Things No One Tells You About Being Pregnant:
1. You bloat. You bloat like a dead whale during an August heat wave. Every pregnancy website and book you encounter will be chirping, "You don't gain an ounce during your first trimester and hiding the pregnancy will be the easiest thing you've ever done!"; meanwhile, back in reality, the Bloat means that by week eight none of your pants fit and everyone at work is wondering when they can start telling you to lay off the donuts. (Also, you are supposed to gain some weight during your first trimester. The nutritionist yelled at me for only gaining two pounds at the end of mine, which was adding insult to injury given that I was resorting to the fifteen-pounds-ago-pants at the back of the closet by then.)
2. If you think you have seen the most hostile and shaming stuff the internet has to offer, you haven't. I've had cancer; I thought I knew how scary and evil the internet could be. But I knew NOTHING. I was completely unprepared for otherwise normal-seeming and woman-friendly pregnancy sites to suddenly say things like, "some lucky women actually lose weight during their first trimesters if their morning sickness is bad enough," because vomit-related weight loss, at a time when you need to be as strong and healthy as possible, is still weight loss and therefore automatically awesome!! Visit a pregnancy website and get blindsided by pro-bulimia sentiments: do you love being a woman yet?
I was unprepared for the forums on which all participants swear to high heaven that they didn't show until twenty-four weeks and that anyone who does is eating 3,000 calories a day and will have a diabetic obese baby. I AM NOT EVEN EXAGGERATING. This sentiment is ALL OVER the internet. Even setting aside the Bloat, if somehow you have managed to gestate a fetus the size of a cantaloupe but in the process you haven't gained any weight and your uterus hasn't moved above your pelvis (which it does around week 13), I would guess that maybe you are, I dunno, an enormous liar.
It turned out that, despite being an intelligent and realistic person, and despite having watched many of my friends go through pregnancy, I completely bought into the Hollywood myth that a pregnant woman looks exactly as she did before for three months and then gets a tiny, perfect, obviously-baby-related belly. And the internet is full of women reinforcing this myth, aggressively and judgmentally, at each other. At fifteen weeks and absolutely huge, I made the terrible mistake of image-googling "fifteen weeks pregnant", and of course was slammed with pictures of whippet-hipped women who looked like they'd maybe had a large lunch. There were tears. It was awful.
(Every pregnancy website and book will attempt to console you for your tragic weight gain [even if they think it shouldn't arrive until month six or whatever] by pointing out, over and OVER, that you have giant boobs now and are therefore womanly. You will see the phrase "your new womanly curves" approximately 400,000 times in your pregnancy reading. Apparently all these sites and books believe it is impossible for a woman to have already had large boobs, or to have been perfectly womanly without them. My "new womanly curves" consisted of my waist disappearing, so that I looked like a potato. I could never decide which was worse: being told that I shouldn't be gaining any weight or being told that my weight gain should make me feel sexy. Either way, the implication was that I was doing something wrong by feeling dumpy.)
This whole fat-shaming where-is-your-self-control bullshit is especially evil given that it's being directed at women who will be hunched over a toilet dry-heaving if they don't put food in their bodies far more frequently than they used to: having an empty stomach makes the nausea terrible. On very bad days, I had to set my alarm to wake me up every three hours overnight for preemptive eating, rather than be woken by my stomach trying to turn itself inside out. Of course, the internet (and the nutritionist I visited) would have it that even at vomit o'clock a.m. I should be taking care to eat only the most healthful and varied of foods. I went through a five-week period when literally anything other than saltines and egg noodles came immediately back up, and if I so much as looked at lists of "healthy pregnancy snacks", with their raw vegetables and yogurt, I would have to sit very quietly until the urge to vomit passed. When, out of self-loathing, I forced myself to eat raw carrots before I sensed that my body was ready for them, I threw up for the next sixteen hours. What I was finally able to keep down: a grilled cheese sandwich. Diabetic obese baby, here I come!
As if this body-policing and -shaming wasn't enough, I was trying desperately to hide it at work, long past the point at which I was fooling anyone. I was so excited to be pregnant. I was also horribly afraid that something would go wrong, and if on top of something going wrong I had to explain to 200 people, some of whom have Strong Opinions, that I wasn't pregnant anymore... HELL, NO. At one point I decided that if word got out I was pregnant and then I didn't carry to term, I would quit my job and move to Nova Scotia. I'm not kidding; that would be far preferable to hearing, daily, "It's because you walked your dogs," or "It's because you ate that thing I saw you eating the other day". (This plan is still very much in effect, by the way.) So, while the internet was busy telling me that I shouldn't see any difference in my body, I was struggling with the basic fact that when you start out short and with a tiny waist, being four months pregnant is not something you can hide. It made me have flashbacks to high school, when my outfits of choice involved enormous t-shirts because I believed my body was so appalling that the only thing to do with it was swathe it in a tent and pray nobody looked at me.
All this resulted in me hating the changes in my body, when I wanted to be excited about them. It was an awful, awful feeling.
3. The Better Mother Than You madness starts with prenatal appointments. There will be tons of women on the internet claiming that they got care weeks before you did, in a "I am taking better care of my baby than you and/or my doctors have agreed that my pregnancy is just the most important one ever" competition. When I called my medical center the same day that I peed on the stick, they said they don't even consider a woman pregnant until eight weeks, so that's when my first appointment would be. Then I went on-line and found women swearing that by week six they'd already had an ultrasound. This is ridiculous and should be ignored. It's only true in cases where the woman was already under medical care when she got pregnant (usually because there were fertility treatments involved) and/or has medical issues which mean the pregnancy is very high-risk.
The less medical intervention required during your pregnancy, the better, but the internet competition to have the most and earliest screenings and appointments is fierce. It's a means of feeling important, like I said: if you are the person in the OB waiting room to whom the most attention is being paid, then you and your fetus are truly special. I fell victim to this at first, being a competitive person, and actually got a little huffy at how casual and cheerful everyone was around my OB appointments. Then, at my first ultrasound (not until twelve weeks, which is perfectly normal) I had to wait half an hour for the doctor to come in because all the other ultrasounds that day were showing problems and he was running way behind. He finally came in, used the words "beautiful" and "perfect", told me to start saving for college, and was gone in ninety seconds, back to some poor woman who had just gotten bad news. I realized then that I was being incredibly stupid.
(It's also worth noting that I live in a state with progressive abortion laws. Women who are not so fortunate need medical information earlier, because they have less time in which to make a decision. In the year 2013, there are women who have to have conversations with their doctors about being sent across state lines should they be among those getting bad news at their ultrasounds or from their tests. In the year 2013. Just saying.)
