Loveless? Read this book!

books:


	• I Know You're Out There: Private Longings, Public Humiliations, and Other Tales from the Personals Michael Beaumier Three Rivers Press, 2006 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Fun idea poorly executed

For a guy with so much great material to draw on, this book was disappointing. It wasn't so much about an inside view of the personals as a memoir of a few years in his life. He should have stuck to the personals.

A reader of the Reader

Having been a reader of The Reader and automatically going to the personals to see who wants to screw who or however. Wagers are made between myself and a friend to see how many guys in the M seeking M section will be closeted MWM w/ children from the northwest burbs who need to keep it on the DL. This book was like going to see the wizard.

A very revealing look into this guy's job and his life. If a book can make me laugh out loud or cry when I'm on public transportation it's a good read. This book did this to me. In particular the chapter's "Sixes and Sevens" which had me tearing up then laughing in the chapter's ending paragraphs. Those inappropriate jokes following a buried skeleton, unearthed, that only a family can share is something I think many can relate to. Then "Emergency Powers" with one of the best quotes ever from a woman named Estelle. After finishing the last line of the chapter a woman next to me asked if I was okay. I admit it, I teared up a little.

I loved the book and if you buy it, you will too.

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Loveless? Read this book!

These days you can't watch TV without seeing a commercial for online dating. Every 30 seconds Eharmony or Match.com urges that "it's okay to look" and promises that your next love connection is but a click away. But before Match.com facilitated stalking there was another way for lonely singles to connect: the personals section of the newspaper. Michael Beaumier still reads the personals every single day, not because he doesn't have Internet access or he's single (although he is) but because it's his job, he's the editor of personal ads for the Chicago Reader. He hears, edits and prepares personal ads for the singles of his city and watches as their love lives take off, falter, and crash and burn, and now so can you. In his collection of stories about working at the personals with such "nut jobs" as the woman who is cheating on her husband but irritated that the men she dates want to sleep with her and a young man so shy he is unable to talk to women you'll find humor, an observant eye, and the understanding that comes from seeing hundreds of people continue their search for love week after week. I Know You're Out There makes us laugh as we see the struggle, humor and utter humanity of the people trying to find love in the personals section, and also of the people working there. But Beaumier doesn't parade his clients as sideshow freaks, even though a woman looking to hypnotize guys is hard to describe in other words, he instead brings out their humanity and shares the universal struggle to find love in a lonely world. He also describes his own tumultuous relationship with "the boyfriend," stories about his family and for those of you looking to place an ad a translator for what words really mean (fyi: adventurous means slutty; fun means annoying). Part memoir, part non-fiction this book explores the age-old quest for love and says, it's okay to look while admitting that looking doesn't always mean finding. "My last great love affair didn't work out--many don't, but maybe the next one might, and if not, maybe the one after that. There may not be someone for everyone; there may not be a God in heaven, or peace on earth either. But that doesn't mean you just sit around at home, doing nothing." Without sappiness but with plenty of humor and honest Beaumier admits our innate desire to find "the one" and shares the often tricky, usually embarrassing road that such a journey takes us on.

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Lovely

I enjoyed reading this book and have suggested it to several of my single friends. It offered a very special insight into the world of personal ads and the love life of the author. The tone of the first half of the story and the second are very different. The first more contemplative (I nearly stopped reading it); the second half is more lively, filled with more examples of the personal ads and is slightly cynical. I wished the entire book was more like the second half.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

Love lost, found, and kicked around

?It might be my imagination, but it seems like most people in the building tend to steer clear of me. I?m the one who gets the weird phone calls, the strange visitors, and disturbing mail.?

?My last great love affair didn?t work out?many don?t, but maybe the next one might, and if not, maybe the one after that. There may not be someone for everyone; there may not be a God in heaven, or peace on earth either. But that doesn?t mean you just sit around at home, doing nothing.?

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