Girls Just Don't Do That by Natalie Simone is a surprisingly good read that is particularly striking for handling domestic violence in a sincere and realistic manner, something not usually handled in lesfic.

Even though I found the story and characters interesting, my favorite part is what the author writes in her afterword:

I needed to address the issues that occur in our community that are kept secret. A lot of people still don’t believe that domestic violence occurs in lesbian relationships, or that women can have very meaningful relationships with each other. But the reality is that we meet, we fall in love, and we plan for the future, just like everyone else.


Curve magazine featured an article on the topic recently:

 http://www.curvemag-digital.com/curvemagazine/oct_14?pg=18#pg18


Another good title:


The cover to Fierce Overture does not do this wonderful story justice at all. I downloaded the title over a year ago when it was on sale for $1.24 and then forgot about it until after I had read other Gun Brooke titles and realized how much I liked their sincere and touching approach to life and love.

Fierce Overture has all my favorite romance novel themes: a May/December relationship, the realistic and troubling internal struggles of wondering "does she like me or does she not?" plus sweet and endearing meets cold and indifferent which, of course, is secretly hiding a heart of gold and protective instinct.

Both women are an interesting combination of contradictions. Noelle is a super-popular singer who has a reputation for being a party girl and diva when she's actually shy and caring. Helena, the icy CEO of the company that produces Noelle's albums, is (in stereotypical love story fashion) afraid to trust her own feelings or heart.

The dynamics between them is amazing and as unrealistic as it can sometimes be there are all-too-familiar real life sentences like this: "Noelle wondered how a person could radiate so much presence that a room seemed empty and cold once she left." Another passage, kind of heartbreaking, goes: "Helena was hot and cold, stubborn and compliant, kind and stern, and most of all, she was apparently less affected by Noelle than Noelle was by her."

Not every reader goes for the back-and-forth doubts and behaviors that go with two women being insecure in love. But those who either understand it or have experienced it in their own lives will gobble this up like candy.(

I'm sitting at my desk on a lunch break, thinking about dinner. Then I open my email and see an article on pasta alla norma and suddenly my lunch kind of pales next to the thought of this recipe and article:

"The tomatoes now are the best they'll be all season," says Joe Pasqualetto, chef at Brooklyn Italian jewel box Rucola, gingerly digging through a bowl of rainbow-colored miniature heirlooms. "And eggplants are at their height, too. That's why this dish, to me, is perfect for right now."

He's talking about pasta alla norma, the classic Sicilian recipe for pasta in tomato-eggplant sauce, spiked liberally with garlic and fresh basil and topped with a dusting of hard, salty cheese. Named in honor of Vincenzo Bellini's opera Norma, the pasta is a quintessential entry in the pantheon of nonna-style dishes that made it to America.

Read more: http://www.tastingtable.com/entry_detail/national/17960/Video_Rucola_Chef_Joe_Pasqualetto_on_How_to_Make_Pasta_Alla.htm#ixzz3EoiFNKSD

As much as I love food, I love pictures of food even better. I also love eggplant, which I think sometimes gets a bad rap. Truly, it deserves more praise. Atlanta Magazine thinks so too:

http://www.atlantamagazine.com/dining-news/if-you-dont-love-eggplant-please-try-harder2/

Though you wouldn't know it from the cover, Death After Life is an emotionally moving and often intelligent read. It's (no surprise here) a zombie novel, but not just any zombie novel. Using a clever twist, writer John Evans injects the plot with a virus that slows America down considerably, but doesn't completely immobilize it.

Virus Control Cops control events and people ("there is no cure," billboards constantly remind people wherever they go) and there are euthanasia centers for ill and elderly people who might ("might" is used very loosely by the doctors who work at them) be vulnerable to infection, no matter that they haven't been bitten yet.

The economy has tanked, only the rich have money (which they keep  as cash, stashed in secret locations) and citizens risk going out for drinking and dancing most every night, desperate to find pleasure in activities that used to make them feel good. People still go to the movies as well, but finding enjoyment in anything (everyday things or not) is not so easy and numbness has become a way of life. Often, it's difficult to separate the zombies from the humans.

Death After Life is definitely well-written and more than worth than 99 cents it costs to download through Amazon. The problem is how disturbing it is...not so much in the violence (though that's hard to take) but in how eerily life manages to go on as close to "business as usual" during this particular zombie apocalypse.

Somehow it all reminds me of a quote by singer Zola Jesus, who said in an interview not too long ago:

"I want to write songs about things that are important, like why we're here, what the future holds and the apocalypse. Maybe the apocalypse has already started. If you look around in America, there's a lot of sadness and a lot of suffering. Most people turn a blind eye to it. I want people to come to terms with it." -Zola Jesus

 

In a way I much prefer the 1950s and 60s pulp fiction (even the sadder ones) to (most) modern lesbian fiction where romance can be over the top (and unrequited love always turns out to be requited), every woman the main character meets (even in a small town) just happens to also be a lesbian (statistically, that's almost impossible) and being gay is no big deal (how nice that would be.) 

