Tuesday, October 9, 2007

The Book I Found On My Shelf

Sometimes, I buy books, and apparently, I just put them away on the bookshelf before reading them. Then, months or even years later, I rediscover them...

Today I was working on a tedious little task and was staring off into space, or rather, at my bookshelf. And the book that caught my eye was called "Why We Love"- I just started flipping thru it and now here I am, 52 pages later. And that tedious little task still has to be finished. But first, let me digress even more.

This book is written by the "renowned anthropologist", Helen Fisher, Ph.D and so far it's pretty fascinating. If asked to define love, it seems impossible. But here's actually some science behind it.

I know when people are in that "falling in love" stage, they might think, "THIS is a love like no other", but that is really false. It's science. It's the way the brain and the chemicals react not just in humans, but even in some animals!

"Why read this?" you might ask. Well, because the first part (and most of) the book are chapters that delve into the chemistry of love, the evolution of love, etc. which is interesting enough... But then towards the end of the book, there's a chapter called, "Making Romance Last"- Not just love...ROMANCE! And THAT's the stuff that I wanna know more about. From a scientist. Not just a therapist or a bad magazine article.

Chapter 8. I'll be there in about 130 more pages. Some skimming to get there may be involved, so I don't think it will take me long.

The other reason I want to read this is, well, at some point I bought it and clearly something about the book grabbed my attention. And then today, it caught me again. Love is a wonderful thing. We all know that. It's also sometimes painful. We already know that, too. And maybe there's even more to know about it than just those two simple and complicated facts.

No comments: