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selenajournal's review against another edition
5.0
last year, i think, i read important artifacts and personal property from the collection of lenore doolan and harold morris, including books, street fashion and jewelry, by leanne shapton and it stayed with me. using the format of an auction catalogue, the book chronicles a relationship. it turns it into an artifact, something to be studied. it takes items and makes them people, gives them a setting to exist within. it dares to put a price on something forcing you to ask questions about emotional worth and monetary worth and the importance of archiving and reflection.
barthes only brought this book to the forefront in my mind. he dissects love, emotions relating to love and the loved one, forcing us to think about the words we use, the emotions we try to help them portray. the book is indeed written in fragments, arranged in alphabetical order by titles. for this we the reader are told that it is meant to show us that no one part is more important than the other, each weighs in equally, and the author presents it to us as such. essentially, barthes breaks up the book by aspects of love, the loved one and the love relationship. then he uses beautiful conversations, fiction and non-fiction excerpts and his own experiences to expound on a topic.
prior to barthes, every book i’ve tried reading on love focused on the rules established around the definition of romantic love, and they isolated me as a reader. i couldn’t see any love i’d ever known (or god forbid, hoped to know) in those pages. with barthes, i could see loves i’d had and loves i hoped to have reflected in that text. i took notes like a madwoman in margins and flagged passages and added other books on love to my list of books to read. i read passages aloud to my husband, to my friends, to former lovers. i felt like my heart was bursting in a wave of understanding and acknowledgement of being understood.
i made notes: page 14, 24, 39 (perfect), 42, 85, 100 (perfect), 104, 199, 233. i wrote in the margins about former and current lovers. i made notes to re-read rilke. to read blake, to finally read goethe, bataille.
on goodreads, a smart woman wrote that she recommends this book to “those who must analyze as they swoon” – that’s the perfect way to describe it.
barthes only brought this book to the forefront in my mind. he dissects love, emotions relating to love and the loved one, forcing us to think about the words we use, the emotions we try to help them portray. the book is indeed written in fragments, arranged in alphabetical order by titles. for this we the reader are told that it is meant to show us that no one part is more important than the other, each weighs in equally, and the author presents it to us as such. essentially, barthes breaks up the book by aspects of love, the loved one and the love relationship. then he uses beautiful conversations, fiction and non-fiction excerpts and his own experiences to expound on a topic.
prior to barthes, every book i’ve tried reading on love focused on the rules established around the definition of romantic love, and they isolated me as a reader. i couldn’t see any love i’d ever known (or god forbid, hoped to know) in those pages. with barthes, i could see loves i’d had and loves i hoped to have reflected in that text. i took notes like a madwoman in margins and flagged passages and added other books on love to my list of books to read. i read passages aloud to my husband, to my friends, to former lovers. i felt like my heart was bursting in a wave of understanding and acknowledgement of being understood.
i made notes: page 14, 24, 39 (perfect), 42, 85, 100 (perfect), 104, 199, 233. i wrote in the margins about former and current lovers. i made notes to re-read rilke. to read blake, to finally read goethe, bataille.
on goodreads, a smart woman wrote that she recommends this book to “those who must analyze as they swoon” – that’s the perfect way to describe it.
marxgaux's review against another edition
4.0
i love barthes i love theory i love it all,,,, i do however miss feeling happy
aarongertler's review against another edition
4.0
There is an enormous quantity of good material here, but I am left just barely unsatisfied even after copying many quotes into my collection. I want to learn about the lover satisfied, the lover who gets what they want, the lover who experiences exuberant joy or calm contentment or disappointment or any of the other things that come with actually being bonded to another person. I want to learn about the "object of love" from inside -- what is it like to be loved, to be objectified, to be the *target* of all these gigantic feelings?
Others have written about this, but Barthes' method is unique, and I wish he'd applied his skill for references to the subject of love in its totality -- not merely to the Wertherian hopeless, unconsummated variety.
Others have written about this, but Barthes' method is unique, and I wish he'd applied his skill for references to the subject of love in its totality -- not merely to the Wertherian hopeless, unconsummated variety.
ellioth_mess's review against another edition
4.0
¿Me gustó? Por momentos. Y por momentos también es maravilloso. Y por momentos es incómodo porque habla de las concepciones más usuales del amor, que son dolorosas y neuróticas y que tal vez por eso son tan recordadas. Al fin y al cabo el fantasma explosivo de Werther es lo que conecta el libro de principio a fin, con alocuciones de Freud guiándolo con un cayado amable. Si no me dio lo que buscaba, tal vez, es porque concibo el amor más al estilo de Erich Fromm que el de los dramas europeos. Pero quién te dice, el equivocado no sea yo.
emma_g1's review against another edition
challenging
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
inlaraland's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
The most in depth analysis on love that you'll probably ever read from a philosophical and linguistic perspective. Roland Barthes provides fragments that analyze and describe what it means to be consumed by love. I read this work in between other stories, taking in the words a few essays at a time. It's a thought provoking read, with beautiful words sprinkled in between. I'm not big on philosophy as a genre, so I did find reading this to be slow at times which is why I had to take some breaks in between.