Love & Misadventure

Love & Misadventure by Lang LeavLove & Misadventure by Lang Leav
Publisher: Andrew McMeel
Number of pages: 78
My copy: Kindle edition

Lang Leav is a poet and internationally exhibiting artist. Awarded a coveted Churchill Fellowship, her work expresses the intricacies of love and loss. Beautifully illustrated and thoughtfully conceived, Love and Misadventure will take you on a rollercoaster ride through an ill-fated love affair- from the initial butterflies to the soaring heights- through to the devastating plunge. Lang Leav has an unnerving ability to see inside the hearts and minds of her readers. Her talent for translating complex emotions with astonishing simplicity has won her a cult following of devoted fans from all over the world.

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My friend and I were browsing in Fully Booked sometime before Christmas when I spotted this Lang Leav’s Love & Misadventure and started browsing. I opened to a random page, read it, and cursed. Then I called my friend and we started picking random pages, cursing every now and then at the pages we read, because damn, the stuff we read kinda hurt. That was the time I added this book in my wish list, and hoped someone would give it to me. Because, as I said on my Twitter: “Lang Leav’s Love & Misadventure: <3 </3

Love & Misadventure is a collection of poetry and illustrations by Lang Leav that talks about love, and some misadventures in love. It’s quite melancholic and perhaps a bit painful and bitter at some points. The book is short, and I finished reading it while I was waiting in the bank, and it left my heart just a little tender in some parts after I was done.

Except that it didn’t leave me as wowed as I was when I first read it. Perhaps I was expecting it a little too much, especially after I’ve read several pieces before I finally sat down and read the entire collection. That, or this is another case of “mood reading” – when things I read at first resonated because I can relate to it more compared to when I finally read the entire thing. I also felt that some of the poems felt too…young. Not necessarily juvenile, but just something that felt like it was coming from a very young place. Did that make sense?

I don’t know; maybe I just wasn’t in that mood when I was reading this (granted, I read this right after I finished Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly, so that may have affected my appreciation). That’s not to say that the pieces I first read didn’t resonate with me again — it did, but maybe less because I’ve already read them before. I think Love & Misadventure is good, except maybe my personal hype had already faded from when I randomly read some pages of it.

Or, you know, I just really stopped relating to the poems I liked first. If that’s the case…then that’s good, right? :)

Oh, but if you liked the poems in Love & Misadventure and you want more, then I will direct you to Mindy Nettifee’s The First Time and Filipino author Marla Miniano’s blog. I think you’ll like these, too. :)

Number of dog-eared pages: 8

Favorite dog-eared quotes:

Everyone has one – an inventory of lost things waiting to be found. Yearning to be acknowledged for the worth they once held in your life.

Do you remember the song that was playing the night we met?
No, but I remember every song I have heard since you left.

A Time Capsule

This is where,
I began to care,
where I was befriended.

This is where,
my soul was bared,
where all my rules were bended.

This is where,
a moment we shared,
was stolen and expended.

Now this is where,
this is where,
this is where we’ve ended –

Rating: [rating=3]

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