We’re very excited to welcome guest blogger Honorée Fanonne Jeffers. Honorée is an award-winning poet and fiction writer who’s been blogging on culture since 2009. Her most recent book of poetry is Red Clay Suite.

Usually, my blog posts deal with African American community or political issues, and I talk as one cultural insider to another cultural insider.

However, I’ve realized that sometimes, well-meaning, really nice White people (of which there are many, by the way) want Black folks to talk to them in non-angry, non-confrontational, and patient ways about Black cultural issues they don’t understand.

So I wondered if it might be useful for me to write blog posts that break racial things down for good White folks who mean no harm—and who either have Black friends or are in the midst of acquiring friendships with Black people—and are just trying to navigate these racial waters that ironically (and to me, bewilderingly) have become far more treacherous since the election of our first Black president.

Sidebar: I use “race” as a shorthand because that word usually means “Black” or “People of Color” to White people. But really, “race” is not a real, like, biological thing. It does not exist except in people’s minds. What I actually mean when I say “race” is “culture.”

I hadn’t even planned to post again this week, but I’ve noticed the online furor on Black social media concerning Governor Jan Brewer’s pointing her finger very close to President Barack Obama’s face. The response from White folks? Some are upset, but I get the impression they don’t really understand why we African Americans are so troubled. Some of us are even enraged.

So I thought that it might be time to write a Teachable Racial Moment post.

Ok, here goes: If you are wise, you will not ever put your finger–or your whole hand– in a Black person’s face, unless you know you want to immediately engage in a knock down, drag out, fight-to-the-concrete physical brawl. It’s actually a well-known signal for “let’s fight right this moment” in the Black community. When I say “ever” I mean not in this present lifetime, or even after death, if you encounter another Black angel in Heaven. Because that angel is still liable to get into it with you and risk being de-winged.

I don’t know when the finger point in the face became such a grave insult to Black folks, but it has been for at least 50 years. And what does the gesture mean anyway? It means derision. It means disrespect. And above all, it means power to the pointer.

Sidebar: Have you ever seen a mother (of any cultural background) in the mall with her disobedient toddler? She finally gets exasperated and leans down and begins to scold the child—by pointing her finger in his or her face. And what happens? The toddler starts crying, and then gets it together and starts behaving better. Thus, the finger point in the face is not a gesture between equals. She who does the pointing is establishing herself as a superior to the person being pointed at.

Okay, and now, I’m about to reveal a Racial Secret. Are you ready? I’m going to put this in italics so you really get it.
Because the finger point gesture establishes superiority, the gesture is even worse if a White person does it to a Black person, due to the history in this country of White supremacist violence and cultural demeaning of Black folks.

Nice Non-Racist White folks, this may seem silly to y’all. And I get that. Right now, you may be saying, “Dang, Black folks got too many rules! It’s so hard to keep up with y’all!” That’s true. I won’t deny it. So many rules, even I have a hard time keeping up.

But consider that, individually, we all have rules that help create a space in which we are happy.

For example, I despise egg whites. (No racial pun intended here, I promise.) I will eat whole scrambled eggs willingly, or baked into cookies, cakes, etcetera, but if given a boiled egg, I will only eat the yolk. The thought of an egg white omelet is one that moves me almost to physical pain. It’s so slimy and disgusting.

So one day, I was visiting my mama and she was making potato salad. And she was chopping up boiled egg whites to mix into the potato salad. Now I live to eat my mama’s potato salad. Nobody makes it better. So I was watching her chop up those egg whites and I felt tears come to my eyes, because I knew I wasn’t going to eat that potato salad with those egg whites in it. I was so disappointed and I felt really betrayed, too.

Mama looked up and saw my face and said quietly, “Honi, you know I already made your potato salad without the whites, darling. It’s sitting in the refrigerator right now.”

That’s what I mean.

