People today have more romantic options than at any point in human history, and thanks to social media, smartphones and online dating, our abilities to connect with these options are staggering. Yet we also have to face new and absurd dilemmas, such as what to think when someone doesn't reply to your text but has time to post a photo of a pizza on Instagram. But this transformation of our romantic lives cannot be explained by technology alone. Whereas once most people would find a decent person who probably lived in their neighbourhood and marry by the age of 23, today we spend years of our lives on a quest to find our soulmate.
While Ansari has long aimed his comedic insight at modern relationships, here he teamed up with award-winning sociologist Eric Klinenberg to research dating cultures from Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Paris, crunch the quantitative data and interview some of the world's leading social scientists. The result is an unforgettable tour of the romantic landscape.
Review: I so enjoyed this book, it is such fun! I listened to this book on audiobook and I actually listened to it with my other half. It was so interesting and thought provoking that it took us ages to listen to because we had to keep stopping it to talk about the observation that had just been made! I think the whole concept of the book is something that should be explored nowadays, the way we date and the way we meet people in general is so different now, so reliant on technology that it is something really interesting to sit down and actually think about. One of the observations towards the end of the book is to do with the fact that we wouldn't speak to someone in real life the way we speak to them on a dating app.
Ansari obviously adds his own humour into this book and that's what really tipped it from a four star into a five star read for me. I was laughing the whole way through. Obviously you can have some Hilarius stories stemming from any kind of dating scenario but particularly online dating and so the subject is funny anyway. When you add Ansari's brand of dry quick witt into there, you've got a match made in heaven! Some of the things he was saying were a little risque and definitely not for the most sensitive of souls, but his brutal honesty was what made it for me really.
I really liked the way the book was structured as well, It is always difficult knowing what to expect with a non-fiction title and this book just had it all for me. I liked the fact that we dealt with one subject matter after another. There were scientific studies, comments from anthropologist, results from surveys and observations from people who are actually living in this age of modern romance from online and in real life interviews. I thought it was a really good way to bring the whole subject together. Of course, because i listened to this on audiobook, I got to hear it read by Aziz Ansari and that added another level to the whole thing but I think I would still like to own a hard copy of the book so that I can see the charts and graphs and studies that lie within.
This was such a fun read but also though-provoking and definitely something that it needed in today's society. Add it to you TBR now!
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