 

The older I get, the more I realize reality is better for your heart than daydreaming ever could be. And in pulp fiction, there is very little daydreaming going on.

It often has a much more steady grasp of how hard it is to meet someone who would be a true kindred spirit in love and friendship. And the inner struggles (substitute the much smaller society of a conservative family for early 1960s America) echo the circumstances some women still find themselves in, even here in 2014. That alone can be comforting.

 

Another useful dose of reality with the pulps is how one-sided love is treated. The futility of it is eventually exposed, as is the idea that it's more like illness than love…to like someone until your heart aches…especially when that someone doesn’t even know you beyond a name and a face and you are absolutely meaningless to them in any way that counts.

 

Sloane Britain, who edited and wrote for a small publishing company called Midwood Tower in the early 1960s, did this very well in These Curious Pleasures. Her main character not only gets over her unrequited feelings, she goes on to meet someone who is able to love her back.

 

The writing is crisper, less nauseating in its sentimentality and more sincere, plus the universality (straight or gay, man or woman can relate) of feelings is pleasantly surprising. Some of the best passages from one particularly strong example (Valerie Taylor's Unlike Others) include:

 

-There’s no point in owning a double bed if you have to sleep alone.

-But she knew better. You couldn't tell the truth to straight people, ever; the best you could hope for was tolerance without understanding. They saw the different ones as emotionally retarded or, worse, guilty of some nameless sin against society.

 -Still vivid in her own mind were the twelve years of her misery: guilt, worry, daydreaming, trying to find out from books what no one would tell her.

 -She unbuttoned her blouse and tossed it into the hamper. I don't seduce teen-agers, she continued her mental inventory, I don't pick people up, I'm not promiscuous. I tell the truth and pay my bills promptly. I do an honest day's work in return for my pay. They ought to have a better name for people like me.

-If you have enough love, you don't need psychiatry.

 

-...but there were things that friendship didn't cover. She needed someone to dedicate herself to, someone to become involved with. She needed to be first with someone.

 -An office, like a home, has a climate of its own. It's dominated by the emotional content of the people who spend their time there.

- But even more than any physical relationship she wanted somebody who would come first in her life. A girl who would be more important to her than anything else in the world, a love that was emotional and spiritual as well as physical

-You've got it bad, she thought scornfully. Where do you think it'll get you? Carrying the torch for a girl who doesn't even know the score. How adolescent can you get?

 

-The solution was to find a good steady girl, who wasn't frigid or alcoholic or any more neurotic than the average run of human beings. Somebody warm and intelligent who would be glad to settle down and make a home. This would be about as easy as finding uranium in the back yard.

 

Valerie Taylor's novels ended up happily more than not, especially compared to her contemporaries at the time she was writing. She became instrumental in helping start one of the first equality rights groups in the country and in 1965 she met and fell in love with the woman with whom she'd spend the next decade. 

 

When her partner wound up seriously ill in the hospital, Taylor was not allowed to visit her and never got to say goodbye to her before she died. Heartbreaking incidents like that still happen to this day and is one reason gay people fight so hard for the most basic of rights. I can think of fewer things more tragic than to be denied the chance to be with your loved one when you most need each other.

Sometimes, the way people see us is not the person we are inside. We may appear idiotic, unattractive (I refuse to use the word "ugly" because it is such a mean, nasty word), even pointless. 

We may seem that way because we are just so bad at human interaction. We'd be better off never having to be around other people and yet we actually do like them. What we end up doing is not always what we set out to do. We try to fake it until we make it and often come up short.

I used to think having good intentions was enough but now I realize that's just not true. People aren't mind readers, they only have our actions to go by. 

They don't know the reason we might not be able to talk coherently with them is because we like them, not because we don't. It's always been hard for me to grasp (and frustrating) that the more I care about someone or something, the more I tend to flub what I most want to go well.

Terrified of saying something stupid, we can avoid them completely and be rude without meaning to be. There are occasions when it feels like I have lost the will to try with certain people because I realize (hopefully, not too late) that they just don't care for me and we are never going to be friends. I learned in high school the horrible consequences of trying too hard to win someone over.

Ever since I was a little girl I've been most comfortable away from others. Teachers tried to help and my parents were always telling me to stop reading and go out and play. I didn't like the real world, only the one in between the pages of a book.

When I was about ten years old, my grandfather put a copy of Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends & Influence People in my hands. Whether breaking out into Elvis songs or grabbing an unsuspecting dance partner out on the floor, he had a way about him that suggested there was no one he was not comfortable being around, at home or parties. He could have written the book himself.

I didn't want to disappoint him so I did end up reading it, though I honestly don't think it helped much. I don't want to "win" friends or influence anyone. I just want to feel comfortable around people and not have to fake a way past my shyness, which I still have to this day.
  
(p.s. By "we," I really mean me. Most people I know have their acts together and if they don't they're doing a great of job of pretending they do.)