Mama could have said, “Look, get over it. I’m not making two separate potato salads to please your rusty grown behind. What am I, your personal chef?” But she didn’t. And just like she knows I won’t eat egg whites, I know she despises the dark meat of chicken and I’d never try to serve a chicken thigh to her. It’s these little things that lead to understanding between two people.

And this leads us back to Governor Jan Brewer. After she pointed her finger in President Obama’s face she followed up in a media interview by saying she “felt threatened” by him. But remember when I said above that the finger point in the face was both an aggressive act and one attempting to establish superiority?

If anyone felt threatened, it would be President Obama, threatened by Governor Brewer’s attempt to not only belittle him, but also because he probably suspected that later, she’d try to flip the racial script on him. Which she most certainly did.

Here’s that flipped script: she, the Little Helpless White Lady, felt afraid of him, a Big Ole Scary Black Man. (Refer to the film, Birth of a Nation if you aren’t familiar with this tired script. It’s only a bit more tired–and dangerous–than the Big-Breasted Loving Black Mammy Who Lives To Take Care of White Folks Kids With No Pay script in Gone With The Wind.)

So, let me get this straight.

Governor Brewer felt afraid of President Obama. She felt threatened by him. After she poked her finger in his face and attempted to humiliate him. And let’s not forget this was going on in front of cameras.

Yeah, okay. I completely believe her.

This flipped racial script of Governor Brewer is very old, and has several versions, but it has proven useful throughout the years for the shell game of White supremacy, as when a Black man was lynched whenever a White woman accused him of looking at her funny.

I’m not playing here mentioning the funny look. It was the unofficial law of “reckless eyeballing” created by White southerners, and many a southern Black man swung at the end of a rope for committing that supposed crime. The case of Emmett Till was a variation of “reckless eyeballing,” because he whistled at a White woman and ended up murdered.

Just because President Obama doesn’t talk about that racial script doesn’t mean he isn’t well aware of our nation’s troubled history concerning White women and Black men, which is why he walked away from Governor Brewer. I’m pretty sure that, as a Black man, he was angered by her culturally transgressive act, but he had the presence of mind to get himself together before he broke all the way fool on the tarmac with that lady and not only ended up in jail, but went down in history as 1) the first Black president and 2) the first president who physically assaulted a woman in public.

But he saved himself, because President Obama is an Old School Brother. And it is never acceptable for an Old School Brother to hit a woman, whether or not she has committed an act of aggression. And let me tell you that you don’t really want to know what would have happened if Governor Brewer had pointed her finger in the face of another Black man—not an Old School Brother but one of these Young Knuckleheads With No Sense.

Eh, Lord, it would have been so ugly. And that’s all I’m going to say.

Polite, kind, respectful, self-controlled, and full of common sense: that’s how Old School Brothers get down. And by the way, that’s why I really adore them. And that’s why, despite the fact that President Obama hasn’t been a perfect leader (at least in my opinion), as a Sister, I feel extremely proud of him. And I bet Mrs. Obama does, too.

Read more of Honoree’s blog posts here.

Prudence digs deep into an ocean of insight

In 1998, if you hadn’t seen The Titanic by week two of its release, you were in danger becoming marginalized; a social misfit unable to contribute to the main topic of conversation du jour—a shipwreck from 86 years before. Sheesh.

This brings me to chair number 18 at Umberto, a Beverly Hills über-salon where—for the right price—even nobodies like me can rub foiled locks with B-list celebrities.

David, my stylist and a dog show aficionado who could have walked straight (so to speak) out of Best in Show, was trying to ignore overtures from a buff young man in a tight black t-shirt sweeping up shorn locks from Umberto’s imported Italian marble floors.

But Muscles McSixpack said the magic word, “Titanic,” and conversation between the two men ramped up as if I weren’t there. I tried to signal my displeasure with various eyebrow moves, which is a near-impossible feat when peering out from under an awning of tin-foil shingles.

