The Book of Love: Improvisations on a Crazy Little Thing

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Description

The beloved New York Times bestselling author Making Toast and Kayak Morning returns with a powerful meditation on a universal subject: love.

In The Book of Love, Roger Rosenblatt explores love in all its moods and variationsromantic love, courtship, battle, mystery, marriage, heartbreak, fury, confusion, melancholy, delirium, ecstasy; love of family, of friends; love of home, of country, of work, of writing, of solitude, of art; love of nature; love of life itself.

Rosenblatt is on a quest to illuminate this elusive and essential emotion, to define this thing called love. Cleverly using lines from love songs to create a flowing balladas infectious and engaging as a jazz riffhe intersperses fictional vignettes that capture lovers in different situations, ages, and temperaments along with notes addressed to you, his wife of fifty years. The story I have to tell is of you. Of others, too. Other people, other things. But mainly of you. It begins and ends with you. It always comes back to you.

Lively yet profound, poignant yet joyous, The Book of Love is a triumph of intellect and imagination: a personal discourse on love that is both novel and timeless.

Reviews

While plenty of writers have tried their hand at capturing the improvisational brilliance of jazz, with varying degrees of success, Rosenblatt's wanderings with the subject of love are like Coltrane at the Village Vanguard. When you hear it, you know." -- Kirkus Reviews "[This book] could probably be read in one sitting, but it's too clever, and it dashes here and there, and for many such reasons, it's a book to savor. Moreover, it can be opened and read at nearly any point. For Rosenblatt--wittily, urbanely, wholeheartedly--is in love... -- Booklist "Forget the flowers and candy. This year's ultimate Valentine's Day treat is Roger Rosenblatt's impressionistic riff on what makes the heart beat faster." -- O, the Oprah Magazine "Who wrote The Book of Love This month, it's Roger Rosenblatt; by interspersing romantic verses with personal and fictional vignettes, he composes a symphony of amore." -- Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair "Interweaving short reflections with notes to his wife of 50 years, Rosenblatt crafts a colorful riff on love in all its forms." -- Good Housekeeping "Just in time for Valentine's Day, Rosenblatt (The Boy Detective) uses lines from love songs to riff on everybody's favorite subject." -- USA Today, New and Noteworthy-Lead Pick "Brimming with lyrical musings and offering uniquely experiential perspectives, THE BOOK OF LOVE is delightfully inventive, imaginative and deep." -- Bookreporter.com "By opening up his own heart and mind, Rosenblatt creates a work so diverse and comprehensive that it feels more like a shared dream than merely an intricately written reflection of one man's life and loves." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Author Bio

Roger Rosenblatt's essays for Time and The NewsHour on PBS have won two George Polk Awards, the Peabody, and the Emmy. He is the author of six off- Broadway plays and seventeen books, including New York Times Notable Books Kayak Morning and The Boy Detective, as well as other national bestsellers Unless It Moves the Human Heart, Making Toast, Rules for Aging, and Children of War, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.