4. The "pregnancy glow" is a giant myth, unless you were already the kind of woman who hasn't had a visible pore since she was seventeen. A massive overload of hormones is going to do things to your complexion, but they are not going to be kind things. The one mercy the internet offered me was that this is universally agreed upon. It's considered okay to admit to anything that isn't weight gain, and so at least I didn't have to think I was alone in my experience of Zit Fest 2013. This was scant comfort, but I took what I could get.
5. No one agrees on when the second trimester starts. It's held out to you as the holy grail. It's when your risk of miscarriage plummets and you stop feeling sick and you can tell people, but NO ONE agrees on when it starts. Some say week 12; some week 13; some week 14. I got all excited when I thought I'd made it; and then I encountered all these sites saying, "You're in the last week of the first trimester; hang in there!" and I was like, "Oh joy, another week of being convinced I'm going to miscarry any second." (It turns out that the part about your sickness ceasing is also a lie.)
To add to this joy, my first ultrasound was at a place other than my OB's office. The ultrasound estimated that I was six days further along than we'd thought, but my OB's office said that until they did an ultrasound, they would continue counting from my LMP. Between that and the above nonsense, for an ENTIRE MONTH I didn't know which trimester I was in. And I DO NOT DEAL WELL WITH UNCERTAINTY.
6. If you bring a peanut butter sandwich to work for lunch, you will eat it before 10 a.m.
7. They have dropped the "Advanced Maternal Age" designation from the chart of women over 34. I had been warned about that designation, and was ready for it, but instead I was handed a piece of paper with - wait for it - "Elderly Primigravida" written on it, and I made an amazing noise. That's right, ladies: on your 35th birthday you are medically considered "elderly". As a 37-year-old, I'm surprised my chart doesn't just say "Crone" or make references to Sarah and Abraham.
8. There will be a whole 'nother post about this, but visiting your oncologist while pregnant is the most terrifying exercise in "be careful what you wish for" imaginable. All my doctors have been casual and cheerful about the pregnancy. Not a one of them has been either of those things about me, in terms of potential cancer recurrence (except, ironically, the internet, which is sure I'll be fine). But more about that later.
9. Everything about it is surreal. But I'm really, really happy and excited.
10. The current cultural assumption that leggings are pants gets pushed even harder at you. And it's tempting. It's tempting as heck. Will I be able to resist? Watch this space!
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Monday, November 11, 2013
the triumph of hope over experience
Yesterday Berowne and I got married, in a tiny ceremony in the backyard. The little group of friends and family participating worked like stevedores for a few days on our behalf: a tent had to be raised and lowered, tables and chairs arranged, food cooked, dishes washed, dogs wrangled, pictures taken, and last-minute texts reading WE ARE OUT OF COFFEE FILTERS responded to. Everyone was unflaggingly cheerful and generous.
It was all quite perfect. The weather cooperated - a tiny bit of rain when the cake came out, but we just hustled it into the tent -, the impromptu speeches during the Quaker-style service were hilarious and touching, and the dogs, who were the obvious stars of the day, behaved impeccably.
I don't regret my first wedding at all. I don't regret my first marriage at all, which I know may surprise those of you who remember the early, bitter days of this blog. The marriage's dissolution was sad and rough, but that is the nature of the beast. Without that marriage I wouldn't live in this adorable little island house, and I wouldn't have the world's best dogs, and I wouldn't have some of the wonderful friends and family that I have. I will always think of myself as having two sets of in-laws, and I'm very lucky in that regard.
And I don't regret that I had the fancy chapel wedding, all about the dress and the hair and the makeup and the pictures. It was an excellent party, with an excellent group of people. But I didn't need to do it again, and thankfully Berowne felt the same way. Hence the tiny backyard wedding with a friend officiating and people just speaking up during the service until Berowne looked at me and said, "I think we're married now," and then we broke out the posole and frito pie. I wore my mother's handmade cocktail-length wedding dress. A friend did my eyeshadow. My hair did its own thing. Sometime in the afternoon I ran upstairs and changed. It was exactly what I wanted.
Today we're off work; Berowne will be running down to his old place to return the tables and chairs to his landlord (who usually rents them for weddings but let us use them free of charge, because, like I said, people have been awesome to us) and pick up some more stuff. I have about sixteen loads of laundry to do and think the dogs deserve some new toys, so eventually I too will be getting out of my pajamas and sallying forth. And tomorrow our quiet domestic routine kicks in again.
But for now, one more cup of coffee at the kitchen table, looking at the autumn light on the yard and feeling like everything in my life is turning out just right. I were but little happy, if I could say how much.
It was all quite perfect. The weather cooperated - a tiny bit of rain when the cake came out, but we just hustled it into the tent -, the impromptu speeches during the Quaker-style service were hilarious and touching, and the dogs, who were the obvious stars of the day, behaved impeccably.
I don't regret my first wedding at all. I don't regret my first marriage at all, which I know may surprise those of you who remember the early, bitter days of this blog. The marriage's dissolution was sad and rough, but that is the nature of the beast. Without that marriage I wouldn't live in this adorable little island house, and I wouldn't have the world's best dogs, and I wouldn't have some of the wonderful friends and family that I have. I will always think of myself as having two sets of in-laws, and I'm very lucky in that regard.
And I don't regret that I had the fancy chapel wedding, all about the dress and the hair and the makeup and the pictures. It was an excellent party, with an excellent group of people. But I didn't need to do it again, and thankfully Berowne felt the same way. Hence the tiny backyard wedding with a friend officiating and people just speaking up during the service until Berowne looked at me and said, "I think we're married now," and then we broke out the posole and frito pie. I wore my mother's handmade cocktail-length wedding dress. A friend did my eyeshadow. My hair did its own thing. Sometime in the afternoon I ran upstairs and changed. It was exactly what I wanted.
Today we're off work; Berowne will be running down to his old place to return the tables and chairs to his landlord (who usually rents them for weddings but let us use them free of charge, because, like I said, people have been awesome to us) and pick up some more stuff. I have about sixteen loads of laundry to do and think the dogs deserve some new toys, so eventually I too will be getting out of my pajamas and sallying forth. And tomorrow our quiet domestic routine kicks in again.
But for now, one more cup of coffee at the kitchen table, looking at the autumn light on the yard and feeling like everything in my life is turning out just right. I were but little happy, if I could say how much.
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
mini-reviews
Good heavens, I'm behind on this. Life is very busy! In good ways!
Levels of Life, by Julian Barnes. A very short little piece about nineteenth-century ballooning and Barnes grieving his wife. I do love his voice.