David was just dropping one of those behind-the-scenes tidbits (that he no doubt read in People magazine) when Muscles pursed his lips and covered his ears, “Ooo! Don’t tell me what happens in the end; I want to be surprised!”

David’s hands fluttered to a stop in midair over my head and he shot me a look in the mirror—a look that said, “You may be cute, Muscles, but you are a dunce.”

Who knew that 14 years later, and on the hundredth anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking, the Costa Concordia, an Italian luxury liner (if that’s what we can call a floating monstrosity jam-packed with tourists and low-paid help from former Iron Curtain countries), is listing; half-sunken after striking rocks just off the coast of Tuscany. What a bizarre homage.

It may be a reach to say that the Costa Concordia’s demise is in any way, shape or form connected to the Titanic disaster, but the all-too human habit of looking for patterns, especially those linked to anniversaries, is one we embrace. Stating that “today is the anniversary of…” or “150 years ago today, such-and-such happened” gives us a superficial grasp of issues and allows us to fill our Facebook pages and tabloids as well as our TV and radio talk shows with issues we don’t so much explore as exploit for their shock value.

But these snapshots of historical coincidences and frightening statistics do not serve to build an enlightened society any more than historical novels or feature films do justice to real human, legal and organic issues of former times. We must dig deeper.

If we held close the lessons of history, if we—everyday people as well as leaders—looked for patterns to help us predict—and thus avoid—disasters, couldn’t we have avoided the chain of events that has emblazoned the past 100 years with mass murder, mayhem and unprecedented environmental degradation?

What could have been a seminal century, a 100-year span that married the industrial revolution to the information age spawning enlightenment and the spread of knowledge, has instead degraded into the Bermuda Triangle Century.

The material lessons that should have abided seem to have disappeared into some mysterious ether that swallows facts and spits out feelings; feelings that can be used to manipulate the masses whose ability to access authentic reality (vs. reality TV) is an increasingly difficult task.

I don’t blame Muscles McSixpack for not knowing the Titanic sank to the bottom of a frigid sea. In 1998, he probably could have waxed eloquent on headline-grabbing Monica Lewinsky or shared juicy behind-the-scenes tidbits on the murder of comedian Phil Hartmann, both now forgotten players in the melodrama of the late ‘90s.

Meanwhile, what really mattered—the systematic dismantling of the U.S. Justice system, the purposeful disruption of the Clinton presidency by his opponents, the beginning of an unprecedented pick-pocketing of the middle- and working-classes by wealthy bankers and insurance corporations—lurked under the fog of inconsequentialities that has only thickened with players such as the Kardashians, the not-so-real reality shows, and opinion shows masquerading as news.

I’ve been alive for more than half of this past century, and I am not optimistic that we can turn this around. I hear Republican presidential hopefuls beat the war drums as they eye Iran; I listen to the belligerent crowds cheering vile, racist rhetoric at so-called Christian gatherings; I witness unparalleled hatred of the media, of the poor and the disenfranchised. What, I ask you, can come of this?

I think I’ll purse my lips and cover my ears. Don’t tell me where we’re headed. I want to be surprised.

Due to technical difficulties, this has been re-posted (RSS readers will be getting this twice).

Carine explores the pursuit of big business and the big O

Ladies!

Do you know that you are sick if you don’t have vaginal orgasms? If your libido is kind of low, you have an illness? If you are not instantly lubricated when your partner suggests lovemaking, you are diseased? And did you know that not climaxing when you engage in sexual activity means something is wrong with you?

Listen up. Your debilitating ailment has a name: Female Sexual Dysfunction, or FSD. Don’t you feel better knowing what’s wrong with you? Now you can go to reputable sites like Mayo Clinic or Web MD or AAPF (a peer-reviewed medical journal of the American Academy of Family Physicians) and read all about it. That’s the good news. The bad news is that, unfortunately, not even one of those smarty-pants scientists out there has been able to come up with the Holy Grail otherwise known as female Viagra. Ain’t life a bitch sometimes? Does God hate women or what?

