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Book drive for Katrina victims
A very worthwhile effort to help get books to the hurricane survivors.
Ephemera Bound Publishing & Books for Katrina
Donate Your Books to Survivors of Hurricane Katrina
As a publisher, naturally I believe in the power & importance of books and their ability not only to entertain, but to empower and heal as well. That's why we at Ephemera Bound, the publishers, editors, authors - and avid readers ourselves - wanted to do something to help the survivors of hurricane Katrina, by means so personally significant to us. We have teamed up with other booklovers across the world at Bookcrossing.com to contribute to the relief efforts the with "Katrina Books dot com," a book donation program for victims of this disaster.
By using organizations that already exist to expedite the delivery of donations, we hope to deliver more than 'just books,' but deliver the message that people care....
September 15, 2005 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
More Victorians than you can shake a whip at
I began this compilation of SM tidbits about famous Victorian personalities last year after the publication of a biography of Florence Nightingale, and then never finished it. But the URL that Mike sent about the French couple (see previous post) reminded me of this little file of goodies I'd stashed away. So herewith the partially researched list.
Some of the links may be dead, but I excerpted the most tantalizing bits.
'Nightingales': Nurse's Aides
...The oddity of a woman who, on her return, pursued her vocation as a reformer from an elegant house in Mayfair (paid for by her father) and who interviewed politicians in her bedroom while denying access to her own family, was not, at the time, questioned. She seemed to be England's answer to Joan of Arc, called on by God to serve her people....In the decades when biography employed Freudian techniques to focus on any hint of sexual deviance, Nightingale came under scrutiny for her intense and difficult relationships with women. Much was made of the ''dreaming'' for which she castigated herself as impure. It has been suggested that she was lesbian, that she was obsessed with masturbation and, more seriously, that her role as a hospital reformer was greatly overestimated....
Healing the Victorians
NIGHTINGALES: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale
...what kind of caddish degenerate would assemble the definitive collection of sadomasochistic pornography for all his friends to sample when they visited? Why, Florence's spurned gentleman suitor (and cousin), Richard Monckton Milnes....Sexual intercourse began in 1863...
Ian Gibson illustrates with great humour the relationship between capitalism and perversion in The Erotomaniac
...Gibson's life of Ashbee provides the reader with a peep through the keyhole onto a remarkable male network of manic erotic bibliophiles. Ashbee's 'coterie of erotomaniac cronies' included Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), James Campbell Reddie, Sir Richard Burton (Ashbee's abiding hero) and the somewhat unfortunately named Frederick Hankey.Ashbee and his influential friends met or corresponded almost daily to pursue their kindred 'clandestine' tastes. Collectively, they got hot under their highly starched collars about an obscene profusion of textual practices. They pawed over detailed indexes, sighed over rare editions and arm-wrestled one another over footnotes in an orgy of bibliographic fetishism. Gibson shows that Ashbee spent most of his time in the company of likeminded men. And this is the point - the only thing that made these activities 'secret' is that they took place out of the view of wives, children and economic subordinates, except, of course, the prostitutes and mistresses who serviced the fantasy....
Florence Nightingale: Richard Monckton Milnes
....The Pope-Hennessy book goes on to tell that it was said that if Jesus returned to earth Milnes would invite him to one of his famous breakfasts held in his mansion. Male friends would spend the night and breakfast the next day spending much time in Milnes famous library. The library contained books on every subject from everywhere, among them the most extensive collection of Marquis de Sade and pornographic books and even a human skin bookmark. Milnes is said to have collected autographs of executioners. He was instrumental in bringing about reform for youth prisons....Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...In 1861 Swinburne travelled with his family in Italy, writing both poetry and short stories in which beautiful and murderous women featured prominently. On returning to England, he met Richard Monckton Milnes, who introduced him to Richard Burton and (in 1862) to the works of the Marquis de Sade. Though Swinburne laughed at Sade's literary style, he was evidently liberated by finding that it was possible to write explicitly about the connections between pain and pleasure. Swinburne's poetry at this point becomes more daring and confident; but it also becomes more deeply informed by grief, love, loss and anger....
September 11, 2005 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Ass sponges and other toilet aids
A communal sponge?
So it's true! The family that shits together sticks together.
Toilet Paper Used To Be Really CrappyRegardless of what you think about your toilet paper, it’s a definite improvement over what passed over the posterior in the past.
James Buckley, Jr., author of a new book, The Bathroom Companion (Quirk Books), says the ancient Romans had no knowledge of two-ply toilet paper and were forced to wipe their bums on a communal sponge soaked in salt water.
Folks in medieval England cleaned their keisters with discarded sheep’s wool while ancient Hawaiians preferred coconut shells.
During the 18th century, members of French royalty used lace doilies when doing their business.
These days, toilet paper is universally available but there are still some regional differences. For instance, T.P. in the Ivory Coast is named after popular American soap operas, which means the locals can buy brands like Dallas Jumbo or Santa Barbara.
April 6, 2005 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Robbe-Grillet: of turtle suits and SM
Novelist and shell suit not a good fit
France's chattering classes have been pondering an unusual dilemma: should one of the country's titans of literature be forced to wear a sword, bicorn hat and green tailcoat in exchange for a place among "the immortals".
Since its foundation by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635, the Academie Francaise has demanded that newly elected immortals – the name given to its 40 members – wear the embroidered green costume, plumed hat and an epee at their induction ceremony.