The Likeness, by Tana French. The sort-of sequel to In the Woods, though you could read it on its own. The only way I can describe this book is to say it's exactly what would happen if The Secret History were an Irish police procedural, complete with the fact that the supposedly magnetic and irresistible student characters are actually extraordinarily obnoxious. If you liked The Secret History, you would like this; and even if, like me, you didn't, you might find it compelling as hell. I did.
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood, by Alexandra Fuller. Fuller's memoir about growing up in Africa with crazy-racist, crazy-colonialist, crazy-drunk, just plain crazy parents. Immensely disturbing and fairly hard to put down.
The Clockwork Scarab: A Stoker & Holmes Novel, by Colleen Gleason. Oh dear. Gleason's premise and the set-up for a series is that, in a steampunk London, Bram Stoker's sister and Sherlock Holmes' niece fight supernatural crime. I find the initial decision to use one historical family and one fictional one questionable at best (why not give Conan Doyle a niece? he and Bram Stoker knew each other), and it goes downhill from there. Neither heroine is at all likable, and Gleason's conception of steampunk is that everything is mechanized, down to umbrella-stands and sugar spoons, just because. And early on we are given the backstory that Miss Stoker's previous mentor, who has mysteriously disappeared, was named Siri. What on earth, you may think. No one has ever been named Siri except... and then the time-traveler from the present day appears, for no reason, and you get one guess as to what kind of cell phone he's toting with him. It's all pretty much that forced. Nothing is resolved, because we're supposed to want the sequels, and every male character under thirty is a potential love interest for at least one of our heroines, so that the constant "my knees weakened under my skirts" reactions to policemen / noblemen / pickpockets / time travelers get REALLY old.
The House at Sea's End, by Elly Griffiths. The third in the Ruth Galloway series. The plots, which all require an archaeologist to get involved in, and menaced by, murder cases, are starting to get a bit absurd, but I am pleased to report that our heroine having given birth has made her much more like she was before getting pregnant. She's interesting again! And the struggles of single motherhood struck me as realistic, unlike the previous book's "I am ten weeks pregnant and therefore HAVE NO IDENTITY BUT MOTHER," stuff.
Tombstone Courage, by J.A. Jance. Mystery set in Arizona. Pretty generic but a decent afternoon's distraction.
Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison, by Piper Kerman. I haven't seen the series, but I thought I'd check out the book. It's not bad, though not particularly memorable.
Levels of Life, by Julian Barnes. A very short little piece about nineteenth-century ballooning and Barnes grieving his wife. I do love his voice.
The Likeness, by Tana French. The sort-of sequel to In the Woods, though you could read it on its own. The only way I can describe this book is to say it's exactly what would happen if The Secret History were an Irish police procedural, complete with the fact that the supposedly magnetic and irresistible student characters are actually extraordinarily obnoxious. If you liked The Secret History, you would like this; and even if, like me, you didn't, you might find it compelling as hell. I did.
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood, by Alexandra Fuller. Fuller's memoir about growing up in Africa with crazy-racist, crazy-colonialist, crazy-drunk, just plain crazy parents. Immensely disturbing and fairly hard to put down.
The Clockwork Scarab: A Stoker & Holmes Novel, by Colleen Gleason. Oh dear. Gleason's premise and the set-up for a series is that, in a steampunk London, Bram Stoker's sister and Sherlock Holmes' niece fight supernatural crime. I find the initial decision to use one historical family and one fictional one questionable at best (why not give Conan Doyle a niece? he and Bram Stoker knew each other), and it goes downhill from there. Neither heroine is at all likable, and Gleason's conception of steampunk is that everything is mechanized, down to umbrella-stands and sugar spoons, just because. And early on we are given the backstory that Miss Stoker's previous mentor, who has mysteriously disappeared, was named Siri. What on earth, you may think. No one has ever been named Siri except... and then the time-traveler from the present day appears, for no reason, and you get one guess as to what kind of cell phone he's toting with him. It's all pretty much that forced. Nothing is resolved, because we're supposed to want the sequels, and every male character under thirty is a potential love interest for at least one of our heroines, so that the constant "my knees weakened under my skirts" reactions to policemen / noblemen / pickpockets / time travelers get REALLY old.
The House at Sea's End, by Elly Griffiths. The third in the Ruth Galloway series. The plots, which all require an archaeologist to get involved in, and menaced by, murder cases, are starting to get a bit absurd, but I am pleased to report that our heroine having given birth has made her much more like she was before getting pregnant. She's interesting again! And the struggles of single motherhood struck me as realistic, unlike the previous book's "I am ten weeks pregnant and therefore HAVE NO IDENTITY BUT MOTHER," stuff.
Tombstone Courage, by J.A. Jance. Mystery set in Arizona. Pretty generic but a decent afternoon's distraction.
Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison, by Piper Kerman. I haven't seen the series, but I thought I'd check out the book. It's not bad, though not particularly memorable.
Monday, October 21, 2013
lots of books, all crammed in
The reading, of late:
Death of Riley, by Rhys Bowen. Slight mystery set in nineteenth-century New York. It was okay; nothing memorable.
Armadale, by Wilkie Collins. Oh, Wilkie. It's no Woman in White, but it's still delicious. There is actually a chapter entitled "The Plot Thickens" (ironically, that particular chapter caused very little to thicken). It starts very, very slowly, but once the villainess showed up I couldn't put it down. She is wonderful. Melodrama! Coincidence! Disasters at sea! Foreboding dreams! A kick-ass female character! Fabulous stuff.
Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge, by Eleanor Herman. A book about royal mistresses through history. It contained some interesting and juicy stuff, but Herman came across as so incredibly judgy about sex that the book's topic seemed a virtually nonsensical one for her to choose. (She also includes a postscript about how her second marriage has worked where her first didn't because of what she learned from royal mistresses: always put the man and his interests first, basically, and never show him you're having a bad day. Gaaaaagh.)
A Serpent's Tooth, by Craig Johnson. A solid entry in his Walt Longmire series, although the instant the male characters start remarking of a female character, "Have you noticed that she's a bit emotional lately?" I rolled my eyes back into my head. I will have you know, writers, that I have been female for almost thirty-seven years, and a good majority of that time I have been emotional as hell while also, amazingly, not being pregnant. A female character could be emotional because she has family concerns, or financial worries, or her job is preoccupying her, or for any of the reasons that a male character might not quite be himself either. But noooo, it's always that she got knocked up. (I refuse to consider that a spoiler, because the first time someone mentions it is roughly ten pages in, and if you have read any books before it's completely obvious what Johnson's point is.)
Pym, by Mat Johnson. This book is insane. And insanely good. The premise is that a fired English professor discovers a manuscript proving the historical veracity of Edgar Allen Poe's Narrative of Gordon Pym (which is recapped deftly, so you don't have to have read it), and puts together an all African-American crew to travel to Antarctica and look for the locations Poe describes. Johnson is an amazing and hilarious writer, and his riffs on literature and being black in America were my favorite part of the book. The plot is utterly deranged, although never less than engrossing. I tore through this and would highly recommend it, even though a dog disappears with no explanation (given its potential fates, I was frankly relieved to be spared detail).
The Fallen, by Jessy Mackenzie. Mystery set in South Africa. Should have had potential but was just dull and over-long.
Zelda: A Biography, by Nancy Milford. I knew very little about Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald prior to reading this, other than that they seemed like exhausting people to be around. This book certainly reinforced that, but in a compassionate way. They were so, so young, after all. The last third dragged, given that it was just endless excerpts from Zelda's novel Save Me the Waltz, which was kind of a hot mess, but I found the book interesting overall.
Mind's Eye, by Hakan Nesser. Scandinavian mystery. So dark and cold. I don't feel the urge to continue with the series.
Writers Between the Covers: The Scandalous Romantic Lives of Legendary Literary Casanovas, Coquettes, and Cads, by Joni Rendon. My Early Reviewers book, and rather fun. Short, dishy little chapters, perfect for bathroom reading. From the cover and the blurb, it seemed like it was all going to be about ladies' men, but equal time is given to homosexual and bisexual writers, which I appreciated.
Americana: Dispatches from the New Frontier, by Hampton Sides. Essays from a writer I love about the craziest aspects of America. Some are from the early 1990's and haven't aged as well as one would like, but Sides' writing is never anything but great. The essay about Santa Fe, where he lives, had me on the verge of packing the car and heading west; and the last section, with three essays about 9/11 and the Iraq war, was wrenching. I cried.
So what have I been doing lately? Other than reading my butt off, clearly. Well, Berowne is almost completely moved in, which is utterly wonderful. I have been dealing with anniversary-emotions: October 17 was the day Claudio left, and even though it's been three years and it was 100% for the best, every late October I get smacked with a big ol' dose of You Are Not Good Enough and there are a lot of ranting journal entries and some crying. (I believe I actually said, and meant, "Anyone else would have done everything better than I have!" to Berowne, who was kind enough to not laugh. Much.)
But things are good. The dogs are happy and getting more walks; I am being fed by a ridiculously good cook; the dryer and the porch railing are fixed. In three weeks I get married again, which is madness and also just about the easiest decision I ever made. No complaints around here.
Death of Riley, by Rhys Bowen. Slight mystery set in nineteenth-century New York. It was okay; nothing memorable.
Armadale, by Wilkie Collins. Oh, Wilkie. It's no Woman in White, but it's still delicious. There is actually a chapter entitled "The Plot Thickens" (ironically, that particular chapter caused very little to thicken). It starts very, very slowly, but once the villainess showed up I couldn't put it down. She is wonderful. Melodrama! Coincidence! Disasters at sea! Foreboding dreams! A kick-ass female character! Fabulous stuff.
Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge, by Eleanor Herman. A book about royal mistresses through history. It contained some interesting and juicy stuff, but Herman came across as so incredibly judgy about sex that the book's topic seemed a virtually nonsensical one for her to choose. (She also includes a postscript about how her second marriage has worked where her first didn't because of what she learned from royal mistresses: always put the man and his interests first, basically, and never show him you're having a bad day. Gaaaaagh.)
A Serpent's Tooth, by Craig Johnson. A solid entry in his Walt Longmire series, although the instant the male characters start remarking of a female character, "Have you noticed that she's a bit emotional lately?" I rolled my eyes back into my head. I will have you know, writers, that I have been female for almost thirty-seven years, and a good majority of that time I have been emotional as hell while also, amazingly, not being pregnant. A female character could be emotional because she has family concerns, or financial worries, or her job is preoccupying her, or for any of the reasons that a male character might not quite be himself either. But noooo, it's always that she got knocked up. (I refuse to consider that a spoiler, because the first time someone mentions it is roughly ten pages in, and if you have read any books before it's completely obvious what Johnson's point is.)
Pym, by Mat Johnson. This book is insane. And insanely good. The premise is that a fired English professor discovers a manuscript proving the historical veracity of Edgar Allen Poe's Narrative of Gordon Pym (which is recapped deftly, so you don't have to have read it), and puts together an all African-American crew to travel to Antarctica and look for the locations Poe describes. Johnson is an amazing and hilarious writer, and his riffs on literature and being black in America were my favorite part of the book. The plot is utterly deranged, although never less than engrossing. I tore through this and would highly recommend it, even though a dog disappears with no explanation (given its potential fates, I was frankly relieved to be spared detail).
The Fallen, by Jessy Mackenzie. Mystery set in South Africa. Should have had potential but was just dull and over-long.
Zelda: A Biography, by Nancy Milford. I knew very little about Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald prior to reading this, other than that they seemed like exhausting people to be around. This book certainly reinforced that, but in a compassionate way. They were so, so young, after all. The last third dragged, given that it was just endless excerpts from Zelda's novel Save Me the Waltz, which was kind of a hot mess, but I found the book interesting overall.
Mind's Eye, by Hakan Nesser. Scandinavian mystery. So dark and cold. I don't feel the urge to continue with the series.
Writers Between the Covers: The Scandalous Romantic Lives of Legendary Literary Casanovas, Coquettes, and Cads, by Joni Rendon. My Early Reviewers book, and rather fun. Short, dishy little chapters, perfect for bathroom reading. From the cover and the blurb, it seemed like it was all going to be about ladies' men, but equal time is given to homosexual and bisexual writers, which I appreciated.
Americana: Dispatches from the New Frontier, by Hampton Sides. Essays from a writer I love about the craziest aspects of America. Some are from the early 1990's and haven't aged as well as one would like, but Sides' writing is never anything but great. The essay about Santa Fe, where he lives, had me on the verge of packing the car and heading west; and the last section, with three essays about 9/11 and the Iraq war, was wrenching. I cried.
So what have I been doing lately? Other than reading my butt off, clearly. Well, Berowne is almost completely moved in, which is utterly wonderful. I have been dealing with anniversary-emotions: October 17 was the day Claudio left, and even though it's been three years and it was 100% for the best, every late October I get smacked with a big ol' dose of You Are Not Good Enough and there are a lot of ranting journal entries and some crying. (I believe I actually said, and meant, "Anyone else would have done everything better than I have!" to Berowne, who was kind enough to not laugh. Much.)
But things are good. The dogs are happy and getting more walks; I am being fed by a ridiculously good cook; the dryer and the porch railing are fixed. In three weeks I get married again, which is madness and also just about the easiest decision I ever made. No complaints around here.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
mysteries, book clubs, insects
There is nothing new going on in my life which is fit for blogging, so this post will just be the books.
