Dear Old Love: Anonymous Notes to Former Crushes, Sweethearts, Husbands, Wives, & Ones That Got Away »

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.

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.

Children's Literature

This book began as a website where people could send messages to former flames and objects of affection—all anonymously. The author states that he edited and posted what he thought were the funniest, the saddest, the sweetest, the smartest, the most illuminating, and sometimes the most spiteful. "A good Dear Old Love note that is the long, sloppy story of a heart, condensed to a line." This is in the form of a book because you really can not give someone a website and "because the best books are beguiling and enduring, like memories of our best and dearest old loves." After an introduction he has little note headings that are hilarious, like Pet Peeved, Puzzling, You Awake?, Off Track, Long Term, Exposed, Away From It All, Beyond Hugger, etc. There are some "The Dear Old Love Fill-Ins" at the back! The format matches perfectly, and one will love it. It is somewhat of a "crazy" book. Reviewer: Naomi Butler