On my way out the door - #AmReading #Erotica #Literature

By Lisabet Sarai

By the time you read this post, I’ll be in China.

As I write this, it’s already 9PM, I’m leaving at noon tomorrow, and I haven’t even started packing.

Hence, this is going to be a somewhat perfunctory post. I hope you’ll forgive me.

Our topic this month is “What are you reading?” I’d love to spend pages on this, as I’ve been engaged in some juicy books, but I’ll just give you the short version.

I just finished Funhouse, the seventh book in Aurelia T. Evans’ incredible Arcanium series. Arcanium is a demonic circus controlled by ancient djinn Bell Madoc, a perversely charming chameleon who gets his kicks fulfilling people’s casually expressed wishes in ways that bind them to the circus. In general, I’m not a fan of series; I find that after a few books, they become overly formulaic and lose their zest. I’m still enchanted by Arcanium, though, largely due to its moral ambiguity.

Horrible things happen in Arcanium. People are disfigured, tortured, even devoured. The demons who populate the Oddity Row and perform under the big top don’t subscribe to any sort of human moral code. They’re happy to feed their lusts on human flesh and even human life. The humans who have attacked Arcanium and are in the process of being punished can be even more reprehensible.

At the same time, Arcanium offers a sort of sanctuary for individuals who really don’t fit in the outside world, as well as a path to self-knowledge. Neve, the protagonist in Funhouse, is a fine example. A brilliant PhD biologist who happens to also be a voluptuous redhead, Neve has never felt sexual desire. She marries Joseph because they enjoy one another’s company and have similar tastes – both are fans of Rocky Horror and H.P. Lovecraft – but though she tries to satisfy her husband, she feels no physical pleasure herself. This tears their marriage apart and brings Neve into Arcanium, when she wishes, in Bell’s presence, that she could “experience sex the way her husband wants her to do”. She becomes a sexually insatiable creature, suffering constant torment from the simple sensation of clothing on her super-sensitive skin. Arcanium is drenched in sexual tension, and Neve could easily find partners among the demons or the humans, but having been objectified all her life due to her opulent body, she resists.

I liked Neve a lot, but the actual plot in Funhouse wandered a bit. In particular, I found the end a bit unsatisfying, since there’s no real resolution to Neve’s dilemma, other than her increasing acceptance of her abnormal state.

Nevertheless, I’m sure I’ll purchase Haunted, the next installment, since I gather it continues Neve’s story.

In a very different vein, I’m within thirty or forty pages of finishing Riven Rock, by T.C. Boyle. Boyle is an incredibly creative and diverse author. Each of his books is a thoroughly new experience. This one, one of his earlier novels, riffs on the historical characters of billionaire Stanley McCormick and his wife Katherine Dexter, suffragette and woman’s rights advocate. Always a sensitive child, dominated by his mother, Stanley falls prey to the hereditary schizophrenia that destroyed his older sister. In Stanley’s case, the dementia has strong associations with sexual desire and sexual guilt. Katherine is forced to sequester him at their Santa Barbara mansion Riven Rock, where he is not allowed to interact with women at all. There he languishes for decades, defying all attempts to "cure" him.

The book vividly portrays the erratic and constantly changing nature of psychosis. It’s also a wonderful portrait of America during the first half of the twentieth century. Katherine and Stanley are both sympathetic characters; I would like to hope for a happy ending, though it seems unlikely.

The true brilliance of the novel, though, lies in the contrast between Stanley and his long-time male nurse, Eddie O’Kane. Eddie is, at various times, a womanizer and a drunkard, but unlike Stanley, he has the agency to change his behavior and his life. In a way, Eddie provides a mirror for Stanley, suggesting that the core symptom of insanity is the inability to recognize it in one’s self.

I’m leaving Riven Rock behind on my bedside table, to finish when I return. Instead, I’m taking two used volumes that have been on my shelves for a while: The Wasp Factory by Ian Banks and The Lubetkin Legacy by Marina Lewycka. I’ve read work by both these authors and enjoyed it. Banks’ The Bridge, in particular, is amazing, mysterious, evocative and intense. Apparently The Wasp Factory was his first novel.

Meanwhile, Lewycka’s A Short History of Tractors in the Ukraine was laugh out loud funny. I’m hoping this book is as good.

And now I really have to go pack!