I had never heard of the term FSD until I stumbled upon an eye-opening 2009 documentary called Orgasm Inc. It tracks filmmaker Liz Canner’s own stumble upon the pharmaceutical industry’s dogged pursuit of ways to make perfectly healthy women feel abnormal in order to sell them the medication that will make them “right” again. It follows that in order to sell a new prescription drug and new medical procedures, Big Pharma first had to come up with a problem, which needed curing. Hence the term FSD was born. And even though they continue to con women into trying new drugs, and an entirely new industry has sprung up around the issue (along with a veritable cornucopia of methods to sell the message—including trade shows, TV ads, self-help books and more) it turns out that (surprise!) there is nothing wrong with women. Data from multiple respected doctors and sources indicate that 50-60% of women don’t climax through vaginal intercourse, and that most women achieve orgasm only through clitoral stimulation. I guess there’s just no getting around that persistent urban legend that men and women are built differently!

It’s not like I never dreamed Big Pharma would go so far as to invent a disease in order to make money from women who are told every day in myriad ways that they are not perfect and MUST be perfect. It’s just that this excellent documentary exposes the full-of-shitness factor so handily that, warning! it may induce nausea; but in the process, it might remind you that no, you don’t need labiaplasty—plastic surgery for reducing the labia minora in otherwise fine women who are made to feel everyone is supposed to look identical (to those of you who really do need that surgery, by all means…). I once had a gynecologist who was big into labiaplasty tell me that she considered taking a booth at the LA Erotica trade show because, “We’re doing these ‘designer vaginas’ now…” I swear she used that phrasing, which is when I started looking for a new ObGyn; meanwhile, the term “designer vagina” has become the accepted and flirty way to describe the surgery during a sales pitch. Can somebody just shoot me now?

And you know how it’s become all the rage to wax off every last pubic hair you ever had in an effort to, I dunno, look like an 8-year-old? A porn star? Well, maybe you should ask yourself why your partner digs that look so much, or why you suddenly need to be bare, bare, bare! I suspect someone in the waxing industry got high one night, came up with the idea, and then figured out how to turn it into a trend. I recently saw a woman in her thirties wearing a cropped top with jeans riding so low on her hips that I wanted to say, “Okay, I get it! You have no pubic hair!” I found that in-your-face sexuality as vulgar as all the ass-cracks you see blaring out from guys’ super baggy jeans. Listen up, ladies and gentlemen, showing the entire world what’s just below your belt and in between your legs is too much information. Repeat after me: I am not sick. I am beautiful just the way I am. Now, excuse me, I have to go to Brazil to yell at them for inventing the Brazilian Wax, those snatch-hugging hip-hugger jeans with the world’s tiniest zippers, and for beating out Beverly Hills in the incidence of cosmetic surgery (mostly done to pad their booties not breasts!). Come on girls, how caliente can you get without going up in flames?

Well, dear readers, our Fifty is the New summer vacation lasted so long, that while we were away, I climbed the proverbial hill, lurched over it, and landed smack into the shitsky—I mean sixty. 60. Yes—I’m up to my neck in a steaming pile of years. I’m happy to report that in the wake of this monumental event, the earth did not rend itself in twain, the seas did not turn red with blood, the crops did not wither and fail and the climate has not changed. Oh—wait a minute, yes it has but not because I turned 60.

I had been dragging my ass towards this birthday, really glum, and I thought I might greet the day by sitting in the dark alone with a half-gallon of ice cream, a fifth of vodka, a sharp knife and some Joan Crawford movies. Happily, it turned out, my nice husband rented a cabin on the east side of the Sierras and nine of us spent a weekend in Mammoth eating, drinking, hiking, laughing, enjoying the scenery and each other’s company. Our Cathy was there too, celebrating her birthday, and all of us had a grand good time.

