It's been almost a year and I still terribly miss the tv show Fringe. Like many of the films and programs I love, music is essential to it. One of the main characters, Walter, often rarely works in his lab without music on and in the final season of the show, music pretty much saves his life.

But even when music isn't on the forefront of it all, it always seems music slips in anyhow. During the fourth season, there's a scene between Lincoln and Olivia, two very likable characters who bond over shared sorrow while talking in open-all-night-diner.

Their discussion is quite intriguing yet even so this song playing in the background just blows me up...I go online and look up the words and "Fade Into You" by Mazzy Star appears. I end up buying the whole album and loving every single song on it.

"Fade Into You" turns twenty this year and is a very well-known song, but for me it's almost brand new. "Five String Serenade," also off on the same album So That Tonight I Might See is even more stunning! Grey's Anatomy is probably the best-known show for turning people onto 'new' musicians, but in its own way Fringe has just as amazing a relationship with music.

Music is so much about mood...and on those days when anything spirited seems like a slap to the face, music can still soothe. One of the most beautiful film scores ever is Somewhere In Time. It's lovely in and of itself, but always dependable for those days when your spirits are pretty much low key. For over thirty years, this album has gotten me through studying for exams and been a constant companion while reading or dreaming. John Barry was surely one of the most talented composers to ever grace a soundtrack.

Puppy Love, as you might guess from the title and cover, is an absolutely adorable read, which is an absolutely great thing for a book to be, especially on a very lazy Saturday afternoon, when you're sick in bed with a cold.

As with L.T. Smith's See Right Through Me, Puppy Love is full of humor, love and lots of strong writing. The humor can go from sweet and vulnerable ("My heart banged dramatically inside my chest, as if it was auditioning for a new play called Hope.") to downright I-really-shouldn't-laugh-but-how-can-I-not? ("I know, I'm up and down like a prostitute's underwear about how I wanted our relationship to pan out.")

One reason I love L.T. Smith's books so much is that she creates characters who may need a little kick in the pants sometimes (the kind of people who need runway clearance and big, flashing lights before they realize someone likes them) but are nonetheless incredibly endearing and cute for being so clueless in all matters relating to love and relationships. Anyone who may find this frustrating has clearly never suffered from doubts when meeting someone she really likes and wants to have her like her back.

When Ellie and Emma, the two very likable leads in Puppy Love, first meet there is an actual spark between them. This happens along the way while they are getting to know each other and in its initial appearances, Ellie wonders if her "time with power tools made me electric."

It's stuff like this, along with genuine chemistry, down-to-earth people, a terrific dog named Charlie and Ellie's heartbreakingly and all-too-realistic abandonment by her homophobic parents that make Puppy Love such a soulful, warm and wonderful read! My only complaint, as with all truly terrific reads, is that finishing books like this make returning to your own world very hard. :)

Have a great Tuesday! I have been away from blogging for a while, but hope to be back here on a much more regular basis. It's not so much that I think what I have to say is important or even should be heard, but that I like to share new books and music I discover. And, yes, also...(sometimes) voice thoughts about a world that sometimes still confuses me...Today, I want to write about this awesome "new to me" album I discovered last week:

Someone once said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. I don't think I have ever felt more like that than when wanting to do justice to Gem Club. Everything beautiful and sad on their Acid and Everything EP, everything that made it so mesmerizingly haunting, is back on Breakers, a full-length album so intoxicatingly lovely it makes a mess of your heart in the best way possible.

Its quiet restraint (the cello and piano are as much the stars as the gorgeous vocals) should not fool you. This is a very passionate album and a wonderful balm for a soul yearning for healing.

I purchased the entire MP3 album because every single track is worth its weight in gold. So if any are more outstanding than others, it's more a matter of which ones speak most to the individual listener. In my case, it's: "Breakers," "Lands," "I Heard The Party" (oh. my. gosh.), "Black Ships" and "252." Whenever someone says today's music is just awful, I silently wish I could correct them and just say they're listening in the all wrong places. Gem Club is the perfect antidote to everything that is wrong in so much of today's music scene.

50 Shades of Double Standards

A few months ago I finished the first book in the 50 Shades trilogy. I couldn't stomach any more, not so much because of the content (television and movies have shown far worse) but because the writing is just plain bad.

I also found myself getting a little upset that many local libraries are bending over backwards to get more copies ordered, yet you'd be hard-stretched to find any GLBT fiction in their collections.

How is it a novel about a straight couple (not married nor planning to have a child) having all kinds of sex and kinky adventures can be all the rage on morning talk shows and on bestseller lists, but gay and lesbian fiction is still considered a "no no" in most mainstream bookstores and in many libraries? How is it Christian conservatives stay mum on things like this, but have a cow whenever the topic of gay marriage is brought up?

Recently, Kindle opened a whole new world to me of lesbian fiction, some of which is quality lesbian fiction, where there is genuine love and romance long before the women even consider a physical relationship.

When there's no one in your life to talk about certain topics (your straight friends say it's okay you're gay as long as you never talk about it) the right book can almost, no make that actually, save your life.

I like it when I see characters who feel like I do reflected in books (find it very helpful and healing) and though I'd prefer to find libraries carrying gay and lesbian fiction (there's certainly no shortage of violent crime novels, Zane books or other less than scrupulous subject matter at hand in them) I sigh and shrug and decide to buy my own. I'd rather make up the loss in my budget by skimping on food because books talk to me and food doesn't. Books help me feel less lonely and food does not. "Calories," as someone on my Twitter account recently tweeted,"do not heal heartache."

Books, I firmly believe, can! I find comfort in reading books by women who understand the emotions, heartache, romance and longing of being gay in a world that still has trouble accepting them.

I don't read lesbian fiction to be rebellious or to "sin,"  but to survive...because when you're surrounded by people who don't understand what it means to be gay, you can feel very lonely...