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Nonfiction Post on Love
Growing up in a traditional Indian home in the ’80s, “love” is not a word you get to hear too often. Love is there, of course, and you feel it all around you, but you can’t put a name to it. My parents have never once said “I love you.” Not to us kids, and not, in my hearing, to each other.
Putting a word to that emotion happened when I discovered books and stories. One of the first memories I have of this is from the children’s book, What Katy Did. The protagonist of the story, Katy, and her siblings make Valentine Day cards for each other and their parents. Until then, Hallmark or Archies ads had led me to believe that Valentine’s Day was only about romantic love. So this threw me for a loop. Valentines for your brothers and sisters and mom and dad? This novel idea gave me a peek into a larger world of love and its manifestations.
Moving on from children’s books, there are many different types of love in books, and I’m not just talking about romantic novels – historic, action, adventure, fantasy, almost every genre has a love component. Love can be the pure type that one human being has for another or the love of a mother for her child, love for friends, love between couples – young and old. There are so many different types and each of them is beautiful in their own way.
- There are Gothic novels like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre with their sad, broody love.
- Tragic love like in Tale of Two Cities.
- Simple, almost silly, formulaic love of Mills and Boon.
- A mother’s love bordering on the insane in The World According to Garp.
- Poetic love? Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
- Serious, idealistic, punishing love in Fountainhead.
- An almost spiritual love in Erich Segal’s Love Story.
In books, much like in life, there are passionate love affairs and love-hate relationships. For most of my childhood, I learnt about love by reading about it. As an adult, I see these different types of love all around me. Out of the pages of books and into real life. Having read about love in all her different glories and having had time to think it out and digest it, makes me more accepting of unconventional relationships. And respect the fact that no third person can really know what makes a relationship between two people tick.
... Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
— William Shakespeare
To read posts by other members of the Wordsworth Legion in the Super 6 Round, see here: Shilpa, Smitha, Lazy Pineapple, Tavish, Kshitij, Rahul and Hitesh.
Stargazerpuj's Book Blog 
Cool post, Pujitha!! Very interesting and very insightful. 🙂
Ditto for me…. books opened the door to this Love and its myriad forms.
Cheers 🙂
Sometimes I think all I have is book-learning! 🙂
I loved your post. In my house too we never utter I love you to each other. My parents have never even shown us their love by hugging or kissing us. It was just there in all theur actions and we just knew..
Absolutely – I’m still not comfortable with hugging or being hugged except with very close friends.
Nice post!!! What Katy Did was one of my all time favourites too… and I liked the sequel too 🙂 You’re absolutely right when you say that this book opened your eyes to a whole new meaning of the word ‘love’ 🙂
Oh, yeah, writing this post brought back all those lovely books I read as a kid.
for me, it was movies first and then books that explained what love was..but I experienced it much later 🙂
I didn’t get into movies until much later in life. And life and love seem so much richer in the words of a powerful writer!
I so agree, words are so much richer.. And I think books let you imagine, it lets you build your own image of the story, if you know what I mean..
More often than not, I am disappointed with movie adaptations of books, because I feel that the essence of the books are rarely well captured.. But then, that might just be me 🙂
I know exactly what you mean. And, no, that’s not just you. I almost always disappointed with movie adaptations…
i agree with Neha,… it was movies first for me too.. 🙂
infact it had a lot to do with the lyrics of the songs that enticed me to this funny lil thing called “LOVE”
sigh..!! and now im jus addicted to the feeling love.. 😛
wondering waiting hoping to experience it someday.. 😀
maassttt post 😀
thanks!
Movies were where I learnt about love for the first time. Although, at my home, unlike others things are very open. My parents have spoken openly to me about the 4 lettered word as well as the three lettered word… Ive read book only to build my writing style and for the real love of books… i mean the books I have read are not the ones that talk of love really so…. love was something i understood only I fell in into it and then fell out of it… hehe
anyways that was a really cool post… enjoyed reading it…. honestly i have never understood y ppl love books…. but now thanks to ur post I do!
Cheers!
Tavish
P.S. was that the longest comment u recieved here? Your welcome! 😀
Yes, thank you for the long heartfelt comment!
LOVE the poem in the end!
I remember reading it somewhere…
Is it sonnet 116?
And there are a lot of ways, a lot of authors have looked at love! 🙂
All the best! 🙂
Shakespeare, Sonnet 116, that’s right! I could never remember the numbers. I’m not really into poetry, but this is one of those that has really stayed with me.
It is lovely! 🙂
You seems to me a great book lover…
have you read all of them??
I’m trying to read all of them! Too many books, too little time. In a way, that’s great ‘coz that means there will always be more books to read. 🙂
Same pinch, same thoughts… 🙂 🙂
🙂
Nice Post…. Well I learned about love through movies, music, books in that order 🙂
I think I’m still learning… about love and life 🙂
That was a beautiful post, Pujitha!
I think love as an emotion was felt more than displayed, in the generation that most of us grew up in. Although, it is very different in our home today. I tell my parents ‘I love you’ all the time, and they have learnt to say it back to us too 🙂
My daughter, has never known anything different, she is used to us talking about love, hugs and kisses, so I guess we have gone through a generational shift in the way we express love.
I do think, that I have learnt and understood a lot from books too. Books are my constant companion, I read all the time 🙂 So my perceptions of things have a lot to do with my reading too. Words have a mesmerizing effect on me 🙂
This is some …love archive! I felt as if I’m in the lib near the shelf with books starting from ‘L’! Good to read.
Interesting. So much has been said and written about love. People seem to know so much about love and still know nothing. I thought all what they showed in movies was crap and does not happen in real life or at best mind playing tricks. But then I experienced it and realized I was wrong. Then I experienced it again and i realized I was probably right the first time.
I just saw your blog and I really love the way you’ve tied in the concept of understanding the different kinds of love with different books. These are books I’ve grown up reading, and I’ve had a similar experience with them, and I really enjoyed the way did this post. And of course, the quote by William Shakespeare was something which really tied this post together. 🙂
Thanks! Took a quick look at your blog – looks like we have similar interests. Will definitely be dropping by to read your posts regularly. 🙂
“no third person can really know what makes a relationship between two people tick” – agree to that.. Even I learnt about it only after watching movies. Never read a romantic book. I always found them boring 😦 for some reason. I was more interested in other kind of books. Nice post. Should grab some of the books you have mentioned there.
Nodding with everything Ava has said above.. She just stole my words from me on post 😛
Good Books are our best friends always… 🙂
Good luck for BPL 🙂
Good luck to you too! 🙂
I hardly ever read “romantic” books per se. But most books do have some romance in them