Eons ago when I was turning 45, I started thinking that it would be wise to prepare myself for the turning of 50. I joined Jazzercize. I loved the music, the dancing and the camaraderie. Now, this was back in the day when everybody wanted to look like Jamie Lee Curtis in Perfect. Of course, none of us, except our instructor, even came close; but there we were, middle-aged in our thong leotards, leg warmers and sweatbands bouncing our boobies and looking more like the cast of exercisers in Richard Simmon’s, Sweating to the Oldies. Still, it was fun and I did slim down and firm up. I did Jazzercize for about ten years before my knees and back really began to protest and I quit. Since then, I’ve done Pilates, Zumba, yoga, Curves and gone to the gym. I’m like the Where’s Waldo of the workout world; and still, between the menopause, the Jelly Bellies and The Food Network, I have slowly gained back all the weight I lost.

I’ve finally wrapped my head around my 60th birthday and I’ve become crystal clear about what’s coming down the pike. I’m grateful to have been born with good health, a strong body and a happy outlook on life, but the fact is no matter that good luck, I still may have only 20, 25 years in front of me. It’s hit me like a ton of lard, that if I don’t get my shit together over this, turning 70 is going to be hard and not just in a mental exercise sort of way. These ten years between turning 50 and 60 have sped by like a bullet train and I can only surmise that this coming decade will feel even more like a moment, a dream, like the snap of my fingers. So, I’m back in the saddle again, taking the reins, cowboying up, and all that other buckaroo bullshit and I’ve signed back on at Jazzercize for low-impact aerobics, dancing, sweating and smiling, and thank goodness all of us, even Jamie Lee Curtis, seems to be over that “perfect” thing.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Jamie Lee Curtis in Perfect (1985) and Jamie Lee Curtis featured in More Magazine (2002)

Melissa works at creating a personal survival guide for the tumult of the times

These are tough times. This is the one thing we all can agree on. At this juncture, I am forced to acknowledge that personally things are also rough and ragged. This could be a chicken and egg question, “Is it the state of the world that is making me sad or am I just sad which is affecting how I see the world?” Does it really matter? It’s perilous out there and its perilous in here. So what to do? The very wise ones say that it’s not what is happening that is important rather how we respond and relate to what is happening.

With this in mind I’ve begun to make some changes – they may seem superfluous and shallow but I’ve noticed immediate improvement in my outlook. I have blocked the posts of people on Facebook who persistently lambast. It depressed me. Truth be told I’m limiting my FB time and when I am there I find I am looking for inspiring stories and cute animal photographs of interspecies bonding and acceptance. These things lift me up and contribute to an overall feeling of well being.

A few days ago I flew from the West to East Coast to attend a retreat with the Buddhist Nun and Teacher, Pema Chodron titled, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change. I left the West Coast just shortly after the Oakland Police Department unleashed tear gas, rubber bullets and batons on a group of peaceful protesters critically injuring Scott Olsen a young member of Veterans for Peace. Shortly before that event, the deposed dictator of Libya, Moamar Ghaddafi, was found and then sodomized with a knife by one of his captors all captured on video. The news media then played, played and re-played the video of a bloodied and dying Ghaddafi. I found this all entirely disturbing and savage. No matter Ghaddafi’s documented atrocities towards the people of Libya, an inhumane act toward an inhumane person is still inhumane. The media approach to this “story” was likewise inhumane and indecent. My retreat was well-timed and aptly titled.

As I flew across the country the sun went down behind me and I began to see little gatherings of light below me — unknown towns and villages. I looked down on them and whispered out the window, “There is some goodness down there, there must be.” And there is. Everywhere. In this time I am prospecting for goodness.

I am fortunate to know a number of people who contribute to goodness in the world in big, big ways nationally and globally. This work inspires me. Right now though I’m seeking the little gestures around me and also the ones I can create so as not to feel so overwhelmed by the tumult of these times.

