Book Review: Sex at Dawn

July 21, 2011 1 Comment

Title: Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships
Author: Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha
Format: Trade Paper
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Pub Date: 2010; this edition: 2011
Read: July 2011
Source: Borders, the Shops at Columbus Circle
Why: You know I’d heard about this book a couple of times and it was on my To Read list…then I saw it in Borders while searching for The Rest Is Noise and thought I gotta get this.
Fulfills Challenge? Yes.

Review/Thoughts:
This was probably the most interesting work of non-fiction I’ve read in a while. Even more so than The Ancient Guide to Modern Life (which was damn good but still…this is far more relevant to my feminist interests).

Sex at Dawn essentially debunks everything you took for granted about human sexuality by examining the way our pre-historic ancestors lived, our closest relatives: chimps and bonobos, our physical anatomy, and other cultures. They argue that the standard narrative of sex is wrong. You know the one I’m talking about: men want to plant their seed in every woman imaginable because they can, women seek a man who can provide for and protect her and her offspring because well, 9 months is a damned long time to be pregnant and so mates must be chosen with care! There are certainly differences between the sexes, and at no point do they deny this. For example, though men are ready to go very quickly (unlike women), once a woman gets going, she can keep going. But for some reason, people interpret the former as an argument for men being more sexually inclined while the latter is ignored completely when it could be used to make the argument that women are just as sexual as men. Not to mention that the moment a woman shows the same sexual proclivities as a man, suggesting that one is not necessarily naturally more sexually inclined than the other, she’s deemed a slut. Because of course, that makes total sense. And people really think this doesn’t at least play a role? I mean, seriously?

Anyway, back to the book: Ryan and Jetha present a convincing case. When criticizing other evolutionary psychologists who support the standard narrative, they point to specific examples, so that it’s clear where they’re coming from and what they’re arguing against. Their main argument, besides challenging the above standard gender narrative is that monogamy does not come naturally to human beings, that it’s largely the result of the birth of agriculture. This argument and their presentation of it, for the most part, did seem to make sense to me. They also devote an entire section to non-sexy bits, entitled The Way We Weren’t, which provides context for a lot of their arguments and also suggests that Hobbes vision of humankind before ‘rules n shit’ is at best grossly overstated. Technically speaking this section probably wasn’t absolutely necessary, but it was just as fascinating as the rest of the text, so I didn’t mind one bit.

I don’t think the book is perfect — the “Philandering Phil” chapter rubbed me the wrong way though this seemed to be a widespread feeling as the authors included a note at the end explaining why they only chose to present a man’s tale of infidelity and not a woman’s as well. Phil was a friend who opened up, they had no female friends that opened up (I think they still should’ve made more of an effort to find a woman willing to talk. Also they argue that female infidelity is often more complicated, which to me is fine, EXPLORE THAT! Delve into that! They spent so much of the text arguing that women are actually biologically built for variety that I would have liked to see what infidelity looks like from a woman’s perspective in the context of the book’s theories. By only showing the philandering husband, it created the impression that MEN LIKE VARIETY, WOMEN DON’T, or rather, I suspect a lot of people looking for a reason to do so, will end up coming away with that.

Despite this problem, it’s still a book I feel everyone should read, and I rarely say that. It’s not so much that I think polyamory is the answer for everyone, but I do think the book is important in reminding us that we should at the very least question the standard narrative we’ve been sold regarding monogamy and sex and gender. Choosing to be monogamous should be just that, a CHOICE, with the understanding that there are other legitimate ways to approach sex and relationships even though they may not be for you personally.

Final Verdict:

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Book Review: Nom de Plume

June 22, 2011 4 Comments

Title: Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms
Author: Carmela Ciuraru
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pub Date: Jun 2011
Read: Jun 2011
Source: the author asked me to review it and sent me a copy
Why: see above (it sounded interesting, so I said yes)
Fulfills Challenge? Yes.

Review/Thoughts:
So I’ll admit that just based off the (sub)title alone I actually thought the book was going to cover the history of pseudonyms…in a more general way. Once I read the synopsis of course, I realized I was mistaken. Me and my silly misconceptions.

What I liked about it: each vignette covers a different author (with the exception of the first, which covers all three Bronte sisters though focuses most heavily on Charlotte) and we get a biography of each of them. The biographies are tailored around the story of the pseudonym — not only where the pseudonyms originated, but tales of conflicted identities, dualities, feelings of not belonging, wanting to remain anonymous, etc. These themes crop up again and again (not surprisingly), and Ciuraru carefully crafts each biography around these themes to illustrate some of the reasons why each author chose to use a pseudonym. It also means that there are obviously going to be some holes in each person’s story since these are not meant to be comprehensive. I also appreciated the fact that Ciuraru covered some lesser known authors and pseudonyms. You have your big names such as George Orwell, Mark Twain, and George Eliot, but there’s also lesser knowns such James Tiptree, Jr., Henry Green, and Emile Ajar. The variety keeps this collection of biographical essays from totally falling into the “I’ve heard all this before” trap. You probably know the story of Mark Twain, but I doubt you’re familiar with James Triptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon). My favorite was probably George Sand — now want to go out and read some of her books. Her story just seemed interesting to me. Least favorite…maybe Emile Ajar? I sped through most of them, so no complaints here.