Such theatre, however, did not appeal to Alain Robbe-Grillet...who was elected to the academy last March but whose refusal to dress in anything other than his trademark white poloneck jumper has held up his swearing-in.
Asked last week what his problem was, Robbe-Grillet, 82, replied: "Have you seen it? That jacket looks like a turtle's shell. It's monstrous."
Absorbing the iconoclastic novelist and film-maker into the starchy club was never going to be easy....
Robbe-Grillet had a reputation for always thumbing his nose at Establishment pomposity. So did Catherine, his 72-year-old wife, who lives with him in Normandy.
She has outraged some of the academy's elderly arbiters of cultural taste by publishing her diaries. They chronicle the couple's sexual safaris through Paris in the 1960s and reveal that they enjoyed holding sadomasochistic orgies....
March 24, 2005 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Spock's Fat-bottomed Enterprise
'Spock' publishes book of fat bottomed girls
Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy is publishing a book featuring naked fat bottomed girls.
The women, members of the cabaret troupe The Fat Bottom Revue, are photographed in similar poses to models used by acclaimed erotic fashion photographers Herb Ritts and Helmut Newton, reports the New York Post.
Nimoy, who played Spock in the hit sci-fi series said: "The women are interested in fat liberation. Their self-esteem is strong...."
Nimoy, 73, previously caused controversy in the US when in 2003 a book of his photographs, Shekhina, featured photos of women wearing nothing but ritual Jewish prayer items.
March 20, 2005 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Post-modern Christian chastity
But Can Sex Talk Be the Bride of Chastity?
....With her new book, Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity (Brazos Press), Ms. Winner, a 28-year-old evangelical Christian, intends to promote chastity among Christians while challenging the prevailing just-say-no approach with an unflinching, soul-searching, distinctly up-to-date alternative that urges people toward a frank assessment and acceptance of their sexuality. Drawing on her own history of premarital sex as a cosmopolitan, liberal single woman and delving into subjects like sodomy and masturbation, she aims her argument at sophisticated young working Christians who know the ways of the world. In her view, people are more likely to abstain from sex once they fully understand its power.
Although the book isn't due in bookstores until April 1, it is already causing a stir in circles where merely raising the issue of sexual pleasure can be considered potentially corrupting. "You know," Ms. Winner said over lunch at a restaurant specializing in South African cuisine in Charlottesville, where she is teaching religion courses at the University of Virginia while she finishes her dissertation for a Ph.D. in history from Columbia, "I use the words 'anal sex' in the first chapter...."
March 14, 2005 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Longmire does Romance Novels
(Thanks to Jay for the link to this amusing collection.)
I think a lot of us can agree that a large number of romance novel covers are pretty silly and are just asking to be ridiculed. So that's exactly what I did. I bought a few of them at the used book store and got to work on them. The artwork almost writes its own jokes.
Take a look at the following covers I "reimagined...."
February 27, 2005 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The bizarre story of Gloria Trevi
Behind rags-to-riches story hid the bizarre saga of a sex cult
Rise-to-stardom stories always sound incredible.
Take Gloria Trevi, the pop star who, during the '90s, became "the best known living Mexican in the world." Hers was a rags-to-riches story: In every interview she talked about begging on the streets before taking her songbook to legendary producer and star-maker Sergio Andrade. Together they broke the Latin mold of the prim, emotive female singer by engineering Trevi's image, characterized by flamboyant behavior, ripped fishnets, and righteous post-feminist lyrics. Soon she was selling hundreds of thousands of records and starring in romantic comedies written for her - playing a character named, naturally, Gloria Trevi.
It wasn't long before rumors started to fly that Trevi was having a clandestine affair with Andrade, despite the fact that he was "short and shockingly fat." But their real secret was much darker. The two were found guilty of the kidnapping, rape, and brainwashing of the young teenage girls they'd taken into their performing arts training school....
February 17, 2005 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Solo sex: satisfying oneness
Interesting review of some books on masturbation. I especially liked what author Laquer has to say.
Solosexuals
....A more scholarly approach to self-gratification is Thomas W. Laqueur's highly readable 2003 book Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation. Laqueur, a professor of history at UC Berkeley, presents what is perhaps the most comprehensive analysis of the origins of self-gratification up to the present day's relative acceptance of what was once taboo.
In considering pure freedom vs. cultural norms, Laqueur writes, "Modern masturbation is profane. It is not just something that putatively makes those who do it tired, crippled, mad or blind, but an act with serious ethical implications. It is that part of human sexual life where potentially unlimited pleasure meets social restraint; where habit and the promise of just-one-more-time struggle with the dictates of conscience and good sense where fantasy silences, if only for a moment, the reality principle; where the autonomous self escapes from the erotically barren here and now into a luxuriant world of its own creation. It hovers between abjection and fulfillment." Laqueur then charts the rise of modern acceptance of masturbation in the '70s with the burgeoning feminist movement and then by gay rights activists as a practice in the "service of freedom, autonomy and rebellion against the status quo. . . .
February 15, 2005 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sex and neuroscience
Another book with worth looking at, and this one offers free sample chapters. Click the link to read more of the sex chapter.
Mind Hacks: On orgasms, epilepsy and the lack of sexual neuroscience
Recently published results report the first reliable link between brain activity and levels of sexual desire. Yoram Vardi from Rambam Hospital in Israel has reported an association between an electrical brain signal (known as P300) and libido.
