The White Woman on the Green Bicycle

by Monique Roffey

In 1956, a young couple arrives to Trinidad from England. He falls in love with the island. She hates it. His secrets are outdoors. Her secrets are inside.

I like the premise and I loved the book. It could have been great, perfect even. But I found a few things quite irritating. The (chronologically) last part comes first, the beginning and the rest of the story later. Although these are arguably the better read (no doubt, because of the first-person narrative), one may wonder what’s the point of reading when we know how it all ends. (Tragic, that’s how.) Perhaps the structure makes it easier to gloss over the 36-year gap between the last and the first parts?

Also, the word “steupsed” is used far too often. I reckon by its third appearance in the book the reader should get that Trinidadians do it a lot.

‘How old are, you, Venus?’ ‘Twenteh.’ Five years younger than me. But she could have been any age. Eighteen, thirty-five. ‘Do you live far?’ ‘Just up so, in Paramin. I walk there. I does like to tek a walk. It good fuh de blood system. Good to keep slim.’ ‘I ride my bicycle.’ ‘I see you, Miss. Everybody know you already.’ ‘Who?’ ‘Everybody. I tell dem I go fine a job with de white lady on de green bicycle. Nobody believe meh. But is true. I see you ride pas’ every day. With de basket in front.’ I blushed. ‘You is famus, Miss.’

Jasmine

by Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden

Unhurried. Hardly ground-breaking. No pretence. No showing off. Almost none of that (in)famous Keith Jarrett Moaning™. Just two friends playing a few standards. And, for a change, a jazz album which has true soul in every tune.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

a film by Grant Heslov

Could there even be such a thing as a light-hearted Iraq War film? Well, here’s the one. Fantastic acting from George Clooney as Lyn Cassady (finally, a drop-dead gorgeous Jedi Warrior); better still, Jeff Bridges as his New-Agey mentor, Bill Django. All we are saying is give LSD a chance.

Orgasms for Two: The Joy of Partnersex

by Betty Dodson

Betty Dodson is a sex-positive feminist. Instead of focusing on gender equality, she embraces sex diversity. She’s got her Ph.D. in sexology for research that she modestly calls “working in the field” (as opposed to questionnaire-based “research” media presents us every day). She left behind romantic heterosexual love, a failed marriage, group sex, adventures in lesbian and bisexual SM community only to embark, at the grand young age of sixty-nine, on a sizzling love affair with a boy in his twenties. But what about masturbation, I hear you asking. Fear not, it is not forgotten. Quite the reverse: Ms Dodson shows us the many ways of incorporating it into, or rather, making it central in the experience of partnersex — absolutely guilt-free. Separate chapters are devoted to sex toys, anal eroticism and sex for older lovers.

Not exactly sequel to Sex for One but a self-sufficient book. True, it does repeat the relevant bits of the former. But it is because they are worth reiterating. Unlike Sex for One, it features pen and ink drawings. Just like Sex for One, it is a fun and often hilarious read.

This is not a book about how to get a man, how to keep him, or how to get rid of him or kill him after the relationship is over.

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Towards the end of the last year we were married he came home one night and announced he was taking up golf. I blurted out: “That’s good, because I’m taking up sex.”

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Freud and Reich never got to read the Kinsey report, which put America’s national average time of thrusting with full erection after penetration at two and half minutes. That’s barely enough time to get me interested in sex, let alone have an orgasm.

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Most young women today are getting their sex misinformation from women’s magazines, in articles written by young, sexually inexperienced writers who get their information from experts who are basically talking about what they have read in books or tested with a Ph.D. thesis that relied on a questionnaire.

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Just when I thought the clitoris had been reinstated, men and women started digging around inside vaginas searching for some magic spot.

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Kim has a marvelous sense of humor. She can squirt anywhere, anytime, and loves doing it. While I badger her about peeing on my rug, she laughs and tells me I’m jealous.

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Group sex could easily take a whole chapter, but I’m saving all those delectable details for my memoir.

Marqués de Cáceres Rioja Crianza 2006

Could it be that I’ve finally found an agreeable Rioja? Last week, I had a dinner at Waikiki just before the late night performance of de lo Flamenco. It was a chilly evening calling for a red wine. I’ve ordered a half-bottle of this wine and was not disappointed. The end.

More photos of red wine @ Shutterstock.

Психоз

by Tatiana Solomatina

Why should I care about a young and attractive woman psychologist who leaves her boring husband, acquires two equally boring New Russian lovers neither of whom she loves, then finds another man with whom she falls in love? No reason whatsoever. But here I was, finishing this book in a transatlantic flight (Boston—London), worrying about its hapless heroine instead of having a well-deserved nap.

Not bad, not bad at all. I like the style. Not perfect though. If the author reads this, here’s my free and completely unsolicited advice: next time, lose the poetry.

I came across just one typo in a whole novel — for a post-Soviet book, a small miracle!

So long, just some words

As I wrote somewhere else, last year I started yet another blog called just some words. You see, I wanted to have a non-Blogger blog. But why Maneno? First, Maneno is multi-lingual, and I want to have an option to publish in more than one language. Second, Maneno is African.

It allows those with limited or narrow-bandwidth internet to use a system that is lightweight and straightforward in functionality.

I thought, I will need this when I move to Africa! Last but not least: “maneno” means “words” in Swahili, and just some words is all about words. From different languages.

To my big disappointment, Maneno stopped hosting blogs. Fair enough, they gave an advance warning last Summer. And this very morning, I received an XML dump of justsomewords. I was able to recreate it at sólo algunas palabras (justsomewords.wordpress.com was already taken). So much for getting away from a major blogging platform.