Barefeet in the Sand to Heal the Soul

I am currently making my way through my Cultural Intellectual book.  I am not much for one single page of reading at a time, the way this book is set up.  I love random knowledge and facts, so I like reading this stuff.  I like reading in chunks.  So I'm about halfway through this mountain of knowledge. It's got 7 different categories from politics to music, from sports to literature and film. 

Anyways, I recently read a novel called Barefoot, by Elin Hilderbrand.  I really enjoyed this reading.  I was another gym book exchange pick-up and another one I stayed up all night to finish.  It's really been a while since I've just wanted to dive into books and escape.  It is so much more refreshing than scrolling endlessly through Facebook.  Which, side note, I was trying to stay off Facebook from Monday through Friday and last week was the first time breaking it since the start of the year.  It is bad.  I broke again today.  Excuses, excuses, my phone has been acting up and messenger kicks me out all the time and acts like I just downloaded it.  So to get my messages, I go in and then I get sucked into the vortex.  I just need to not. It really is amazing how much time you have for other things. Back to the book.  It was one of those "gets to your heart" novels. It's a multi-person perspective novel, so you see the story from everyone's point of view.  I like novels that give you the story from many different angles.  It just makes the story feel broader and well-rounded. 


The story is of three ladies that move out to Nantucket for the summer (which I just learned where that is the other day while watching the weather channel...nerd, I know; but it was on at the gym. I also learned where Montauk is located).  Two of the three women, sisters, and owners of the house their family has held on the island for generations.  The third is a friend of the eldest sister who has come to escape the city and some troubling relationship problems.  All of  them are dealing with issues and trying to solve them with "a little Nantucket sand in their shoes." The first day arriving on the island, they meet Josh.  He is going to school to be a writer.  The moment he sees them, he knows there is a story.  His path keeps brushing up against theirs and he eventually becomes the babysitter for the eldest sister's two small boys.  The story continues from there.

Nantucket and Montauk on the map, because I know you wanted to know

Mercury in Retrograde

I'm BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And on my favorite night: Lit. Lundi!

I recently read Mercury in Retrograde by Paula Froelich.  I have not laughed this hard in a long time.  The book was hilarious and at a point when I needed a good laugh.  This was the second book, in about two weeks, that I actually stayed up into the wee hours of the morning to finish.  The story was entertaining and light.  I picked this book up at the gym book exchange.  This isn't a deep thinking novel, but it was witty, humorous, and entertaining.  Laughter is great medicine.  Reading is great for empathy; and thank God for this book, because I at least know I'm not the only one that seems to have lots of things going wrong in my life (Mercury just seems to be in constant retrograde for me - lol).

The book follows three girls as their lives get up-ended by Mercury going into retrograde.  When Mercury appears to be traveling backwards, from earths perspective, things tend to go rather WRONG.  Penelope, Lena, Dana are three New York ladies whose lives have gone awry during Mercury retrograde.  It covers how their paths all cross and their lives go in every which way; thanks Mercury retrograde!

I recently put out, on the city network page, an ad for a book club!  I don't know if I should just join the library book club or start my own. I'm just excited to get back at it.

Let's Talk About Sex Baby

I have been quite disturbed recently with a great deal of ... SEX! I have to dip into other media, not just books for this talk. I have recently been reading a book, London: The Wicked City: A Thousand Years of Prostitution and Vice by Fergus Linnane. This book is making me really begin to consider what the muffin man really did on Drury Lane since it was a hotbed of nasty nasty! There were things called posture molls that were basically dominatrix ladies. They flogged or were flogged and many of them did a special dance and trick that was followed by the spectators attempting to chuck money into her "commodity" (and she was typically in a head stand about this time). It is kind of interesting to see that sex and sex fetishes have not changed since the 1700s...and I'm sure Mesopotamia and Greece and Rome had just as many freaks as London did in the 18th Century. It is easy to see why there was such prudery in the Victorian Era if it followed the horny 18th Century - this is probably why British people are so darn repressed now. They were kinkier than kinky back in the day and now they are trying to work back out to a normal after fluxing into the extreme prude in the Victorian Era.

This leads me to our more modern media and literature. Is anyone else disturbed that more and more lyrics are beginning to sound like rape? The whole of Kanye West's addition to Katy Perry's ET is raunchy and this part sounds like rape:

Tell me what's next, alien sex
I'mma disrobe you, than I'mma probe you
See I abducted you, so I tell ya what to do
I tell ya what to do, what to do, what to do

There are a bunch of other songs out there as well that sound exactly like this or have similar lyrics to excuses guys use as justification for rape. Justin Timberlake and 50 Cent have lyrics in a song, Ayo Technology, that sound like these justifications:

Ooh, she wants it, uh uh, she wants it
Ooh, she wants it, (so), I gotta give it to her,
Ooh, she wants it, uh uh, she wants it
Ooh, she wants it, (so), I gotta give it to her,

Call me crazy, but I think I like my songs with more of sexual innuendo than full on descriptive. We don't have anymore black snake moans or hound dogs. Artists had to be so creative back in the day to get their yearning out there, now guys just tell all us girls to shake it, "sit" on "it", spin it round the pole a few times, and show them our breasts. I was really quite disturbed in 2010 when popular radio stations were playing the Top 100 (or whatever number their station was) songs of the last decade...most of the top 20 were about shaking your butt. I think part of the reason I have taken to folk and blues music more and more because there is actual emotion and plot and detail to these songs other than grabbing or shaking or humping! Goodness Grapenuts, Josephine Baker used to dance around topless in Paris and she had more class in her songs than half the music on the radio today. Personally, I think I'd rather listen to my kids sing Night Moves by Bob Seger than Right Round by Flo Rida.

I do have to say that pop culture is trying to redeem itself in the form of Glee. I have to say on of the most honest and real sex talks I have ever heard was when Kurt's dad sat down to talk to him about sex. It was definitely a respect yourself and that's the best you can do for yourself when it comes to sex. I can respect someone that gives a message of expressing yourself sexually but doing it in a way true to yourself and respecting yourself. That is the best way to keep the balance - just be true to self!