The fact that such a straightforward link is both important and newsworthy may be surprising for people who aren't aware of the state of scientific research into the neuroscience of sex.
Considering that sex is one of the most important human activities, and the current findings have been thrilling to say the least, why is it that we know so little about how the brain handles sex?
....Sexual neuroscience is one of the most under-researched areas in the human sciences. A quick search of PubMed (the international database of medical research) shows that we know more about the neuroscience of hiccups than we do about orgasm....
(Thanks to Mike for sending this!)
January 28, 2005 in Books | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Interesting reads
I've added a few new books to my Amazon recommended list (at right). Some are worth checking out if only for the free inside peeks that Amazon offers. Thanks to Brent for recommending It's a Man's World and SIN-A-RAMA, two fresh looks at pulp sex. Also check out Pornogami, a guidebook to folding paper into erotic shapes. Fun!
For a far moodier literary experience, check out this review of a highly acclaimed, dark, semi-autobiographical novel with some heavy SM themes.
Tell Me Where It Hurts
Homeless kid, masochist, stroke victim, Stanford lecturer: Stephen Elliott has been there.
Are all novels autobiographical at heart? In Stephen Elliott's new release Happy Baby, the protagonist watches his mother dying agonizingly of multiple sclerosis. As an adolescent, he flees a household marked by addiction and abuse. He becomes a ward of the court. Having learned to associate pain with affection, he grows into a young man haunted by sexual confusion. He works as a sex-show barker in Amsterdam and strives to figure out how the whole mess started.
To say that Elliott graduated from the school of hard knocks is more than just an understatement....
He says that writing Happy Baby helped him confront many of his own fears surrounding sex, intimacy, and S/M. "I learned a lot. ... I could never write a book like this again. It's discomfort that creates art," he notes, and discomfort is something this author has put behind him, at least as it relates to his sex life. Everything is a little easier now. For example, in one recent relationship, Elliott and his girlfriend negotiated dominant and submissive roles and maintained them 24/7.
"That's light-years from anything I could have done before," says Elliott, who will read at Stacey's in San Francisco in early March. "Writing has always been therapy for me...."
January 28, 2005 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hot book on het porn
Great review of an extremely interesting new book!
The Other Hollywood
Roderick Edward "Legs" McNeil is beholden to the priests and nuns of Cheshire, but not in a way he anticipated as a kid growing up in this safe suburban town.
"I'm Catholic," explained McNeil, 48. "And being Catholic guarantees a great sex life, because the dirtier sex is considered--the dirtier anything is considered--the more enjoyable it becomes...."
McNeil's newest book, The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry--the result of eight years of research--rips the G-string off the Pandora's box of America's sexual obsessions. The porn film industry, he reports, is a $10-billion-per-year enterprise that has infiltrated mainstream American culture and made a lot of "family values" Americans obscenely rich in the process.
That $10 billion surpasses all of Hollywood's annual box office receipts; and it doesn't include revenues from porn magazines, Internet sites, cable adult channels, sex devices, etc. Nor does it take into account the following assertion by U.S. News and World Report : "Americans spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, off-Broadway, regional and nonprofit theaters, the opera, the ballet and jazz and classical music performances--combined."
Since Americans of all social strata are spending this money, the hypocrisy that surrounds sex in America is all the more baffling. Why the floods of moral outrage when even the most inconsequential "erotic" moments creep into the mainstream, as when Janet Jackson "accidentally" bared her breast at a Super Bowl? This hypocrisy, McNeil said, was bluntly summed up by one porn star: "You masturbate to us with one hand and push us away with the other."
McNeil's book, written with assistance from Los Angeles-based researcher Jennifer Osborne and New York Post crime writer Peter Pavia, doesn't try to chronicle the entire warp and woof of America's sex obsession. It focuses instead on the porn film industry--the hetero side, that is....
Buy this book at Amazon
January 12, 2005 in Books | Permalink
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Susan Sontag's glass closet
I thought I knew a fair bit about Susan Sontag--until I read some of the published obituaries and discovered, buried within one or two, the barely-addressed fact that she lived as a gay woman. This editorial addresses the questions this raised for me: why has the media downplayed what would seem to me to be a detail of her life that is at least as interesting as other biographical minutiae the obituaries pondered?
While I believe everyone is entitled to privacy, and that no one should ever be forced to out themselves, Sontag's liaisons with famous women were apparently well-known in literary circles. As someone who aggressively sought celebrity and literary power, who seemingly never hesitated to analyze and over-analyze both her private life and themes of sexuality in writing, it rings hollow that this this aspect of her life has been concealed--particularly since one can easily infer that her sexuality shaped her potlicis. So why are editors respecting the glass closet she created?
A silence that speaks volumes
...Sontag never denied being a lesbian, but newspaper obituaries ignored her sex life On December 29, major gay and lesbian news organizations announced that ``lesbian writer Susan Sontag'' had died. In its obituary of Sontag, the New York Daily News wrote, ``Famed photographer Annie Leibovitz had been her longtime companion.''
On December 29, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times reported Sontag's death on their front pages, with more stories inside. Yet neither paper mentioned Sontag's relationships with Leibovitz and other women.
It seems that editors of respected (and liberal) newspapers believe that one personal detail cannot be mentioned in even the most complete biographies - being a lesbian.
In a 1995 New Yorker profile, Sontag outed herself as bisexual, familiar code for ``gay.'' Yet she remained quasi-closeted, speaking to interviewers in detail about her ex-husband without mentioning her long liaisons with some of America's most fascinating female artists....
