Review: What’s Going on Down There? by Karen Gravelle

Aug 02 2012       16 responses so far

 

First, here’ s ten year old Max’s review: What’s going on down there ? That is the question. Two ways to answer that question: A) you could go order this book for $9.99 or, B) take a shower. A lot of the book is just reviewing, just to be safe that you don’t forget, what your penis looks like. I’m guessing that this may be interesting to people that have never changed their clothes, but most people have.

Now, Jessica’s review: I bought this 150 page paperback (1998, Walker Publishing Company) for Max to read because, unlike his older brother, he tends not to ask many questions about sexual health. Max’s older brother started going through puberty at eleven, and although every child is different, we wanted to make sure *some* sexual education was happening. Whenever I or my spouse saw an opportunity to do some educating around these issues, Max would shut the conversation down. I figured I’d get a book and see if maybe he felt more comfortable learning that way. It worked! Despite his protests, he read the whole ten chapters in about a week. For comparison’s sake, I never did get him to finish The Hunger Games.

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Review: When You Wish Upon A Duke, by Isabella Bradford

Jul 30 2012       5 responses so far

Love this cover

I thought Isabella Bradford was a debut author when I requested this one from Net Galley back in May. It turns out Isabella Bradford is a pseudonym of Susan Holloway Scott, the well known author of more than dozens of historical novels. Before that, she was Miranda Jarrett, author of thirty historical romances for Harlequin and Pocket Books. Bradford runs the website Two Nerdy History Girls with one of my favorite historical romance writers, Loretta Chase.

When You Wish Upon A Duke is set in London in 1760, but begins in Dorset when the Wylder household is awakened in the middle of the night by the Duke of Marchbourne’s solicitor, Carter.  Charlotte Wylder, eldest of the three Wylder girls, greets Carter in bare feet and a “oversized fisherman’s jersey,” her legs naked from the knees down. Without asking to see Charlotte’s mother (her father, the earl, is long dead), Carter notifies Charlotte of her “impending nuptials” and hands her a gift of an oval portrait of His Grace. When Charlotte’s mother enters the scene, she puts her hand around Charlotte’s waist, hugs her, and informs her that, yes, “As soon as it can be arranged, you will wed His Grace, the Duke of Marchbourne.”

Now, I’m no expert, but to me, this scene communicated pretty clearly what kind of a historical romance this was going to be. I suppose things may have been more lax in the country, but Carter’s showing up in the middle of the night, speaking directly to the eighteen year old, unwed Charlotte without a chaperone present, Charlotte greeting strange men in the middle of the night wearing nothing but, essentially, a man’s sweatshirt, and Charlotte’s mother hugging her and giving her a big piece of news in response (instead of a scolding) doesn’t strike me as very eighteenth century behavior.  Please let me know if you think I am way off on this.

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Review: Letting Jack Watch, by Katheryn Wallis

Jul 29 2012       6 responses so far

Letting Jack Watch is a debut erotic novella, published in June by Ellora’s Cave. I know right? When’s the last time I read an erotic romance, never mind an EC? Sometimes I just have an urge to do something different, not read what everyone else is reading, and strike out on my own. This urge has led me to some of the most howlingly bad reads of my life. Luckily this one turned out to be ok.

Adults, read on:

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Review: Thief of Shadows, by Elizabeth Hoyt

Jul 27 2012       4 responses so far

Thief of Shadows (Grand Central, June 2012) is the fourth book in Hoyt’s Maiden Lane series, set in 1730s London. It opens with a body in the middle of the road in the dirty streets of St. Giles which prevents Lady Isabel Beckinhall’s carriage from passing on its way to a foundling home of which she is a patroness. Taking a closer look at his harlequin costume and mask, she realizes the man is the infamous Ghost of St. Giles. Instead of fainting, screaming, or fleeing, Isabel instructs her footmen to collect him, and nurses him for a night, engaging in a little sexually suggestive banter when he awakens, only to have him escape, undetected, when she falls asleep.

The next day, Isabel meets with the severe, plain-clothed Winter Makepeace, mild-mannered manager for the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children. In a plot point that didn’t make a huge amount of sense to me, the patronesses of the home (the “Ladies Syndicate”) decide that the withdrawn and “uncouth” Mr. Makepeace will now be an “important figure in London society.” Isabel draws the short straw and has to tutor him on social niceties.

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Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, Part Five

Jul 26 2012       5 responses so far

Welcome to Part Five of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. I’m reading from the Kaufmann edition, but you can find this text online, for example, Ian Johnston’s.