Traveling, Reading

By Lisabet Sarai

I am writing this two weeks ahead of time because on the day it posts, I’ll be far away from my home and my computer. I’ll be traveling for twelve days, and I won’t be able to access the blog, even to reply to comments.

So far in advance, I’m not sure what I’ll be reading, but I know I will be reading. Indeed, reading is one of the joys of being on the road. A fourteen hour plane trip provides a lot of opportunities to lose oneself in a book—not to mention the hours waiting to board or to make connections. I may be doing an all-day train ride as well. Meanwhile, since I’ll be in a rural area at least part of the time, I expect that there will few activities in the evenings to compete with reading.

What will I bring with me? Well, my tablet, of course, stuffed with at least two dozen titles, many of them erotica. Thank heavens for e-books. They definitely lighten my luggage!

I’ll also be carrying George R.R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons, the last (so far) volume in the Game of Thrones series. I’ve been rationing my consumption of that series, saving it for long journeys. I read the first half of this volume (five hundred plus pages) on my last international odyssey. I’ll finish it on this one, then feel frustrated, I’m sure, because just like real life, these books never tie up the loose ends.

That won’t be enough, though. After a while, I get tired of reading on a screen. I’m sure I’ll want to bring at least a few more print books, even with our limited luggage allowance (low cost airlines... argh!) But which ones?

At the moment, there are all sorts of candidates on my bookshelf. Riven Rock by T.C. Boyle. Sweet Caress by William Boyd. Books by Umberto Eco and John Crowley, Thomas Pynchon and Salman Rushdie, not to mention half a dozen titles from Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series and (as a stark contrast) Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Lots of less well known writers, too—we have access to some excellent used book stores!

One needs to use special criteria choosing books for travel. They need to long enough to justify carrying them, but small enough not to take up too much space. I look for books that will really hook me and pull me in, to distract me from delays, backaches, hunger, bad smells, and other inevitabilities of travel. At the same time, for me at least, a travel book can’t be too intense, complex or intellectual. I’d rather read those books at home, where I have a wider selection and can put them down to pick up something else.

Anyway, I really can’t tell you in any detail what I’ll be reading as you read this. Very likely, though, I’ll be enjoying it.

Far from some things, close to others ( #Musings #PublishingDifficulties #RekindledRomance #NewDirections )

by Annabeth Leong

“I can feel the distance getting close.” - Tori Amos

This fortnight’s topic has made the Tori Amos song “China” run through my head every time I think about it, so I’m going to go with that. I first heard the song when I was way too young to know what it feels like for a long-term relationship to come apart in slow motion, but I felt the emotional impact nonetheless. Amos sings with an ache in her voice about the sense of growing distance--I love the line I quoted because as strange as it is to think of distance getting close, I think it’s very evocative of the sensation of a gradual estrangement that eventually must be acknowledged.

Now I’m old enough to know what it feels like, to know what it’s like to sometimes think the other person wants me to touch them but to feel so much distance at that point that I’m not sure how to bridge that gap or if I should even try.

To avoid getting completely morose as I describe this, I’m thinking about how the rekindled romance is actually one of my favorite tropes. One of the books I wrote for the now-defunct Ellora’s Cave, called Turn Back Time, was about this. A couple had allowed gradually increasing distance to tear them apart. They had separated, but the longing for each other was still somehow present. In the story, they receive a magical timepiece that allows them to return to the moments when they turned away from each other and experience what it would be like had they turned toward each other instead.

The book came out after Ellora’s Cave was well in flames. There was a boycott on, rightly so, but that meant that few people read the book and I never saw any money for it. It makes me sad sometimes, and that heartbreak created another sort of distance, too--from my writing, one I’m still trying to bridge.

Lately, though, I’ve been healing a bit from some of these things. Endings happen and so do heartbreak. Distance grows, but when I’m far from one thing I’m close to something else.

Life’s been strange for me lately. I’ve been across the Atlantic and back, and I’ve driven across the United States and back. So many distances, so far from home I don’t even have an address anymore. But wherever I am, I’m somewhere, and there are destinations I can choose to point toward.

In my rekindled romance story, the couple found their way back to each other in the end. They set their direction toward each other and began taking steps.

Now here I am, definitely going somewhere. I think it’s somewhere I want to go. I’m feeling better recently. I can feel the distance getting close, and when I see the next mile marker, I’m going to notice that I’m pointing in a direction, finding my way to things, both familiar and new.