January 10, 2005 in Books, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Sex and submission: new literary fads
A review of two interesting new books which also explores the growing number of sexually explicit literature. Unfortunately, neither of the new books are available (as yet) on Amazon for US readers.
Explicitly yours SHE WENT TO university and got a degree. She moved to London and got a temp job. But then she got bored, so she did what any clued-up twentyomething would do and became a high-class prostitute.This is the life of Belle de Jour. We know about it because she also wrote an online diary of her exploits on her own website which won the Guardian’s Blog-of-the-Year award. Eighteen months and a six-figure publishing deal later, the woman, who shall remain nameless, has given us her diary, Belle de Jour: Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl, published today.
The book has attracted huge interest, and not just from the trenchcoat brigade. Sure, Belle writes about sex in all its sordid detail, but she writes it well. Educated and eloquent, she lays her life bare, from debating the literary merits of Martin Amis with naked clients to entering a hotel with two whips strapped to the lining of her coat. Her publishers tell us her account as a prostitute is "frank, funny and completely compelling", and, for the most part, we agree.
When it hits the shelves this morning, it will no doubt fly straight off them. But why? After all, her idea is hardly novel - the profession is the oldest of our society, and people have been writing about sex for centuries.
Her success lies at the heart of a 21st-century phenomenon: the autobiographical view of female sexuality....
This week, in addition to Belle’s confessional, we’ve also been given Submission by a Parisian lawyer who has chosen the nom de plume of Marthe Blau. The thirtysomething mother-of-one wants to tell us all about her sadomasochistic extra-curricular activities with a man whose eyes she met across a courtroom, and, apparently, we’re only too happy to listen.....
January 7, 2005 in Books | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Queerly honest Abe
A forth-coming biography of Lincoln closesly analyzes the private life of our greatest president and explores numerous theories about the nature of his relationships with Mary Todd and various male friends. It concludes that one of our greatest presidents was homosexual. Fascinating and controversial!
Seeking gay threads in Lincoln's legendby Dinitia Smith
The subject of the 16th president's sexuality has been debated among scholars for years. They cite his troubled marriage to Mary Todd and his youthful friendship with Joshua Speed, who shared his bed for four years. Now, in a new book, C.A. Tripp says that Lincoln had a homosexual relationship with the captain of his bodyguards, David Derickson, who shared his bed whenever Mary Todd was away.
The book, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, is to be published next month by Free Press. Tripp is a psychologist, influential gay writer and former sex researcher for Alfred Kinsey, the pioneering U.S. sex researcher. In the book, Tripp tries to resolve the issue of Lincoln's sexuality once and for all.
The author, who died in 2003, two weeks after finishing the book, subjected information written by and about Lincoln to minute analysis. He concludes that Lincoln, one of America's greatest presidents and the beacon of the Republican Party, was gay."The length of time when these men continued to sleep in the same bed and didn't have to was sort of an impropriety," Baker said.
The question of Lincoln's sexuality is complicated by the fact that the word homosexual did not find its way into print in English until 1892 and that the concept of being gay is a modern one.
Baker said the focus of 19th-century moral opprobrium was masturbation, not homosexuality. "Masturbation was considered more dangerous," she said. "For homosexuals, there was a cloud over them, but it seldom rained." People, she noted, "were accustomed to these friendships between men...."
December 16, 2004 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A very nice introduction to the modelling of inter-personal behavior
A nerd's-eye view of a book about sex from the POV of a mathematician. I have no idea what they're talking about but it's got really long words and looks real gud.
From slashdot.com:
book_reader (Gary Cornell) writes:
Wow, what an intriguing title! When I was getting my Ph.D in math, the words 'sex' and 'mathematics' were not juxtaposed all that often, and I suspect we would have been more likely to expect a book titled 'Mathematics and the (lack of) Sex.' But, hey, times change and the author, who is not only a mathematician but also someone who was voted one of Australia's 50 most beautiful people in their equivalent of People magazine -- and remember this is the land of Nicole Kidman -- has a point. As she says, echoing G.H. Hardy's famous comment in 'A Mathematician's Apology': 'Mathematics is the study of patterns: their discovery, their interconnections and their implications.' And what is sexual behavior but the most intriguing pattern of all?"
Read on for the rest of Cornell's review......
December 15, 2004 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Times stoops to pulp
Interesting review in the NY Times about a new book from Taschen on the sleazy, cheesy men's pulp magazines of the 50s that often served as the SM literature of its day. What's even more interesting is that the Times would feature pulp rags (replete with risque cover images) in its book review section.
Oh, Those Pulpy Days of 'Weasels Ripped My Flesh'
They were called "men's adventure" magazines, the "armpit school" of journalism, or "sweats." They had names like Man's Life, Man's Exploits, Real Men or just Male. Designed to snare the attention of the Average G.I. Joe settling back into humdrum civilian life after World War II, their gorgeously lurid cover illustrations routinely depicted buxom beauties in shredded tatters of clothes, writhing under the slathering jaws of savage beasts, wild savages or sadistic Nazis.
Cover teasers reiterated the promise of blood, sweat and sex with story titles like "Man Hungry Hussy of She-Devil Island!," "A Bonfire in Hell for the Nazis' Passion Slaves," "I Watched Myself Being Eaten Alive" and the classic "Weasels Ripped My Flesh."