I've read lately:
A Death in the Small Hours, by Charles Finch. This was my Early Reviewers book. I have read two previous entries in Finch's series, which follows a wealthy Victorian gentleman solving crimes in his spare time. In both the other two I was irritated by how brief and obvious the crime-solving part was. After reading a third, I think I've realized that the crimes aren't the point. The "mystery" in this one was also brief and obvious, and concluded when there were still about fifty pages left to go, which made me think that the conclusion would turn out to be a red herring, but it didn't. Finch is more interested in the scene-setting and the rhythms of his characters' daily lives, and while he's not quite good enough yet at creating characters sufficiently fascinating for this to work, he's getting there. I didn't at all mind how fluffy this book felt.
The Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler. It's... not all that much about Jane Austen. And the women in it all have their lives orbit around men (one is a lesbian but her relationships didn't ring true to me; they were just heterosexual relationships with the pronouns switched, I felt). The one who is supposedly obsessed with her dogs doesn't talk nearly enough about said dogs and gets paired off, in strained fashion, with a dude by the end (they all get paired off, which I know is a conscious nod to Austen but which also has a lot of them going back to partners who treated them abominably, and that's not cool). I can see what Fowler was trying to do, and why this book was a best-seller, but... meh. I got initially excited by Crazy Dog Lady, but when it becomes clear that her life is empty without a man and she must stop wearing clothes covered in dog hair so that she will be loved, I barfed in my mouth a little.
The Death of a Joyce Scholar, by Bartholomew Gill. Mystery set in Ireland. It was very intelligently written, for sure, but I didn't feel that fascination with the detective hero/heroine which will keep me reading a mystery series.
The Janus Stone, by Elly Griffiths. Definitely a weaker sequel to The Crossing Places. Our heroine is knocked up and has become All Maternal Instincts All The Time, complete with no conflicted feelings whatsoever about suddenly becoming a single mother at age forty. (Also there's that inevitable moment where she's in danger and she feels the baby move and knows she must survive! for the baby's sake!!, which chafes my britches anyway [women: not allowed a survival drive unless it's for someone else's benefit!] and in this case happens when she's about ten weeks along, at which point feeling the embryo [it's not even a fetus yet] move is not a thing.) And there are the insertions of diary entries / thoughts from the killer, which I just dislike as a stylistic choice (I blame Val McDermid for starting that). But all that complaining aside, I like Griffiths' writing and she did at least keep the heroine passionate about her line of work. I'm sure I'll read the third, though I'm wary about how Ruth will handle motherhood.
Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon's Army & Other Diabolical Insects, by Amy Stewart. Don't read this if you have a tender tummy or are feeling at all sick. Just don't.
Marion Fay, by Anthony Trollope. What an incredibly odd book. The title character develops consumption solely to prove a point, as far as I can tell. It wasn't nearly as charming as most Trollope, though it had some of his wit.
I've read lately:
A Death in the Small Hours, by Charles Finch. This was my Early Reviewers book. I have read two previous entries in Finch's series, which follows a wealthy Victorian gentleman solving crimes in his spare time. In both the other two I was irritated by how brief and obvious the crime-solving part was. After reading a third, I think I've realized that the crimes aren't the point. The "mystery" in this one was also brief and obvious, and concluded when there were still about fifty pages left to go, which made me think that the conclusion would turn out to be a red herring, but it didn't. Finch is more interested in the scene-setting and the rhythms of his characters' daily lives, and while he's not quite good enough yet at creating characters sufficiently fascinating for this to work, he's getting there. I didn't at all mind how fluffy this book felt.
The Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler. It's... not all that much about Jane Austen. And the women in it all have their lives orbit around men (one is a lesbian but her relationships didn't ring true to me; they were just heterosexual relationships with the pronouns switched, I felt). The one who is supposedly obsessed with her dogs doesn't talk nearly enough about said dogs and gets paired off, in strained fashion, with a dude by the end (they all get paired off, which I know is a conscious nod to Austen but which also has a lot of them going back to partners who treated them abominably, and that's not cool). I can see what Fowler was trying to do, and why this book was a best-seller, but... meh. I got initially excited by Crazy Dog Lady, but when it becomes clear that her life is empty without a man and she must stop wearing clothes covered in dog hair so that she will be loved, I barfed in my mouth a little.
The Death of a Joyce Scholar, by Bartholomew Gill. Mystery set in Ireland. It was very intelligently written, for sure, but I didn't feel that fascination with the detective hero/heroine which will keep me reading a mystery series.
The Janus Stone, by Elly Griffiths. Definitely a weaker sequel to The Crossing Places. Our heroine is knocked up and has become All Maternal Instincts All The Time, complete with no conflicted feelings whatsoever about suddenly becoming a single mother at age forty. (Also there's that inevitable moment where she's in danger and she feels the baby move and knows she must survive! for the baby's sake!!, which chafes my britches anyway [women: not allowed a survival drive unless it's for someone else's benefit!] and in this case happens when she's about ten weeks along, at which point feeling the embryo [it's not even a fetus yet] move is not a thing.) And there are the insertions of diary entries / thoughts from the killer, which I just dislike as a stylistic choice (I blame Val McDermid for starting that). But all that complaining aside, I like Griffiths' writing and she did at least keep the heroine passionate about her line of work. I'm sure I'll read the third, though I'm wary about how Ruth will handle motherhood.
Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon's Army & Other Diabolical Insects, by Amy Stewart. Don't read this if you have a tender tummy or are feeling at all sick. Just don't.
Marion Fay, by Anthony Trollope. What an incredibly odd book. The title character develops consumption solely to prove a point, as far as I can tell. It wasn't nearly as charming as most Trollope, though it had some of his wit.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
let me sum up
Oh my, I have been very remiss in updating this to reflect my reading. I shall have to be brief:
Agorafabulous!: Dispatches from My Bedroom, by Sara Benincasa. A quick little entry in the "I had a nervous breakdown" memoir genre. Mildly amusing, mildly perceptive, with a rushed "I'm all better now!" ending.
Last Night's Scandal, by Loretta Chase. Chase takes the child characters from a previous romance novel and has them all grown up and falling in love. They're not as interesting as adults as they were as children, and Chase, whose previous novels are all set in Regency times, cannot stop talking about how ridiculous the fashions of the 1830's are. True, but it doesn't make it easy to believe in the heroine's unstoppable beauty, when on every page we're reminded how stupid her clothes are. And the story kind of dragged.
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin. Sort of a mystery - the hero is a constable and there's a murder - but mostly a novel about race relations and poverty in a tiny Mississippi town. Very rough stuff but really, really well written and I was utterly captivated.