Random, but I found it somewhat amusing that within the pages of this book is a man who died a virgin and a man who boasted having slept with 10,000 women (Fernando Pessoa and Georges Simenon respectively).

Thoroughly enjoyable I’d recommend for bookish nerds who haven’t read a comprehensive bio of every author here. Why the qualification? Because 1) if you have, there probably isn’t enough new material here 2) I had a former co-worker who possessed a seemingly infinite knowledge of everything and anything, and something tells me he’d find this boring because he’s probably heard/read it all before (Karin I bet you know who I’m talking about). Luckily, most of us still have a lot to learn!

Final Verdict:

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Book Review: Sugar in My Bowl

June 15, 2011 5 Comments

Title: Sugar in My Bowl: Real Women Write About Real Sex
Author: Erica Jong (ed)
Format: Trade Paper (ARC)
Publisher: ECCO | HarperCollins
Pub Date: Jun 2011
Read: Jun 2011
Source: found it in the ARC/Galley section of Housing Works Bookstore
Why: Erica Jong’s name was attached to it… that seemed to be enough really.
Fulfills Challenge? Yes (2)
Notes: I first learned Erica Jong was coming out with a new book when I was looking up signings at BEA. I saw Jong was a ticketed signing and I got really excited. Then I saw the book was an edited anthology and I was slightly disappointed but still! Erica Jong! Sadly I didn’t get to see her at BEA because I didn’t wake up at the buttcrack of dawn to get tickets.

Review/Thoughts:
Apologies for this review being posted right after Seducing the Demon. I wasn’t expected to fly through this as quickly as I did or I might have planned better.

Let’s start off with what I liked: the diversity of content. Each story was unique and not every woman talked about the “best sex they ever had” (which was the original title of this anthology). The pieces are refreshing and honest, some sexy, some funny. Some standouts for me were Ariel Levy’s “My First Time, Twice” about how she lost her virginity “twice” because in fact, she didn’t actually have sex the first time, J.A.K. Andres’ funny piece entitled “The Diddler” about her six year old daughter’s masturbatory habits, and Anne Roiphie’s “Peekaboo I See You” about playing doctor in the closet and what followed. Mostly the anthology is made up of essays but there is a trialogue (Eve Ensler), a graphic story (graphic as in a comic strip), and a handful of stories. Truth be told the stories somewhat bugged me. In a collection where “real women write about real sex” these stories seemed somehow less real. Honest (as in the sex was still depicted in a candid way) but still, not real. I appreciated the short story about the older couple (in their late eighties, early nineties) because sex between people of that age doesn’t seem to get a whole lot of attention. I would have liked it better though if it had actually been written by someone of that age… and had not been fiction.

This of course is starting to veer into things I didn’t like. Let me reiterate the collection is solid and if I just examine the pieces themselves and the collection as a whole, I can’t really complain. I read the whole thing in a few hours despite my usual tendency to put aside collections of any sort, reading a few at a time. So in terms of engagement, the book is a success. But still. I have to talk about the negatives.

Although the collection is diverse in terms of age, it is not diverse in terms of race or ethnicity. I didn’t actually notice until I got to Min Jin Lee’s essay. When she started talking about how often times Asian women are fetishized, I realized, hey no one else has mentioned race! That’s when I checked out the contributor bios (which included pictures!) and lo and behold I realized I’d only be encountering one other piece by a woman of color. Two women of color in a collection of 28. Am I the only one who finds this absurd? I think racial diversity adds to the conversation. I appreciated that Rebecca Walker did not focus on race in her piece just as much as I appreciated that Min Jin Lee did. The latter shows that yes, race and ethnicity can and do often play a role in one’s sex life and views on sex while the former shows that regardless of race, some feelings, such as desire, are universal. Both views are important.

The collection also only covered heterosexual encounters. Check that: once again Rebecca Walker did briefly discuss one of her female lovers BUT that was an aside. The piece was actually about a man she lusted after and how the best sex she ever had was the best sex she only fantasized about and never had. Eve Ensler’s trialogue briefly (even more briefly than Walker) mentioned sex between women. And though I’m forgetting which piece it was, there was one other brief mention of sex with women. But I’m not exaggerating when I say brief…MENTIONS. Only Walker takes the time to describe the sex between her and her female lover, and none of the pieces focused on sex or desire between two women.

