I am currently reading "Undefended Love," by Jett Psaris, PH.D and Marlena S. Lyons, PH.D.....It's an inspiring and practical approach to lasting, loving relationships. The message is clear and the effect is profound. I'm learning alot.

Politics and Pasta~by Vincent "Buddy" Cianci.

A Pacific Northwest Author...
 

Have any of you ever heard of Lucia Perillo?

She's a Pacific Northwest author who lives in the state of Washington and I came across a book of hers, the other night, which I plan to purchase next week - since I couldn't find a copy of it at the library.

The title of her book is: Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain (2012).

Here's a book review (LINK)

Here's a brief excerpt of her writing from chapter 1 (Bad Boy Number Seventeen):

....."I think he's funny," she says in that woofy voice of hers. "I think he's cute. I think that boy wants to be my boyfriend."

.....This is the kind of thing Louisa'll say that drives a stake into our mother's heart. Lately Mum's been talking about getting her tube tied, a plan I could condone on pragmatic grounds but against which I've nonetheless felt compelled to launch a squeak or two of protest. Louisa's been living with Mum ever since she got kicked out of the group home for repeated makeup theft, and even though Louisa's relatively sulf-sufficient - she can ride the bus, she has a job assembling calendars and pens - my mother won't rest easy until Louisa's fate is sewn up. I mean, Louisa needs a baby about as badly as she needs a scholarship to MIT, but then part of me says: What right do we have to go monkeying around with Louisa's body? (pp. 3; Perillo, 2012).

Book Description

Publication Date: May 7, 2012

A stunning debut from an award-winning poet.

Populating a small town in the Pacific Northwest, the characters in Lucia Perillo’s story collection all resist giving the world what it expects of them and are surprised when the world comes roaring back.

An addict trapped in a country house becomes obsessed with vacuum cleaners and the people who sell them door-to-door. An abandoned woman seeks consolation in tales of armed robbery told by one of her fellow suburban housewives. An accidental mother struggles to answer her daughter’s badgering about her paternity. And in three stories readers meet Louisa, a woman with Down syndrome who serves as an accomplice to her younger sister’s sexual exploits and her aging mother’s fantasies of revenge.

Together, Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain is a sharp-edged, witty testament to the ambivalence of emotions, the way they pull in directions that often cancel one another out or twist their subjects into knots. In lyrical prose, Perillo draws on her training as a naturalist and a poet to map the terrain of the comic and the tragic, asking how we draw the boundaries between these two zones. What’s funny, what’s heartbreaking, and who gets to decide?




http://covers.feedbooks.net/item/310...e&t=1359403964

reading
 

Biography of Christopher Reeve

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Lover-At-Last-Dagger-Brotherhood/dp/0451239350"]Lover at Last[/ame] by JR Ward.

I started hearing a lot of chatter about this book last year. J.R. Ward writes a series called the Black Dagger Brotherhood which is about vampires. It's romance but it's somewhat edgy. One of the books in the series included BDSM, and people were all frowny about it (this was pre-50 Shades).

So J.R. Ward decides to step it up a notch and make the latest installment of her series about the love story between two men. Two beloved characters that have been in earlier installments.

People lost their ever-loving minds. People flocked to her message board and vented their spleens about how they didn't want to read a love story about two men, and how they especially didn't want to read the sex scenes. They blogged about it. They cried on Goodreads. And so on.

This of course made me want to buy twelve copies, but in the end I only bought two (one for my kindle and one for my local library). I read it yesterday and while it didn't blow my mind, I liked it. J.R. Ward is a good writer and I admire her courage in writing this story despite the criticism.

I am reading The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. I find the author to be a bit full of herself but damn the woman can craft a sentence. I'm about 100 pages in and find myself quite glad that this book is a little over 600 pages. I want to be able to wade in it for a while.

I also loved the 'great and small' series, makes me want to re-read them too!

An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales by Oliver Sacks (I love all his books)

"...seven narratives of neurological disorder....These men, women, and one extraordinary child emerge as brilliantly adaptive personalities, whose conditions have not so much debilitated them as ushered them into another reality"

Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes

http://img1.imagesbn.com/p/978081299...2_s260x420.JPGhttp://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...R%26MaxW%3D620

Just started this one a few days ago ... Its memoir of this women growing up with a drug addicted mother.
Read a review in the new york times recently .
So far its been very good.

The life of Emily Dickinson.

I'm so excited! One of my favorite authors, Mary Roach, just released her latest book: Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal.

Her books tend to pick a subject- sex, death, ghosts, space travel-- and answer all the quirky and obscure questions you've never thought of, but once you hear the question, you HAVE to know the answer (or at least I do). She's a writer of (weird) science who uses lots of humor and outsider perspective to make her subjects accessible. About once a year, I re-read her first book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, because it's just that good.

Her latest book focuses on the digestive system, starting with the sense of smell (and what makes a good wine taster), down through the stomach (where she explains why it doesn't eat itself), and on down to the anatomy of the rectum, and of course what comes out of it (and answers the question: did Elvis really die of constipation?). In the introduction, she writes that her aim is not to gross the reader out, but to fascinate...though she admits being grossed out is probably unavoidable. And I admit I look forward to being grossed out, because she'll have me laughing and learning the whole time.

http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1352232547l/13615414.jpg

Still working on Memoirs of a Geisha. I started reading this before news of the movie came out- then I had to stop. I finally picked it back up a few months ago.... and i'm still not done. Need to get on the ball!