All About Love by Bell Hooks

 

For our November 2025 bookclub, Karen joined us in person - woot woot! We discussed the book All About Love by Bell Hooks, a nonfiction book that explores love in all its different facets. Topics included love from parents, romantic love, self-love, spiritual love,  the healing power of love, etc. It holds an interesting premise that love is a choice, a purposeful action, and not just a feeling. The author embraces a definition of love from M Scott Peck who claims that love is "the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth."

We really wanted to love this book, but unfortunately for most of us, it fell short. Some found it less than engaging, while others were frustrated by the sweeping stereotypes and generalization (Men lie and therefore deny themselves love). Still, there were some good nuggets such as the importance of loving the self. We discussed how the author really wanted to heal from her hurtful childhood and romantic relationships and how she really did want to find true love. We hoped that she did.

The book inspired conversations about renewing vows and love languages. We also discussed personal topics such as parents, kids, work, lack of work, retirement, travel, citizenship, and writing books (Will we collectively write a book about bookclub one day? We're open to title suggestions.)

We were thrilled to see Karen but sad to miss Liz this time around. As we near the end of another year, and reflect on love in our lives, I think we can all agree on one thing: we LOVE bookclub!