Books for November-December
This pile has been collecting a bit longer than 2 months I think.
* Eat & run, Scott Jurek & Steve Friedman
* The life you can save: acting now to end world poverty, Peter Singer
These are both re-reads. I read Eat & run on my trip in August and the Peter Singer one in April 2010. I took them to Indonesia in October.
* What I talk about when I talk about running, Haruki Murakami
I bought this at the airport in KL. :) A good travel companion, slim and easy to read yet not trash. It's a simple, humble kind of treatise on the meditative qualities of running. Wonderful to have an author - a wordsmith - describe a physical activity really.
Most of the rest of these are from an Amazon binge :)
* Redefining our relationships, Wendy O Matik
* Opening up: A guide to creating and sustaining open relationships, Tristan Taormino
These are kind of the follow-on from reading The Ethical Slut previously (which I see I never reviewed, I think I intended to discuss it in detail and that never happened). They all complement each other pretty well, I am glad I have read them all. The Ethical Slut is really idealistic, they are kind of the Richard Stallman of polyamory authors. Taormino's book goes into detail about different kinds of configurations of relationships and has lots of quotes/interviews with "practitioners" as well, while firm and matter-of-fact in its foundations it is not as confronting as TES (nor as easy to dismiss). O Matik's book is an interesting one, a more personal and philosophical kind of approach than Taormino's which is almost attempting to be a textbook. It's also obviously briefer (and I felt safer reading it on public transport :)) but I still found it gave me plenty of food for thought.
* Exposed: The erotic fiction of Alison Tyler
Like all such collections, some stories work really well, others leave me cold. *shrug* (this is borrowed from a friend)
* Sex for one: The joy of selfloving, Betty Dodson
* I love female orgasm: an extraordinary orgasm guide, Dorian Solot & Marshall Miller
These are obviously on the same topic but very different approaches, each grounded in their time I think. Solot & Miller's is pretty breezy and friendly and not "opinionated" except in favour of female orgasm, really. They have lots of quotes from different women which is useful. They are careful to include queer perspectives.
Sometimes in such matters it helps to read someone stating the obvious.
Betty Dodson is a legend, and her book is rather evangelistic - both of masturbation and of Betty Dodson. :) I kinda like how bolshie she must have been so this didn't bother me. At the end it has some brief letters from readers which are touching and hilarious by turns, but apart from this it's all Betty's voice - she does include some anecdotes from her "Bodysex" workshops though (leading group masturbation).
I enjoyed them both.