North and South, by Elisabeth Gaskell. When it is autumn, a not-so-young woman's thoughts turn to fluffy nineteenth-century literature she has not previously read. I have a ton of Trollope on deck, too.
Kiss of Steel and Heart of Iron, by Bec McMaster. More steampunk vampire / werewolf romance fiction, which is a much more prevalent genre than I ever realized until I started rummaging around in it. There's tons of it! The queen, as far as I am concerned, is Gail Carringer, whose books are just hysterically funny on top of being well-crafted. But McMaster is also really good. Her world-building is excellent and I was able to follow the rules and logic of that world with hardly any info-dumping on her part. There is a fair amount of "my woman" stuff going on, but, well, they're romance novels. I knew what I was getting into.
Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind, by David Quammen. Quammen studies the Asian lion, the Australian crocodile, the Amur tiger, and the Romanian bear as he travels around the world examining man's relationship to large predators. It's a good and interesting (and very sad, considering how we are exterminating these predators) book, but mostly it made me want to re-read Vaillant's The Tiger.
Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust, by Richard Rhodes. Aeeiiee. Rhodes details both the mass killings which led up to the Final Solution and the psychology behind convincing groups of men to engage in said killings. It's a really brutal read, as you can imagine, but the discussions of inciting mass violence and how people react to that were interesting enough that this book was more than just a recitation of horror after horror, though it had that element as well. (Reading about Babi Yar made me try to like Shostakovitch again, but that is just never going to happen.)
Disaster at Sea!, by Edward Rowe Snow. This is three unintentionally hilarious volumes of marine disaster and "mysteries of New England" in one. It's... not well written. Snow, I gather, was all about quantity, cranking out three or four books a year his entire adult life. He never uses a period where an exclamation point will do, and he goes on digressions within a five-page story which leaves the reader completely confused. But I gleaned some fun from reading about places I know, and shipwrecks and cannibalism are always my cup of tea.
In life-news: Berowne is moving his stuff in a little bit at a time, and I am clearing away as much of my stuff as I can, although this means - gulp - getting rid of some books. Sacrifices must be made! Particularly when they are books I didn't like but still held onto for some reason.
Speaking of disaster at sea, I went on a sailboat with Berowne and some friends a few weeks back. I got terribly seasick and the outboard motor not only died but tried to fling itself into the ocean on the way back, so the other gentleman aboard had to hold it on while Berowne sailed us back to the mooring, which you're not supposed to do because it's a narrow channel with lots of other boats in it and sailing doesn't give you enough control over your direction. Unless you are a totally bad-ass sailor with a calm and collected assistant (not me; I was busy not throwing up). The boat and all aboard arrived safely. Of course, I still am pretty sure the "it's designed not to capsize" statement was a total lie, and so those moments when the boat was traveling more or less sideways were a little alarming for this landlubber. As I said later, I do know how to swim but I was not going to be thrilled if I had to.
Autumn is here! I am thrilled about that. Bingley has only eaten a little bit of Berowne's couch! The two of them are working out some pack-level issues. He's got a bit of an attitude, that brindle dog of mine, possibly because he was such an easy puppy that I never had to really establish dominance the way I did with the traumatized adult Darcy. But we'll work it all out. Life is pretty good.
Agorafabulous!: Dispatches from My Bedroom, by Sara Benincasa. A quick little entry in the "I had a nervous breakdown" memoir genre. Mildly amusing, mildly perceptive, with a rushed "I'm all better now!" ending.
Last Night's Scandal, by Loretta Chase. Chase takes the child characters from a previous romance novel and has them all grown up and falling in love. They're not as interesting as adults as they were as children, and Chase, whose previous novels are all set in Regency times, cannot stop talking about how ridiculous the fashions of the 1830's are. True, but it doesn't make it easy to believe in the heroine's unstoppable beauty, when on every page we're reminded how stupid her clothes are. And the story kind of dragged.
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin. Sort of a mystery - the hero is a constable and there's a murder - but mostly a novel about race relations and poverty in a tiny Mississippi town. Very rough stuff but really, really well written and I was utterly captivated.
North and South, by Elisabeth Gaskell. When it is autumn, a not-so-young woman's thoughts turn to fluffy nineteenth-century literature she has not previously read. I have a ton of Trollope on deck, too.
Kiss of Steel and Heart of Iron, by Bec McMaster. More steampunk vampire / werewolf romance fiction, which is a much more prevalent genre than I ever realized until I started rummaging around in it. There's tons of it! The queen, as far as I am concerned, is Gail Carringer, whose books are just hysterically funny on top of being well-crafted. But McMaster is also really good. Her world-building is excellent and I was able to follow the rules and logic of that world with hardly any info-dumping on her part. There is a fair amount of "my woman" stuff going on, but, well, they're romance novels. I knew what I was getting into.
Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind, by David Quammen. Quammen studies the Asian lion, the Australian crocodile, the Amur tiger, and the Romanian bear as he travels around the world examining man's relationship to large predators. It's a good and interesting (and very sad, considering how we are exterminating these predators) book, but mostly it made me want to re-read Vaillant's The Tiger.
Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust, by Richard Rhodes. Aeeiiee. Rhodes details both the mass killings which led up to the Final Solution and the psychology behind convincing groups of men to engage in said killings. It's a really brutal read, as you can imagine, but the discussions of inciting mass violence and how people react to that were interesting enough that this book was more than just a recitation of horror after horror, though it had that element as well. (Reading about Babi Yar made me try to like Shostakovitch again, but that is just never going to happen.)
Disaster at Sea!, by Edward Rowe Snow. This is three unintentionally hilarious volumes of marine disaster and "mysteries of New England" in one. It's... not well written. Snow, I gather, was all about quantity, cranking out three or four books a year his entire adult life. He never uses a period where an exclamation point will do, and he goes on digressions within a five-page story which leaves the reader completely confused. But I gleaned some fun from reading about places I know, and shipwrecks and cannibalism are always my cup of tea.
In life-news: Berowne is moving his stuff in a little bit at a time, and I am clearing away as much of my stuff as I can, although this means - gulp - getting rid of some books. Sacrifices must be made! Particularly when they are books I didn't like but still held onto for some reason.
Speaking of disaster at sea, I went on a sailboat with Berowne and some friends a few weeks back. I got terribly seasick and the outboard motor not only died but tried to fling itself into the ocean on the way back, so the other gentleman aboard had to hold it on while Berowne sailed us back to the mooring, which you're not supposed to do because it's a narrow channel with lots of other boats in it and sailing doesn't give you enough control over your direction. Unless you are a totally bad-ass sailor with a calm and collected assistant (not me; I was busy not throwing up). The boat and all aboard arrived safely. Of course, I still am pretty sure the "it's designed not to capsize" statement was a total lie, and so those moments when the boat was traveling more or less sideways were a little alarming for this landlubber. As I said later, I do know how to swim but I was not going to be thrilled if I had to.