A Few Examples

My friend Gina Truex is an extraordinary artist. Gina shares her time and skill with two groups of women who are for the most part homeless but manage each week to make their way to a drop-in day center. There, Gina works with the women creating both community and objects they can call their own.

Through the Berkeley Reads Adult Literacy Program I am tutoring a woman with limited literacy who has raised two children, and now has two grandchildren She wants to be able to read and write beyond the elementary school level. She wants to be able to read magazines and movie titles.

In Winslow, Arizona, three visionaries Allan Affeldt, Tina Mion and Daniel Lutzick saved the last great Fred Harvey Hotel, La Posada, designed by Mary Colter, from the wrecking ball. They have made the restoration of the hotel their life project. The hotel has created 50 jobs in a depressed area. Everybody who works at the hotel has health insurance, retirement and access to funds to help them buy homes.

At the beginning of the school year I gladly answered the call to provide children in Foster Care with school supplies and their own backpacks, Project Ready to Learn. Choosing two backpacks and filling them with cool school supplies made me unreasonably happy.

I just read an article about the monotony soldiers on deployment endure during the hours they are not avoiding bombs and snipers. Storm Williams from North Carolina created a website called Books for Soldiers. I’m a volunteer. I log in to the site see what books are requested, go to the used bookstore, find the book and ship it out. It’s simple, its something I can do and probably makes me feel better than the soldier who receives the book.

I’m well aware that “Living Beautifully” in these times is not all about external acts of goodness. So too I take on the internal in an act of spiritual warrior-ship which basically means not adding to fear and aggression in these times. Adopting the posture of being friendly to myself and merciful to others requires vigilance. I find the former to be the hardest task. So I acknowledge myself when spontaneous love, compassion and understanding bubble up. Yesterday on the train I was thinking about someone I love profoundly who hurt me deeply and all of the sudden I understood why. It didn’t make it right but the understanding prevented my hurt from hardening into anger and I was aware that in this case love prevails — an act of goodness toward my self. It’s a beginning. Step by baby step.

Cathy contemplates the source and the cure for her perfectionist ways

This is revolutionary… get ready for it…

Being a perfectionist is a waste of time.

There I said it.

Perhaps it’s the energy suck of hot flashes and other midlife maladies, or just the wisdom of the years, but lo and behold, I have come to realize that I must conserve and preserve my time and energy, and that no one really cares if what I do is less than perfect—no one, that is, but me.

According to Wikipedia, in its pathological form, “perfectionism is a belief that work or output that is anything less than perfect is unacceptable.”

I come to perfectionism by example. My 88-year-old mother is like a heat-seeking missile: she will find a crumb, an unraveling hem, or a physical flaw and call it out. You can literally eat off my mother’s floor, and to this day you’ll find her cleaning down there. Often.

My many years of dance training—always striving for perfect lines, timing and execution—hasn’t helped either. Nor have my earlier days in the PR biz. A couple of years ago, the president of the nonprofit I work for talked to the staff about venturing into new territories. It might be messy, she casually remarked, and not perfect but that’s ok. That’s ok? What? I was aghast. I, who had been a writer/editor for years, had it drummed into my cortex that nothing less than perfect will do, and that trying your hardest and being your best every moment of every day is the true path to greatness.

Obviously I’m re-thinking that.

I was born at the tail end of the boomer timeline, under a nuclear cloud and the early influence of the 1950’s. In junior high school while the boys were woodworking and fixing cars, we girls were required to enroll in home economics. We honed our life skills by sewing paisley tote bags, “cooking” cinnamon sugar toast and tap-tap-tapping on typewriter keys. We were coming of age in the wake of the How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying era (“I’d be so happy to keep his dinner warm, while he moves onward and upward…”) yet we were smack dab in the middle of the second wave of feminism. And a strong wave it was. We forged ahead, following in the footsteps of our foremothers who burned bras and blazed new trails. We over-reached, over-achieved and strived for perfection in the kitchen, the workplace and the bedroom.

