OOh, we could start a BOOK thread, that is always of interest, to me anyway.... yes?
Of course, it would be pretty hard to roost here in the coop and not fall off, trying to hold on to a book with two little short wings......
well, the next one, is so feathery and light that I presume no chicken will have any problem with the short wings.
the author is Alain de Botton, partly Swiss, and the title is "on love" for the US and "essays on love" for the UK. rarely I found a book so special, and actually, in three years and something since I first discovered it, I reread it at least twenty times, to the point that I know some parts by heart.
on the basis of a love story, the author digresses on what love is, on how a relationship comes to life, devolpes and die, making you think, making you smile, making you laugh, making you wonder, making you cry sometimes (but it could be that I'm a tender heart...
).
the magic is that... 1) it's not a novel for women only, but for every one who has touched cloud niner at least once or wonders what it does mean, 2) the skeleton of every thought that is brought into it is a normal love story, in which probably everybody will recognize. 3) I would define it at the very end, as a philosophical approach to the explanation of love, in fact the author takes into accounts the different ideas, from Plato to Mill, in order to try to understand why a relation work, why there is love, why we behave in certain ways...but - in all that, the skeleton on which the thoughts and perceptions and philosophical ideas are mounted - the love story AdB describes - even if it is an everyday relationship, it never takes a secondary part, on the contrary, it's bewitching and strong enough and described so well, that it glows like it were something magic. and the philosophical interpretations enter into account in a marveillous way, with equilibrium and they both do not disturb the other side: I mean, you never feel as it were only a philosophical book, and you never feel as it were only a love story. that's why I used the world feathery before. it touches you with the same lightness, it's a book that cuddles.