Now it is entirely possibly that Jong requested pieces from lesbians or more women of color and these women for whatever reason chose not to contribute. There is also the fact that some of these women have obviously been involved with other women but chose to focus on a different sexual experience. This is their prerogative and I’m not criticizing these women, just acknowledging that not everyone had only had sex with men. But none of this changes the fact that the collection would have been strongly improved by the addition of more diverse viewpoints and stories.

Final Verdict:

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Book Review: Seducing the Demon

June 14, 2011 1 Comment

Title: Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life
Author: Erica Jong
Format: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Tarcher | Penguin Books
Pub Date: 2006; this edition: 2007
Read: Apr 2011
Source: BookCourt
Why: I’ve read some of Jong’s essays before, which I really enjoyed. This seemed like a kind of writing memoir from someone whose writing I enjoy so I figured, why not?
Fulfills Challenge? Yes.
Notes: N/A

Review/Thoughts:
While I can’t really speak for Erica Jong’s fiction, I do find her nonfiction to be snappy, quick, and insightful. I will say though, that given the subtitle of the book, Writing for My Life, I was expecting something a little more in the way of a writing memoir, which this isn’t really. It’s more personal and anecdotal. Writing does come into play, but not to the extent you would expect given that title. Not that I found the book disappointing, but I can imagine that some might. Jong’s writing is as engaging as it is fun, and Jong kind of just moves along quickly, darting from one episode to another and creating a kind of disjointed feel. Although her relationships do feature heavily, they don’t take up the whole book. Among other things, she discusses her daughter’s drug addiction and the death of her father. Above all, the book seems honest, and she doesn’t shy away from her fuck ups, including sleeping with Martha Stewart’s husband. All in all, I found this to be a quick, enjoyable read.

Final Verdict:

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Book Review: Reading Women

June 8, 2011 3 Comments

Title: Reading Women
Author: Stephanie Staal
Format: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Public Affairs
Pub Date: Feb 2011
Read: Mar 2011
Purchased: St. Mark’s Bookshop
Why: I can has feminism? No really, this seemed to bring together two of my great loves: feminism and reading. As soon as I heard about the book, I couldn’t pass it up.
Fulfills Mini-Challenge? Yes (2)
Notes: I have never actually taken a Feminism 101 course. I took several women’s studies classes in college, none of them foundational courses, so I’ve actually missed quite a lot of the major texts.

Review/Thoughts:
YES. I am finally getting to this review that I started months ago. Many apologies for the months-long delay. I don’t really know what happened. Thankfully I’m a lot more timely with my reviews now.

I have to say this book actually inspired me. I now have an itching desire to go back to school and study the great works of feminist literature in a classroom setting. As mentioned above, I never took a foundational course in Feminist Theory, so I’m a bit out of the loop with some of the major texts of feminism. This was a nice…primer, so to speak. I’ll probably just settle for reading the texts on my own.

Like Kim of Sophisticated Dorkiness, I doubt I was the target age group for this book, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, and I think it has a lot to offer in the way of analysis and introduction. Staal does a great job of incorporating her personal opinions about each text with classroom discussions and tying both back into her own life, then (as a 19 yr old college student at Barnard) and now (as a married mother, auditing classes at Barnard). She presents some of the challenges she’s faced as an adult that she wasn’t expecting when she was a college student, ready to take over the world, so to speak. That is certainly understandable, and never more obvious when Staal states,

Everyone asked my husband when he planned to go back to the office; only a few people asked me. Raising a child is vital work, but apparently it is still women’s work.

How does one balance one’s ideals and desire to work with raising a child? Staal is lucky in that there is another source of income (many households are single parent households), but I’m not unsympathetic toward her dilemma since I’ve seen the onslaught of complaints against those who choose to go back to work after having children — that complaint is never launched at men. The idea of a parent being there when the child comes home is all well and good except that the expectations always seems to fall on the mother. The more things change, the more things stay the same apparently, and Staal shows us some of that in her book.

The book isn’t perfect. It would be interesting to read a bit more about the intersection of feminism and ethnicity/race as it pertains to Staal’s own heritage (as far as I can tell Staal herself is at least part Asian American), but I can also understand that she might not have been able to tie her own heritage back to the actual works studied in her classes. Also, I haven’t read her other memoir about her parents’ breakup, so I don’t know much about her upbringing beyond what she talks about in this book, but it’s quite possible that her heritage did not dominate her upbringing in the same way that my own didn’t (what I mean is I’m Hispanic, Puerto Rican to be specific, but the reality is, I wasn’t brought up on a whole lot of Puerto Rican traditions, I know very little about the history, it wasn’t until I was older that I started to eat more Hispanic foods, I don’t listen to much Spanish music, I learned Spanish in a classroom not in my household (and I’ve lost most of it), etc. so sometimes I don’t feel “Hispanic enough” or even fully qualified to talk about Hispanic issues). So yes, back to Staal, while it would have been nice to include a bit about this, there might also be legitimate reasons why she chose not to, and I respect that. And I’d still recommend the book.

Final Verdict:

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