The whole world has really begun to feel the effect of the pandemic. It became difficult to find raw materials, production stopped in most sectors. I don’t know if they had involved the literary world when the experts warned that “a famine will come”; but this famine hit the book lovers the hardest. Unfortunately, the writers I love have fallen silent one by one. The “new releases” and “bestseller” shelves of the bookstores, where I spent my hours, have turned into a complete disappointment.
That’s why I’m going to recommend you the book “The Course of Love”, first published in 2016. This is only fitting since we are also in February. Valentine’s Day will be celebrated on the 14th. I think this book is a good choice for this month.
We Seek Familiarity in Love
In his ‘Lessons in Love’, Alain de Botton, whose ideas and style I admire, tells all the shocks that can be experienced in a long-term relationship, and that love is not a whim, but a skill we must learn. Revealing the typical anatomy of a relationship under titles such as love at first sight, honeymoon and later, marriage, children and infidelity, Botton defines love as “The admiration for the qualities of the lover who promises to correct our weaknesses and imbalances”. Saying “We believe we are seeking happiness in love, but what we are really after is familiarity”, Botton also has a few words about marriage “Marriage: a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don’t know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully omitted to investigate.”
Couldn’t have been better described…
I would like to write down every sentence and every recipe I have underlined in the book, but I know that everyone will be underlining a sentence where they find pieces of themselves.
Where Is My Home
There are no good books, I said, but we can comb out a few still. I hold on to them like a life buoy. Specialist Psychologist Gokhan Cinar, who is widely known for his program on YouTube and then his TV show, published his second book, titled “Where is My Home”.
Explaining with carefully picked words, that traumas experienced in childhood affect a person’s whole life, Cinar tells that a child is a home of their world, and asks the reader “Every life you live starts at the home where you were born. What kind of house, what kind of family were you born into?”. A good guidebook for those who enjoy psychology.
They Named Me Deniz
I guess I also have the Tsundoku syndrome. The Japanese invented this word. Tsundoku means buying more books than you can read and then herding them. (There is also “Bibliomania”. They buy books to have, not to read.) Fortunately, I have a little bit of the Tsundoku. Otherwise, could I ever lift down the latest book of Demet Cengiz -also the writer of Arkas News- Adimi Deniz Koydular while the people around me sang praises for it?
Using her experience from journalism, Demet Cengiz tells the story of two beat-up children living in different countries under the light of political and economic developments. The novel tells about severe poverty, domestic violence, lack of love and that the place where one is born is their destiny. But the most bitter side of the novel is that it’s based on real life. Author Cengiz says that this book is the first of a trilogy, and is to be followed by the books Nehir (River) and Göl (Lake).
