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(Hardcover)
Call it wisdom of the heart. Or the broken heart.
A knowing, funny gift for everyone who's ever been in love and then out of love: the newly single, the lonely-hearted, and even the happily re-paired. Dear Old Love is a collection of anonymous love notes to the ones who got away—or were left behind. They're the notes that ex-lovers have written to set the record straight. Or crooked. They're concise, witty, melancholy, revealing, sweet, sentimental, outrageous, withering, indignant, sometimes all at the same time. And like a pitch-perfect little poem, each entry paints a complete picture with just a handful of apt words: "A current snapshot of you erased 25 years of fantasizing about what could have been." Or: "I don't care that you miss my dog. When you cheated on me, you cheated on him, too." Or: "I say 'I love you' to people all the time now, to make that time I said it to you mean less."
And for anyone wanting help to write their own love note, the book ends with clever fill-ins: "I wonder if we’d still be together if I had just admitted I was a ____, instead of saying you had a ____ so big it blocked out the _____." Try it on someone you loved.
Andy Selsberg has written for The Onion, GQ, Oxford American, Salon.com, and other publications. He is also a adjunct lecturer of English at John Jay College, CUNY, and a former stand-up comedian. He lives in New York City and his website is www.dearoldlove.com.
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December 28, 2009: I'm typically too cynical for books about "love," but I found this to be funny, touching and deeply poignant.