It being the 1950's, that promise was never fulfilled in the magazines' pulpy pages....Prim by today's standards, the copy mostly served to fill space among the ads for trusses, bodybuilding books and directories of "nudist colonies...."
MEN'S ADVENTURE MAGAZINES IN POSTWAR AMERICA
Edited by Jim Heimann and Nina Wiener
512 pages. Taschen, $39.99
BUY IT NOW
December 13, 2004 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Jewish sex in print
Interesting review of two new sex books aimed at Jewish adults.
Happy Hannukah!
In the biblical senseWhen it hit the market in 1999, Shmuley Boteach's Kosher Sex was anticipated to be the new undisputed Jewish sex-advice champ. Finally, Jews the world over could reach for something that appealed to the yiddishkeit side of their prurient little minds. And then they read the book.
Kosher Sex turned out to be as titillating as a year-old jellybean. Though anticipated by Jews young and old, Orthodox and unobservant, the book addresses only one kind of sex: the married kind. Boteach's instructions are based on three guidelines: sex is holy, a product of love, and never to be performed outside of marriage. By restricting its mission to heating up the Marriage Bed, Kosher Sex left masses of Jews in the dark: the occupants of the Spring Fling Bed, the Desperate Hookup Bed, the Friends With Benefits Bed, and even the Committed Relationship Bed.
Enter Ian Kerner and Leah Furman....
Pick them up at Amazon
She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman
by Dr. Ian Kerner
Published by Harper Collins
240 pages, $22.95
BUY IT NOW
Single Jewish Female: A Modern Guide to Sex and Dating
by Leah Furman
Published by Perigee Trade
208 pages, $13.95
BUY IT NOW
December 8, 2004 in Books, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Buggary book on Sotheby's block
17th Century British Porn to Be Auctioned
The world's first known piece of printed pornography, described as the "quintessence of debauchery," is expected to reach up to 35,000 pounds ($65,040) when it is auctioned next month.
"Sodom," penned in the mid-1670s, has been attributed to John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester...."We believe this is the first printed pornography in English literature, a unique copy of the quintessence of debauchery," Peter Beal, Sotheby's book specialist said....
The book centers on the decision made by a lustful King to "set the nation free" by allowing "buggary" to be "used thro' all the land" and then details the dire consequences....
November 27, 2004 in Books, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The ultimate Yiddish primer
Nu, so you want to learn a little Yiddish?
VidLit™ - Yiddish with Dick and Jane
(Thanks to Harv for sending this!)
November 21, 2004 in Books | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
C.S. Lewis...submissive?
This caught me by surprise. A new biography of writer C.S. Lewis dwells a bit on his interest in sadomasochism and speculates that he was submissive.
Lewis biography takes an honest approach
...we are in need of biographies such as this, that remind us that he was, after all, just a man -- and a very complicated one. The members of the C. S. Lewis Society of Oxford discuss an angelic, High Church Lewis who was a lifelong celibate -- regardless of the facts that he was married for four years and before that lived with another woman for nearly 30, or that his letters to his lifelong friend Arthur Greaves discuss both masturbation and sadomasochism. Many of Lewis's admirers never seem to grasp that they do him no favors by making him an unfallen angel -- his virtues and accomplishments would have been without merit and his life would have nothing to say to us....
Michael White, the author of a much-lauded biography of Stephen Hawking as well as works on J.R.R. Tolkien and Isaac Newton, does a competent job of depicting Lewis's life in all its richness and complexity. Here is Lewis the failed poet but accomplished prose writer, the conscientious (if sometimes bullying) teacher, who always sought to bring out the best in diligent students but could be remarkably spiteful about pupils he disliked. Here is the expansively generous Lewis, who gave his royalties to charity; who encouraged and praised Tolkien's work on ''The Lord of the Rings" even as their friendship cooled and Tolkien excoriated the Narnia chronicles. Here as well is the Lewis who led a double life as an undergraduate and Oxford Fellow, living with Janie Moore, a married woman nearly 30 years his senior in a relationship he kept a secret from university authorities and never discussed with his closest friends.
...Wilson also does a better job, with admittedly little evidence, of the vexing question of Lewis's sexuality. White notes that Janie Moore was ''bossy" and concludes that Lewis, who had lost his mother early in life, ''needed more than anything to be mothered," and makes the rather puzzling comment that his sadomasochistic streak was a ''rebellion" against this ''strongest inner drive" -- a return to childhood innocence. Wilson, on the other hand, sees Lewis's sadomasochism less as a rebellion against the impulse that led him to Moore, but as an integral part of their relationship. Throughout their life together, Lewis was at Moore's beck and call during waking hours, dropping academic duties to run errands or do housework -- ''he is as good as an extra maid," she once commented. Wilson remarks, ''Some men pay prostitutes for humiliation of the most humdrum kind . . . others find emotional fulfillment in being made to scrub kitchen floors or scour out pans."
November 3, 2004 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wal-Mart censors George Carlin
Yet another reason not to shop at Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart Declines to Sell Comedian Carlin's Book
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, is not selling comedian George Carlin's best-selling new book, "When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops," in its stores because its cover makes fun of the "Last Supper," a spokesman for Carlin said on Thursday....Carlin spokesman Jeff Abraham said Wal-Mart did not like the book's cover that shows the comedian in the setting of Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper" sitting next to an empty chair where Jesus sits in the painting.