Autumn is here! I am thrilled about that. Bingley has only eaten a little bit of Berowne's couch! The two of them are working out some pack-level issues. He's got a bit of an attitude, that brindle dog of mine, possibly because he was such an easy puppy that I never had to really establish dominance the way I did with the traumatized adult Darcy. But we'll work it all out. Life is pretty good.
Friday, September 20, 2013
flappers, Nazis, walking scenes, and free love for everyone!
I am sorry for the delay! I have been reading a long irritating book (much more below) and also re-reading the entire No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, because it was a beautiful early fall weekend and I had lots of snacks, so what else are you going to do?
The new books I did read:
The Diviners, by Libba Bray. I do love Bray. This book was set in 1920's New York and features a bunch of young people, all of whom have special powers, getting gradually drawn together by the hunt for a serial killer. By the end they are nearly all assembled for what will clearly be Adventuresome Sequels, for which I am excited. The 20's slang got a little out of control, and Bray really pushed the "almost-awful but always-interesting heroine" shtick too far - at the beginning I disliked the heroine a lot - but I tore through this and had a great time.
The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, by Robert M. Edsel. I've been fascinated by the looting of art by the Nazis since reading Stealing the Mystic Lamb, and so periodically check out books on that topic. Some have been very dull and dry, but this one was quite interesting and exciting. Edsel paces the story well, and juggles the different stories going on with his multiple heroes, who are scattered across Europe, without any confusion on the reader's part.
Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships, by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha. Sigh. Ryan and Jetha have clearly very recently discovered the concept of open relationships and are in that twenty-years-old-just-discovered-poly-place where you scream to anyone who will listen that your way is the natural way!! and everyone else is SO repressed and sad and wrong!! (And the twenty-years-old-monogamous-tending among your friends get REALLY judgy and prudish and mean, not that I would know anything about being like that.)
I'm just going to pick a few examples of what made me mad about this book, because its whole premise made me mad (said premise = open relationships are the way to happiness for every human on the planet), but I think it also featured some pretty sloppy anthropology and stupid conclusions:
The authors trot out, over and over, multiple examples of very small (150 or so individuals) tribal societies which practice no sexual monogamy whatsoever and in which, according to the authors, there is no way for a woman to know the biological paternity of her child. And sure, they argue convincingly that in these cultures the idea of biological paternity is irrelevant, but at no point do they ever address the first thing that came to my mind when I read this: how do these societies avoid incest in the succeeding generations? And if they don't, what health issues have resulted? These (in my opinion) glaringly obvious questions are completely ignored, no matter how often they bring up these tribes, because the authors' theory is that these societies are superior in every way to societies in which biological paternity does matter, and they are not going to let some pesky inbreeding statistics get in the way.
The authors posit that humans stray from monogamous relationships because the amount of sex in a relationship diminishes over time, because it's humanly impossible to remain excited about having sex with someone you love once you've done it too many times, and because monkeys aren't monogamous. To which I have many, many responses, some of which are, "Not always," "There are, like, five hundred emotional reasons why people cheat on each other," "No," and "So?"
The authors seem to believe that in open relationships it's just not possible to cheat, hurt a partner, or damage trust, and so that is the answer to eliminating infidelity and jealousy in our world. I know several people who are in open / polyamorous relationships and who would laugh and laugh at that statement. Trust, interestingly, is never really mentioned at all as part of a sexual relationship, because the authors' goal is for humans to completely separate sex from love. That, to me, kind of defeats the purpose of non-procreative sex entirely.
Well, okay, the authors don't always have the goal of separating sex from love. That's one place where it gets really sloppy: they go inconsistently back and forth between saying that sex is a community-bonding tool (as in the non-monogamous tribal societies) and saying that it is a purely biological need for release which you shouldn't be threatened about your husband getting from his secretary. So I'm not sure they even knew how they were defining sex half the time. It's best if all adults in a community bond lovingly through sex and assume all the kids belong to them! But sex is just sex and equating it with love is a stupid cultural construct that goes against all our throbbing biological urges!
It's as if one of the authors believed that an "open relationship" is a heterosexual one in which the male partner goes off and has anonymous sex in restaurant bathrooms a couple nights a week while financially supporting his wife, and the other was actually defining it the way everyone I know who is in an open relationship defines it: as relationships. You may have a romantic / sexual relationship with more than one person at one time, but it isn't just about sex. You're dating these people. I think one of the authors understood that, but I don't know which one. Unfortunately, whichever one didn't understand that wrote the final chapter (see below), and that chapter wiped away all the times that this book almost made a good point about polyamory's value in family-building, to replace it with a paean to male politicians whose wives put up with their philandering.
Oh, and this book also claims that all humans, everywhere, always, prefer socialization to solitude, and that (presented as an irrefutable fact) "Sartre was wrong". So I guess introversion is also an "unnatural" state into which we have been culturally shamed...? Because our society pressures and guilts extroverts into behaving more antisocially, and tells them they're "not normal" if they just want to go out with their friends on a Saturday night instead of staying home with a book. Everyone knows that.
The final chapter was so ludicrous that it made me wonder if this whole book had been an elaborate satire. On the first page the authors lament, as they put it, this "one-size-fits-all" relationship advice that humans get fed, and then they spend the next eight pages reiterating that, no matter who you are, monogamy WILL make you miserable and sexually repressed, and your spouse / partner WILL go out and have sex with other people, and if you aren't a slave to stupid Victorian narratives you WILL be happy that he's getting the sex he needs, because after ten years or so spouses always think of each other as siblings anyway and he still totally respects you. And if you think, Um, no, I actually disagree with all of that, then you have been brainwashed into repressing the imperatives of human nature. I picked the male pronoun above deliberately, by the way. This whole chapter, which only mentions male straying, felt specifically and hostilely directed at, like, nagging frigid wives of unfaithful men, rather than at both men and women and their equally-valid sex drives. There was a definite flavor of Men Have Needs, Little Lady to it, and they even trot out a psychologist who claims that women who leave their cheating husbands don't actually want to leave; they're just doing what they've seen happen in movies. Seriously.
