Swoon by Betsy Prioleau - TLC Book Review and Giveaway

Swoon by Betsy Priloeau

Norton, 2013

Format? Hardback

Source? the publisher via TLC Book Tours

**FTC Disclaimer:  the publisher provided me a complimentary copy of Swoon in exchange for a review.  However, the review below and the opinions therein are my own and offered without bias.

Title? Meh :/

Cover? Nope...wouldn't have enticed me at all...as a matter of fact, I normally stay away from covers that look like this.

What I Was Reminded Of? Janice Radway's Reading the Romance, the movies, "What Women Want" and "Hitch"

Why?  the promise of an academic look at what makes women fall for certain men

What Now? While not actually a favorite that will move in with the other keepers in my antique secretary, I will keep this one close by, shelved right next to Radway and other books from my feminist literary behavioral studies.

Giveaway

The publisher via TLC Book Tours has generously offered a copy of Swoon to one of my readers.  Just leave your name, blog address, and email should you be interested in this fabulous academic read.

Golden Lines

Romantic love is one of the most extreme human experiences.  As philosophers say, love is "strong stuff."  Under a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan, passionate love looks like a lightening strike; centers deep in the midbrain flare up and release a torrent of dopamine and norepinephrine.  It's so close to what happens when we're angry or afraid that psychologists believe any intense feeling, in a "spillover effect," can ignite desire. (37)

In studies, women seem to be of two minds about virtuous partners.  On the one hand, say researchers, they want a nice guy, with "that old-fashioned quality: integrity"; on the other they want a fun, bold, bad boy.  (63)

Studies show that Americans tend to defer fun and enjoyment; we work longer hours and work at play and relationships.  Which isn't how eros operates.  As Johnny Depp's character in the movie Don Juan DeMarco explains, "I give women pleasure if they desire.  It is of course the greatest pleasure they will ever experience." (86)

Love stories are storehouses of gastronomic seductions.  Drouet captures Sister Carrie of Theodore Dreiser's novel with a mushroom and steak dinner, and Robert beguiles Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin's Awakening over a shared roast chicken on an excursion to Grand Isle. (130-131)

Psychoanalyst Eric Fromm compares listening to poetry interpretation, an intuitive and creative art.  Rather than a passive, laid-back enterprise, it's as demanding as talk.  A man has to be fully present, his mind cleared of distractions, and his brain and emotions engaged.  A hint of insincerity and a woman's superior bullshit detector will find him out. (168-169)

"The art of love," instructs Havelock Ellis, "is even more the art of retaining love than of arousing it," and he cites dozens of works since antiquity on the subject. (193)

The ladies' man, though, shouldn't bring more pressure to bear on distressed men, more impossible sexual standards to meet, more stage fright.  Instead, the great seducer and his arts can be a male liberation movement, a release from the stranglehold of games, bogies, inertia, and ignorance, and a recovery of erotic empowerment, passion, and joy. (245)

Summary

Covering the anatomy of a "great seducer," including charisma and character and following up with sections including:
 Lassoing Love: The Senses

Lassoing Love: The Mind

Locking in Love

Torching Up Love

The Great Seducer Now...
Betsy Prioleau provides the reader with much to think about along the lines of what makes women fall for certain men...men who may or may not be the person they end up spending the rest of their lives with

What I Liked

For a seemingly sappy topic, Prioleau takes quite an academic perspective when looking at the "ladies' man"...who he was, is and even will be in the future.  This saved the book for me...I have to admit when I first sat down to read Swoon, I was afraid I'd made a mistake.  I soon found out I was wrong indeed.

Examples, examples, and more examples...from Casanova to memorable literary characters to politicians, actors, musicians, and even just regular guys, Prioleau seeks a pattern in their behavior, conquests, attitudes, etc.

Ahem, Joe Morelli, Stephanie Plum's love interest in the Janet Evanovich's series, is one of the examples in the category of **cough, cough** Sex Drive.  Oh my.
I feel a little faint. 

The expectation and the assumption that men and women can live, exist, love, and still be their own person...while at the same time planning, thinking, and spending quality time with one another...in and out of the bedroom.

The very realistic look at how we (men and women) spend so much more time on things other than our partners, and how that's affected the quality of relationships between men and women in the 21st century.

The Notes section of Swoon is 75 pgs. long...I'm literally drooling.  I read stuff like that with as much fervor as some people read romance...I'm a "recovering academic"; what did you expect??

My favorites were the men who really loved women but found one particular woman with whom he chose and keeps choosing each and every day to spend his life with.  Hugh Jackman, for example, as a "great seducer" now because he still "actively courts his wife of 16 years."  There are definitely some lessons to learn here for men and women.  

What I Didn't Like

Even though Prioleau doesn't try to push a prescription of any kind on the reader, there were a few examples I really disagreed with...Ashton Kutcher, for one, doesn't strike me as an example of a man who is good to women.  While we obviously don't know the whole story behind his or anyone's break-up in Hollywood, I think we can all agree that Demi Moore was not and still is not exactly ok after the fact.  

Um, Bill Clinton? Just because he can play the sax? Nope, nuh-uh...I bet Bill doesn't make Hillary "purr"...of course, she is still married to him after all his ridiculousness.

"Women are fools for flattery." (143) and "There's no end to what a woman will do for male intimacy." (151)

While Prioleau is using these statements as attention getters and very possibly I read entirely too much into these statements (and a few others like them), they rubbed me the wrong way.

Overall Recommendation

Don't pick up Swoon if you're looking for your next fast, romantic, bodice bursting read.  Even though the cover may lead you to believe that, you will quickly be disappointed.  However, if like me, you enjoy brain exercise while you read, and a book that provides you with tidbits to look up, poetry to read, other books to read, psychology to consider and compare with previous notes, etc, then go for it.  :)

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Thursday, March 21st:  Unabridged Chick

Friday, March 22nd: Books a la Mode - guest post “Heartbreakers in History that were Ugly”

Monday, March 25th:  Man of La Book

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Thursday, March 28th:  Tiffany’s Bookshelf 

Wednesday, April 3rd:  Peppermint Ph.D.

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