"They did not like the cover because it was a parody," Abraham said, adding: "George attacks everything in this book but it does not have any nude photos. He said he thought the title would offend everyone."
Buy Carlin's book now at Amazon for under $17. (list price: $23.95)
October 29, 2004 in Books | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Phonesex worker tell-all book
Ah, those devilishly oversexed Republicans! If there's a chapter on felafel play, I think we know who was on the line...
New Book, By Renowned Former Porn Star Jody Maxwell, Exposes True, Detailed Phone Sex Calls and Bares a Taste of Her Extraordinary Life
OVERLAND PARK, Kan., Oct. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Jody Maxwell, legendary, former erotic film and stage actress; national men's magazines' writer; University of Missouri graduate; former Republican Party activist and officeholder; and school teacher, has just released her debut book, MY PRIVATE CALLS.
In MY PRIVATE CALLS, Maxwell takes the readers through the real world of sizzling, fantasy phone sex, while describing in depth the people who make these calls. Additionally, portions of Jody Maxwell's remarkable personal and professional life are interwoven throughout the book.
Ms. Maxwell spent 12 years talking with many thousands of fans, while she was associated with the premier American fantasy phone sex club, recording explicit, detailed notes of all her calls in 60 journals, in the process....
I worked a phone-sex line for a few months when I was a starving nerd in NYC. I can tell you how the typical exciting phone-sex call begins.
Sex-worker: (cooing) Hi, honey. How are you tonight?
Client: (slurring) Drunk and horny. Can you make me cum?
Oh yeah, baby. It was hot.....NOT.
(Thanks again to Leather for directing me to some pix of Ms. Maxwell--click his links below for more. I thought she looked particularly nice showing off her legs above.)
October 23, 2004 in Books, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Feminine wiles as weaponry
Interesting bits from a review of a new book.
Lipstick and false bosoms were weapons of warAMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Long before suffragettes shackled themselves to railings and Women's Libbers burned their bras, female freedom fighters were waging a more covert war, using lipstick, mascara and false bosoms as weapons.
Far from being instruments of oppression in a vast male conspiracy, such "beauty devices" were used by women to manipulate the judgmental masculine eye in an effort to control the uncontrollable, says feminist author Teresa Riordan.
Researching a century from Victorian corsets and bustles to the nail polish and girdles of the 1950s and Marilyn Monroe's breast implants, Riordan has written a history of the commercial inventions used by women to transform themselves.
...."When it comes to the opposite sex, males from many species are easily deceived. Male fireflies flirt with penlights. Male turkeys become randy at the mere sight of a fake, female turkey head. Male humans find feminine decoys equally beguiling.
"Women recognise this. And they have shrewdly, cannily and knowingly deployed artifice in their ceaseless battle to captivate the inherently roving eye of the male ....
October 16, 2004 in Books, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Lesbian pulp fiction
Fascinating essay and book review.
Pulp Fiction & Lesbian Rights
by Elizabeth A. Allen
In the 1950s and 1960s, hundreds of cheap paperbacks lured readers between their covers for soft-core girl-on-girl action.
Interestingly, it was a title by a lesbian that touched off this wildfire of pulp fiction. Cleis Press' new edition of Spring Fire by Vin Packer (one of the noms de plume of Marijane Meaker) contains the unabridged text, as well as a new preface by Meaker. In this context, you can see lesbian pulps as more than cheap thrills for straight guys; Spring Fire touched off a literary change that sped along the lesbian-rights movement....
The homophobia within lesbian pulps mirrors the culture in which Meaker and others wrote. In fact, Meaker's editor told her that Spring Fire couldn't contain anything construed as remotely condoning homosexuality, since that would violate postal obscenity codes. Far from celebrating lesbian sexuality, the pulps condemned it.
Yet, in the hands of lesbian readers, Spring Fire and its ilk were revolutionary for their widely distributed descriptions of lesbian life. Meaker portrays the isolation of post-WWII gay culture in her preface: "The majority of us were closeted.... My sorority sisters knew nothing about my homosexual love affair in boarding school.... There were no magazines or newspapers about us, no clubs for us to belong to" [p. vii]. Though Meaker mentions the bar scene, queer culture back then seems mostly fragmentary, made up of secretive, anxious individuals who knew no direct way to find support.
So, when lesbians opened the covers of pulps like Spring Fire, they found links to their sisters....
October 12, 2004 in Books, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Oscar Wilde estate auction at Sotheby's
Oscar Wilde Collection Goes Up for Auction
NEW YORK - An auction of important manuscripts, letters and other items belonging to poet and playwright Oscar Wilde goes up for auction this month, the 150th anniversary of the ever-controversial Irish-born writer's birthday.
The 104-item collection, exhibited Thursday at Sotheby's Manhattan location, includes some of the most desirable items from the witty Wilde's holdings. Most symbolic of Wilde's journey from bon vivant to social pariah is the "Tite Street Catalogue," a listing of his possessions for an April 1895 auction that followed his arrest for indecent acts.It's one of only four known copies of the catalog, which demonstrates Wilde's once-hefty collection of worldly possessions: valuable paintings, Chippendale furniture, Persian rugs, his own works and books presented as gifts by such luminaries as Walt Whitman and Victor Hugo.
Wilde, whose gay lifestyle led to a two-year prison term in staid 19th-century England, died in Paris soon after his release.....
