Book Review_The Course of Love by Alain de Botton

It is said that unmarried women wants to be married and those who haven't gain honor chase honor. We always want something unknown. Being 'unknown' is the precondition of our dream. I recommend this gook to unmarried people or married couples who are having hard time getting used to the marriage system.


We think that 'marriage' is the end of love story, and we imagine rose-colored future in marriage. However, when we marry, we face the reality. This book kindly describes the married couple's life; their misery, the gap between the romanticism and reality, and hard work to keep our 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.”  
Due to romaticism, we don't bother to objectively analyze our lover's merits and demerits and how much we fit into each other. That is how we start our marriage life.


- In modern society, it seems that married couples want equality in everything. However, what they really want is the equality in pain. They want to carry as the same amount of pain as their partners does. We always think that we are more miserable that our partners. Thus, we need wisdom to get over this tragic thought. We cannot carry the same amount of pain in life. We should focus more on what our partenrs do for us. We should think that we can do more for our happiness, and eventually myself.


- Adultery. Denying all the possibilities of adultery means denying all the richness of our lives. Let's say that a person doesn't feel any curiosity in infidelity. Is it reasonable to trust that kind of person?
I wanted to marry a man who never ever feels curiosity in other attractive women. Or a man who every women doesn't feel attracted. However, this kind of man is not a man, but instead it is just a robot. It means that that type of guy doens't know about life and finds it hard to spiritually interact with other people. I don't want that kind of guy. I like a man who sometimes feels attracted to other women but he tries to keep his position with consideration and smartness.

- “Never having been betrayed sets up poor preconditions for remaining faithful. Evolving into genuinely more loyal people requires us to suffer through some properly innoculative episodes, in which we feel for a time limitlessly panicked, violated and on the edge of collapse. Only then can the injunction not to betray our spouses evolve from a bland bromide into a permanently vivid moral imperative.”

This part shows Botton's acute observation. It seems that we never betray our partners when we've never been betrayed. However, the opposite is more plausible. When we are in the same situation, we truely understand other's pain because we alreayd know how hurt it is.


- “The partner truly best suited to us is not the one who miraculously happens to share every taste, but the one who can negotiate differences in taste with intelligence and grace.”


I thought I would lead a happy marriage life with a perfectly matched one. I mean when we share the same value, life goals, habits, movie and book taste, humor code. However, Everyone has different taste. There is no one who share the same taste with me. Thus, the alternative is a man who knows how to negotiate differences in taste with intelligence and grace. I want to recommend this book to unmarried people. They will grasp how their marriage life will be unfolded. Also, they can get an idea of what type of person they should spend their rest of lives.

Book Review_The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

This book deals with 4 main characters; Tomas, Tereza, Sabina, and Franz. Apparently, Tomas is a womanizer, but it is not a simple problem. He seems to find himself through intimate relationships with many women, and also it is true that he only loves Tereza. Before I read this book, I just thought that this kind of guys were trash and they just made excuses but I come to know that surrounded by helpless situations, and unsatisfaction, people can pursue something that most poeple consider abnormal.
When it comes to Tereza, can we say that she lives a happy life? In her entire life, she tries to posess Tomas. She always suspects him and actually it is not 'suspect' becuase Tomas always meets other women. Tereza knows Tomas is that kind of guy who is curious of other women but she cannot live without him. She really loves Tomas, and so does him. I think it is a tragedy of love.


Also, the different perspective of Sabina and  Franz strikes me. Sabina thinks that a person loses everything when he or she loses his or her intimacy or secrets. That is how we live with truth. However, Franz thinks that we can live in truth when we break all the barriers between private thing and public thing. Nothing can be a secret and it is like living in a trasnparent glass house. I always thought that 'frankness' is the best. People sometimes say that I am glass. They can see what I think and how I feel. However, life is very complicated and not a happy ending. Nowadays, I don't want to share my tremendous worries and pains. That is because sometimes that makes others safe and keep a relationship with the people around me. I used to be Franz but now I am Sabina.


Tomas says that it is the frantic who introduce communism in Europe, not the criminals. The frantic say that they didn't expect the results. They knew nothing. However, the fundamental question is not about whether they knew or not. Can they escape from responsibility just because thye are fool? Sometimes, I make excuses saying 'I didn't know about it.' However, ignorance cannot be the answer. Especially for those people who are in charge of important tasks that will affect other people's lives a lot, they should know everything, or at least they should try to know.


One day, a reporter and Tomas' son visit Tomas to ask for his signature on a petition. They think that the petition will change the world or do harm to the government, but they believe it is meaningful to show them they are fearless and ready to fight. Sometimes, I just give up because I cannot change the results. However, as the book says, giving my opinions is different from just silence. This is a small step and finally it will lead to a big step. This little step can change the society. I will always remember that.


-“Human life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and which bad is that in a given situation we can make only one decision; we are not granted a second, third, or fourth life in which to compare various decisions.”  


When Tomas thinks whether it is better to live with Tereza or to live alone, he talks like that. We only live once. We cannot compare our decision with others because we don't know what will happen in other decisions.