1 out of 4 stars
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This “book” review is for The Banned Book about Love by Scott Hughes. It is the author’s appeal to their readers to love everyone, regardless of what, if any, hateful or terrible things an individual may have done in their life. It is presented as a philosophical book, with the author telling the readers how tedious, hateful, boring and hard real life is. It presumes the ignorance of the masses, regardless of whether true or not, and offers no supporting evidence of this claim. For a book preaching love it does not feel very loving and accepting.
The document is presented as a book, but it does not read that way. It reads as a disjointed train of thoughts. A high-schoolers quickly written essay, attempting to sound smarter and more profound than it actually is. It contains poor analogies and tangents that are scarcely related to the main idea of the “book”. There are wide spreading generalizations that the author does not back up, or offer any kind of supporting discussion or sources to validate.
It was frustrating to read, which a philosophical text on the subject of loving someone who is easy to hate could understandably easily be. However, the frustration came, not from struggling with difficult concepts that challenged the author, but from the authors disjointed arguments and poor examples. It was only 14 pages, with almost every sentence single spaced. This seemed to have been done to add emphasis to the author’s statements but because it was done throughout the entire work, lost any effect that this tactic might have had on the reader.
I believe that this work is more of a rough draft than a finished “book”. The ideas need to be developed more. More work needs to be put into what the author is actually trying to argue. It would also benefit the author to focus more firmly on one idea throughout the text. At the beginning of my review, I stated that the author is trying to appeal to readers to love those who are easy to hate. However, there are a different topics and subjects running through the work, and considering how short the book is, this only distracts from the author’s main idea. The book is split between telling the reader how hard it is to love, and how difficult it is to make judgments(such as when interpreting laws and creating them) because making judgments are really hard and boring. It fails to draw direct and sound comparisons between the two ideas.
I can see that this book has some interesting ideas, but they are not cohesive and not well thought out. It is too much of a rough draft at this point. I could go line by line and deconstruct all the problems with the arguments the author presents but that would be a waste of both of our time. The author has good intentions but the book needs more work. Because of that I give it 1 out of 4 stars. The author clearly cares about the topic and should give it the time that both the book and they deserve.
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The Banned Book about Love
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