In conclusion, what I gathered the answer to "why we stray" is, according to Ryan and Jetha, becauseDon Draper the penis can't be tamed. Oh, and because our society has forced us through cultural pressure and sexual shame into [heterosexual] monogamy, which is not natural for anyone and which has never made anyone happy. Well. It is the trend at the moment to bray from the rooftops that monogamy is unnatural, and I don't begrudge that trend, since the "anything but heterosexual monogamy is unnatural" trend got broadcast for centuries first and is still, sadly, pervasive. But I think the idea of claiming that anything - anything - is universally natural or unnatural for every single human on the planet is incredibly fucking stupid. You might as well write a book the central premise of which is that every person in the world loves cauliflower: research cauliflower all you like, it's still not going to be true. À chacun son goût, dumbasses.
The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner. It was okay. Seventy percent of it was travel, which was probably intended as a Lord-of-the-Rings type thing, but which just made me say at the end of each chapter, "Well, that was another solid Corman walking scene." (MST3K joke.) I didn't fail to enjoy this, but I don't think I'll be reading the sequels.
The new books I did read:
The Diviners, by Libba Bray. I do love Bray. This book was set in 1920's New York and features a bunch of young people, all of whom have special powers, getting gradually drawn together by the hunt for a serial killer. By the end they are nearly all assembled for what will clearly be Adventuresome Sequels, for which I am excited. The 20's slang got a little out of control, and Bray really pushed the "almost-awful but always-interesting heroine" shtick too far - at the beginning I disliked the heroine a lot - but I tore through this and had a great time.
The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, by Robert M. Edsel. I've been fascinated by the looting of art by the Nazis since reading Stealing the Mystic Lamb, and so periodically check out books on that topic. Some have been very dull and dry, but this one was quite interesting and exciting. Edsel paces the story well, and juggles the different stories going on with his multiple heroes, who are scattered across Europe, without any confusion on the reader's part.
Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships, by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha. Sigh. Ryan and Jetha have clearly very recently discovered the concept of open relationships and are in that twenty-years-old-just-discovered-poly-place where you scream to anyone who will listen that your way is the natural way!! and everyone else is SO repressed and sad and wrong!! (And the twenty-years-old-monogamous-tending among your friends get REALLY judgy and prudish and mean, not that I would know anything about being like that.)
I'm just going to pick a few examples of what made me mad about this book, because its whole premise made me mad (said premise = open relationships are the way to happiness for every human on the planet), but I think it also featured some pretty sloppy anthropology and stupid conclusions:
The authors trot out, over and over, multiple examples of very small (150 or so individuals) tribal societies which practice no sexual monogamy whatsoever and in which, according to the authors, there is no way for a woman to know the biological paternity of her child. And sure, they argue convincingly that in these cultures the idea of biological paternity is irrelevant, but at no point do they ever address the first thing that came to my mind when I read this: how do these societies avoid incest in the succeeding generations? And if they don't, what health issues have resulted? These (in my opinion) glaringly obvious questions are completely ignored, no matter how often they bring up these tribes, because the authors' theory is that these societies are superior in every way to societies in which biological paternity does matter, and they are not going to let some pesky inbreeding statistics get in the way.
The authors posit that humans stray from monogamous relationships because the amount of sex in a relationship diminishes over time, because it's humanly impossible to remain excited about having sex with someone you love once you've done it too many times, and because monkeys aren't monogamous. To which I have many, many responses, some of which are, "Not always," "There are, like, five hundred emotional reasons why people cheat on each other," "No," and "So?"
The authors seem to believe that in open relationships it's just not possible to cheat, hurt a partner, or damage trust, and so that is the answer to eliminating infidelity and jealousy in our world. I know several people who are in open / polyamorous relationships and who would laugh and laugh at that statement. Trust, interestingly, is never really mentioned at all as part of a sexual relationship, because the authors' goal is for humans to completely separate sex from love. That, to me, kind of defeats the purpose of non-procreative sex entirely.
Well, okay, the authors don't always have the goal of separating sex from love. That's one place where it gets really sloppy: they go inconsistently back and forth between saying that sex is a community-bonding tool (as in the non-monogamous tribal societies) and saying that it is a purely biological need for release which you shouldn't be threatened about your husband getting from his secretary. So I'm not sure they even knew how they were defining sex half the time. It's best if all adults in a community bond lovingly through sex and assume all the kids belong to them! But sex is just sex and equating it with love is a stupid cultural construct that goes against all our throbbing biological urges!
It's as if one of the authors believed that an "open relationship" is a heterosexual one in which the male partner goes off and has anonymous sex in restaurant bathrooms a couple nights a week while financially supporting his wife, and the other was actually defining it the way everyone I know who is in an open relationship defines it: as relationships. You may have a romantic / sexual relationship with more than one person at one time, but it isn't just about sex. You're dating these people. I think one of the authors understood that, but I don't know which one. Unfortunately, whichever one didn't understand that wrote the final chapter (see below), and that chapter wiped away all the times that this book almost made a good point about polyamory's value in family-building, to replace it with a paean to male politicians whose wives put up with their philandering.
Oh, and this book also claims that all humans, everywhere, always, prefer socialization to solitude, and that (presented as an irrefutable fact) "Sartre was wrong". So I guess introversion is also an "unnatural" state into which we have been culturally shamed...? Because our society pressures and guilts extroverts into behaving more antisocially, and tells them they're "not normal" if they just want to go out with their friends on a Saturday night instead of staying home with a book. Everyone knows that.
The final chapter was so ludicrous that it made me wonder if this whole book had been an elaborate satire. On the first page the authors lament, as they put it, this "one-size-fits-all" relationship advice that humans get fed, and then they spend the next eight pages reiterating that, no matter who you are, monogamy WILL make you miserable and sexually repressed, and your spouse / partner WILL go out and have sex with other people, and if you aren't a slave to stupid Victorian narratives you WILL be happy that he's getting the sex he needs, because after ten years or so spouses always think of each other as siblings anyway and he still totally respects you. And if you think, Um, no, I actually disagree with all of that, then you have been brainwashed into repressing the imperatives of human nature. I picked the male pronoun above deliberately, by the way. This whole chapter, which only mentions male straying, felt specifically and hostilely directed at, like, nagging frigid wives of unfaithful men, rather than at both men and women and their equally-valid sex drives. There was a definite flavor of Men Have Needs, Little Lady to it, and they even trot out a psychologist who claims that women who leave their cheating husbands don't actually want to leave; they're just doing what they've seen happen in movies. Seriously.
In conclusion, what I gathered the answer to "why we stray" is, according to Ryan and Jetha, because
The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner. It was okay. Seventy percent of it was travel, which was probably intended as a Lord-of-the-Rings type thing, but which just made me say at the end of each chapter, "Well, that was another solid Corman walking scene." (MST3K joke.) I didn't fail to enjoy this, but I don't think I'll be reading the sequels.
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