October 9, 2004 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Elfriede Jelenik wins Nobel
Controversial feminist writer wins Nobel Prize
The book world responded with amazement yesterday - after an Austrian feminist writer was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Elfriede Jelenik, a 57-year-old recluse, is barely-known outside the German-speaking world and her few novels published in English sell only a few hundred copies a year in this country.
She strongly divides her own countrymen and has become a hate figure to Austria's Right and the middle classes whom she satirises in her writing.
A novelist, poet and playwright, she frequently deploys sex in her writing - notably sadomasochism and voyeurism - to demonstrate how women are dominated by men and capitalism.
In her best known and autobiographical book, The Piano Teacher, turned into a film starring the French actress Isabelle Huppert, the middle-aged heroine indulges in violent sex and mutilates her own genitalia with a razor.....
October 8, 2004 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Toni Bentley: The Surrender
'The Surrender': The Beauty of Submission
...Toni Bentley, a former ballet dancer who has written a number of books about dance (most notably ''Winter Season,'' an account of her life at the New York City Ballet during Balanchine's tenure), has taken the radical decision to compose a manifesto for anal sex. ''This is no feminist treatise about equality,'' she warns us -- perhaps a little superfluously -- in her introduction. ''This is the truth about the beauty of submission.'
...no woman before Bentley has felt quite zealous enough about what she calls ''emancipation through the back door'' to write an entire book in its praise. Bentley credits sodomy with having resolved the lifelong psychosexual problems that resulted from not being loved enough by her father. (In one luridly Freudian episode of this book, Bentley pere is described punishing his 4-year-old daughter for some minor infraction by angrily smearing a banana on her face and in her hair.) By giving herself up to ''this forbidden pathway,'' Bentley writes, she has not only found her self, she has discovered ''Paradise,'' she has experienced ''eternity in a moment of real time,'' and she has gotten to know God ''experientially.'' That's not all. She is also pretty sure that anal sex is responsible for piercing her yang, forcing her yin to the surface and releasing decades of anger stored in her lower intestine.
Bentley's inclination to various kinds of self-abasement found early expression in her childhood fascination with the lives of the saints, and later on in her career as a ballet dancer. (All that pain and discipline, all that bowing and scraping before the God-like Balanchine.) But neither these interests nor a busy history of sexual experimentation ever fully satisfied her masochistic yearnings. Only, she claims, when she met a man prepared to focus his attention on her neglected orifice did she enter the realm of bliss. For the just under three years that she and her sodomizer -- a man referred to throughout the book by the regrettable moniker ''A-Man'' -- enjoyed regular bouts of earth-moving sex, Bentley maintained a detailed journal of her experiences. She also kept a tally of how many times she was anally penetrated and made mathematical calculations about the average number of anal episodes she was having per year, week and day....
October 2, 2004 in Books, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Anne Rice's blood boils
The now defunct Eaton's department store used to advertise that satisfaction was guaranteed or your money refunded. But no novelist we know of has ever made a similar offer to the public — until now.
Writer Anne Rice, whose extravagant fictions about vampires and witches have made her famous and rich, vents her anger at readers who dare criticize her latest book Blood Canticle on the Amazon.com website and ends her lengthy, single-paragraph tirade by giving her home address in New Orleans and promising refunds to the disgruntled.
"And if you want your money back for the book, send it to 1239 First Street, New Orleans La. 70130. I am not a coward about my real name or where I live," she writes in a message posted Sept. 6 in response to the harsh criticisms and expressions of disappointment from dozens of readers. "And how glad I am that this book is the last one in a series that has invited your hateful and ugly responses."
Blood Canticle is the ninth and final instalment in the Vampire Chronicles, the series Rice began in 1973 with her first published novel Interview With A Vampire. Three books in the series have become feature films....
(Thanks to my little kittypet for the link!)
September 29, 2004 in Books | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Literature: Graham Greene's sexual appetites
A peek into the restless private life of a great novelist.
Novelist Greene a 'sexual raider'
THE tangled and messy love life of novelist Graham Greene is revealed in the final volume of his official biography, which portrays him as a voracious "sexual raider" who once listed 47 prostitutes he had slept with.
While Greene, regarded as one of the late 20th century's greatest English writers, remained married for 64 years, the extent of his adultery was extraordinary.
The new book - the third volume of the Life of Graham Greene - reveals that as well as having four long-term affairs, he was quite brazen about his relationships with prostitutes.
When in 1948 Catherine Walston, his mistress, challenged him about rumours that he paid women for sex, he scribbled down a list of his 47 favourite prostitutes and gave it to her. In the list the women, whom he had procured on the London streets since his marriage in 1927, were given names such as Russian Boots, Channel Islands Girl, Blackmail, Bishop Hooper, Black Pants, Bond Street French and Caesarian.
September 27, 2004 in Books, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Book about female slave trade
According to the Amazon reviews, this author goes into very intense, gory detail about the international sex slave trade, and writes passionately about the people he meets. I've added it to my book list.
The Price of Sex
Trafficked across the borders of the former Soviet bloc, the forgotten girls and women of Victor Malarek's new book are known in the sex trade as Natashas.
By Louise I. Shelley
For those who have observed the astronomical growth of the global sex trade in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe over the past 15 years, the shock of Victor Malarek's "The Natashas" is unfortunately all too familiar. But Malarek brings home the severity and tragedy of the phenomenon through the personal stories of women who have been trafficked, his encounters with peacekeepers across the world, and interviews with both men and women who valiantly try to combat the ever-growing phenomenon with little success and, often, great personal cost.
