap shot of a 25 year old boy (de Botton was 25 when he wrote the book).
I even almost thought that this book was terrible and a piece of shit, but whenever I did, I was remedied by empathy I felt and words of many philosophers that I once worshiped. This is how the book was "balanced" and kept me going as a reader.
Maybe I am just more mature than de Botton was when he was 25, but I have to agree that he did some serious preparations and readings before writing this book. I give him my hats for that.
P.S.: I will put some of the excerpts of this book in another entry... Some of his phrases are very well written. Sad to say, those were the best parts of this book.