This section is titled “Natural History of Morals.”

In this section, Nietzsche again notes the limited vision (and limited self-understanding) of philosophers. He points out that every philosopher has “wanted to supply a rational foundation for morality … but morality itself, however, was accepted as a given.” He adds, “even apart form such claims … one can still always ask: what does such a claim tell us about the man who makes it?”

In section 188, Nietzsche says that morality, in any form, is a restraint against nature or reason. He says,

What is essential ‘in heaven and on earth’ seems to be, to say it once more, that there should be obedience over a long period of time and in a single direction: given that, something always develops, and has developed, for whose sake it is worth while to live on earth; for example, virtue, art, music, dance, reason, spirituality — something transfiguring, subtle, mad, and divine.

Of special interest to readers of this book blog, on which I review so many romance novels, is this passage from section 189:

“…it was precisely during the most Christian period of Europe and altogether only under the pressure of Christian value judgments that the sex drive sublimated itself into love (amour-passion).”

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Update: What I’ve Been Up to

Jul 16 2012       8 responses so far

Just a quick personal update, hopefully to get me warmed up for writing a few real posts this week:

I’ve been traveling a lot with family the last few weeks. First we went to Florida, as we do every year, and finally got to experience the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal. I was the only person in my family to enjoy the butter beer. It’s like cream soda with an extra buttery thick head of foam. I’m also the only person who loves funnel cakes (I actually call them doughboys, but I seem to be in the minority) as you can see here. My son took about ten pics and this is the only one in which I am not covered in powdered sugar.
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Hot Vicar Action: Hot Under the Collar, by Jackie Barbosa

Jul 12 2012       7 responses so far

Why aren’t there more vicars in romance? After meeting Walter Langston, new vicar for a tiny coastal village in Cumbria, England in 1803, I have no idea. Barbosa’s self-published novella, Hot Under the Collar (110 pages; Click here for an excerpt and buying info), is an unusual romance, featuring as it does a third son and a heroine who has too complicated a past to sum up in this dependent clause. Historical romance novels usually feature dukes (or maybe, if we’re slumming, marquises, or earls). And if the hero starts out as penniless,  he often ends up inheriting the title in the end. Not Walter.

A handsome ladies man, Walter was wounded in service and sold his commission. Having two healthy older brothers and a nephew, he needed to find a profession, so he found himself the vicar of Grange-Over-Sands, fighting off the advances of marriageable ladies and their parents as he delivers sermons to a congregation that far exceeds the population of his village. One day, Walter catches sight of a beautiful blond woman escorting her father to and from services (but not attending herself) and pries her story from his housekeeper. Her name is Artemisia Finch, a fallen woman from a well-respected landowning family in town, who became pregnant by the son of an earl as a teen. Although she named the father, he denied paternity and accused her of sleeping around. She left for London, working as a courtesan (only two lovers, though), but returned to the village to care for her ailing father. The Finches are shunned as a result of Artemisia’s sordid past, and rarely leave their home or entertain callers.

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Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, Part Four

Jul 06 2012       10 responses so far

Part Four of Beyond Good and Evil is Epigrams and Interludes. There is some good stuff here, but for me, as a reader, it tends to get overshadowed by the many problematic things Nietzsche has to say about women. Nietzsche could be a radical in many ways, but was also deeply conservative in his misogyny and elitism. Nietzsche’s view of women is more complicated than it sounds in what follows. To take just one example, he is the rare male philosopher who uses imagery of pregnancy and birth to describe philosophical and artistic creation. A recent book makes the case that “Nietzsche’s texts eliminate ‘man’ and ‘woman’ altogether” (ix), creating a space for the overcoming of binary sex and gender difference. I personally wouldn’t go that far, but there’s no question that feminists (like Luce Irigaray who said that her Marine Lover was “not a book on Nietzsche but with Nietzsche, who is for me a partner in a love relationship.” For more click here.) have found in Nietzsche both an ally and an antagonist. If you’re interested, here’s the reference:

Nietzsche on Gender: Beyond Man and Woman. By FRANCES NESBITT OPPEL. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005.

And there’s the classic from a well-regarded Penn State series:

Kelly Oliver, Marilyn Pearsall, Feminist Interpretations of Friedrich Nietzsche, Penn State Press, 1998.

And for fun:

“Are you visiting women? Do not forget your whip!” –from Thus Spake Zarathustra

(That’s a photo of Nietzsche and Paul Ree pulling a wagon carrying the whip-wielding Lou Andreas-Salome. More on the complex relationships between the three here.)
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