Ahh, the bedroom; how I admired those Bond girls’ seductive Sixties style. They shaped my aesthetic with their sensual ways. But they, like the pinups of the ‘50s and the wafer-thin models of today, represented impossible standards of beauty and fashion, driving girls to self-destruction and anorexia and grown women to self-loathing and debt. In my quest to turn off my perfectionist parrot (the mite-infested one), I’m declaring no more airbrushed comparisons and no more suffering for style. While my 22-year-old niece goes clubbing in her stilettos (I just hope she doesn’t hurt herself), I vow to no longer stand, wobble, cinch or suffer for fashion.

I used to pride myself in being a visual, detail-oriented person with high standards, and now I’m finding it a burden. While I don’t think I need to lower my standards all that much, I need to be less neurotic about it.

Life is not black and white.

Yet, old habits die hard. How many drafts of this post have I done trying to make it sing? Don’t ask. I’ve been polishing this piece of prose with the vigor my mom uses for her silverware. Yet, both of us don’t see as well as we used to—and when it comes to being a former perfectionist, that’s probably a good thing.

Whether it’s Nook, Kindle or iPad, hardback or paper, library or bookstore — we can never get enough great stories. So as summer starts to wane, we at Fifty is the New share some recent good reads. What we did on our summer vacation, literary style.

Prudence

This summer reminded me of my girlhood, when every Saturday I checked out 11 books (the maximum allowed) from the Pasadena Public Library, and returned them a week later for another near dozen. Two I liked:

Wesley the Owl: a Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and his Girl by Stacey O’Brien. Mandatory reading for animal lovers!

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery: a romp through France’s bourgeoisie told by two razor-sharp wits whose lives collide in a fancy apartment building in the 5th arrondissement.

Connie

Summer for me means sun, sand, sea, and books, lots of books, and though I now live in the mountains I still make time for long, slow days and words that make my heart sing.

I am, for the dozenth time, re-reading Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. This delicious froth of manners and misunderstanding within the Bennett family is a perfect summer distraction from our modern miasma.

I’ve also started Pompeii by Richard Harris, the historical fiction of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Sounds like a potboiler, yes?

Carine

A good book teaches you something you didn’t know before about the world and about yourself.

I have been married to a Frenchman for 22 years, and even wrote a book on the humorous differences between our two cultures, but What French Women Know by Debra Ollivier managed to further explain my husband to me. In addition, it provided revelation on the impulses that drive my approach to relationships. An excellent and entertaining read for anyone trying to decipher failed and successful unions!

Christie

Summer makes me think of places I have visited and long to return to. This year Ireland captured my imagination and I found Benjamin Black (BB). BB is the alarming alter-ego of Irish literary genius John Banville. His uneasy characters include Quirke, a disheveled (inside and out) pathologist, who stumbles and bumbles along until he is able to uncover a single truth. It’s 1950s Dublin, we are spared any DNA search and recovery, these characters have to observe and think. Christine Falls and Elegy for April are recommended.

Melissa

Reading isn’t a seasonal activity for me. Since I am not in school nor do I have children in school, time is not as delineated as it once was. But sometimes I read more obsessively than others. Now is one of those times.

Shantaram by Gregory Roberts was 920 pages of complete obsession. I could not stop reading and so I am told, as with any good addiction when I was done I wanted more. I have never been more enthralled by a book. The story is about love, faraway places, loss, redemption and the mystery of human existence—a gut wrenching, epic literary experience.

Cathy

I get most of my reading done in bed or on airplanes lately, though I long for sun, sand and no sense of time.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese took me to Ethiopia with a story of twin brothers born of a tragic union. Though filled with detailed medical explanations, the stories of love, family and betrayal were riveting and unexpected.

I’m just sinking my teeth into Blood, Bones & Butter a memoir from Gabrielle Hamilton chef/owner of Prune in NYC. Deelicious!

*****

Got a good book to share? Be sure to add your favorite summer read!