The most unusual part of this investigation is that it is written by a male. Malarek's outrage at fellow men who blithely have sex with women whose tortured bodies reveal that they are not willing prostitutes, or at international peacekeepers who boast of the sex slaves they have bought, is a rare occurrence in the trafficking discourse....
September 18, 2004 in Books, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Waris Dirie: female genital mutilation
Actress and activist Waris Dirie is a long-time, vocal opponent of the tragedy of female genital mutilation in African cultures. As a survivor of this inhuman ritual, the exquisite Ms. Dirie has devoted herself to speaking out whenever and wherever she can to put an end to the practice.
Scarred Bond girl speaks out against female genital mutilation in Kenya
NAIROBI (AFP) - At the age of five, Waris Dirie was scarred for life by an extreme form of traditional genital mutilation. Now the Somali woman is using her fame as a Bond girl and model to speak out against the practice at a major conference in Nairobi.
Dirie, 33, who appeared in the 1987 James Bond blockbuster, The Living Daylights, said her heart was wounded forever after Somali women forcefully circumcized her at the age of five in line with aged customs.
"I had a wonderful childhood, except one horrific memory that will stick in me for the rest of my life," she said late on Thursday in Nairobi, where she is attending an international conference designing strategies to fight excision, or female genital mutilation (FGM).
I'm adding her most popular work, Desert Flower : The Extraordinary Journey Of A Desert Nomad, to my list of recommended books (check "Neocortexts").
The Amazon product description says:
Waris Dirie leads a double life -- by day, she is an international supermodel and human rights ambassador for the United Nations; by night, she dreams of the simplicity of life in her native Somalia and the family she was forced to leave behind.Desert Flower, her intimate and inspiring memoir, is a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered about the beauty of African life, the chaotic existence of a supermodel, or the joys of new motherhood.
Waris was born into a traditional Somali family, desert nomads who engaged in such ancient and antiquated customs as genital mutilation and arranged marriage. At twelve, she fled an arranged marriage to an old man and traveled alone across the dangerous Somali desert to Mogadishu -- the first leg of an emotional journey that would take her to London as a house servant, around the world as a fashion model, and eventually to America, where she would find peace in motherhood and humanitarian work for the U.N.
Today, as Special Ambassador for the U.N., she travels the world speaking out against the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation, promoting women's reproductive rights, and educating people about the Africa she fled -- but still deeply loves.
September 17, 2004 in Books, Sexual Health | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Smutty details from Kitty Kelley's book
Hard to know if it's accurate, but it's certainly sensational.
Bush family follies: Bombshell book rips clan for sex, drugs
...The controversial best-selling author contends that first lady Laura Bush may have a sweet, sugary demeanor now, but she did a lot more than study in college. She was known as the ``go-to girl'' for dime bags of marijuana, Kelley writes.``She not only smoked dope,'' public relations executive Robert Nash told Kelley. ``But she sold dope.''
Kelley writes that it was during the 1994 Texas gubernatorial campaign that one of George W. Bush's former flames prepared to sell her story.
``She claimed she got a visit from some men who made her realize it was better to turn tricks in Midland than to stop breathing,'' Austin political consultant Peck Young told Kelley.
While vice president, George H.W. Bush chose Jennifer Fitzgerald to be his executive assistant - despite the fact she had no college education. She also became his mistress, Kelley writes.
``Jennifer was a fact of life in George's life. Period. End of discussion,'' said Carol Taylor Gray, wife of White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray.
``I'm glad he had her in his life to bring him a little joy. . . . I know this is heresy to say because Barbara Bush is adored by this country and looks like such a sweet old grandmother, but the country doesn't know her like I do,'' Taylor Gray said. ``I don't think she has a good heart . . . she's not a nice woman. To dogs maybe, but not to people.''
The elder president also had a randy side. George H.W. Bush kept a three-foot-high anatomically correct male fertility statue in the Oval Office bathroom. The president kept a roll of toilet paper on the extended male organ.
``He liked to send young women into the bathroom and watch their reaction,'' Kelley wrote.
September 16, 2004 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
New book: rubber fun for fetishists
Book on rubber bounces onto store shelves
In a new book, Rubber! Fun, Fashion, Fetish (Thames & Hudson, $22.50), text and 500 color illustrations demonstrate many other ways in which rubber has befriended mankind.
Authors Janet Bloor and John D. Sinclair -- who have wrapped their book in covers of fragrant, bright orange rubber -- show how stretching the imagination has found a variety of uses for the stuff in clothing, furniture, prosthetics, toys, building materials, utensils, tools, home decor, athletic equipment and the Goodyear blimp.
(Check my book list in the right column for a link to buy this book at Amazon.)
September 16, 2004 in Books, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Author: Khushwant Singh
An interesting review of the work of Khushwant Singh, an Indian writer who embraces sexual themes in his books.
Mrigini Or Hasthini?
Old Man takes on religious hypocrisy
SAM MILLERPARADISE AND OTHER STORIES
by Khushwant Singh
RAVI DAYAL AND VIKINGKhushwant Singh is one of the last active writers of his generation, and he remains indefatigable and prolific. At the age of 90, he has produced a new book of short stories, covering some of his favourite themes, among which breasts and penises, of various sizes, always loom large (and small). However, in this case, he declares religious irrationality (including astrology, numerology and tarot cards) to be his prime interest and target.
September 6, 2004 in Books |
