I'm listening to Pink Floyd's latest release Endless River (it's mostly instrumental and I love the "comforting sway of swelling synthesizers and the soaring Gilmour guitar that are sometimes unexpectedly moving"* ) while reading a sweet and likable novel called The Music of Mary Frances. The best therapy for when I'm down...low-key music and a good book. Pitchfork refers to the album as being "lazy" at times, but that's why I like having Endless River in the background as I read. If it were too commanding I wouldn't be able to concentrate.

* allmusic.com

I think about how much I love anything zombie and I wonder if it has something to do with the deadness inside of me that comes to my aid and surfaces during trying times. 

I see someone I like (whom I'm not supposed to) and I steel myself so well (it's taken time, but I think I've perfected it) I am almost positive the feelings are gone...even if they aren't really. With enough determination and acting, you can even convince yourself you no longer care.

The Living Dead 2 (as well as its predecessor The Living Dead) is full of high quality writing, sometimes bordering on beautiful. For me, the stories that appeal most are the ones that combine suffering with survival, even if that survival comes with the high cost of detachment. 

For more perspective on zombie fiction and The Living Dead anthology read here:

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/09/zombie-round-table-what-is-the-appeal-of-zombie-fiction

Sunday stuff...

Oh my gosh! So true...from today's New York Times:

|                                   

We Now Conclude Our Broadcast Day

Recalling the Imperfect Radio and TV Reception of the Past

By DANA JENNINGSDEC. 19, 2014

Inside

Photo

Remember when you had to wait for the TV to warm up before you could watch it? Credit Getty Images

Continue reading the main story

Also from today's New York Times:

Many years ago, when I was an innocent lamb making my first appearance on a right-wing radio talk show, the host asked, “If you don’t believe in God, what’s to stop you from committing murder?” I blurted out, “It’s never actually occurred to me to murder anyone.”

Even though I believe in God, it's long irked me that some people think atheists aren't moral people. If anything, a person not believing in God (and therefore possible eternal damnation in Hell) and still doing the right thing means she's doing the right thing for the right reason, not because of some fear of punishment:

read more here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/books/review/living-the-secular-life-by-phil-zuckerman.html

Okay, so I am addicted to Google Play Books and discovered a book by Havelock Ellis that has some rather interesting insights on sex. 

I don’t know to how to quote what I found intriguing without sounding rather crude (the book is surprisingly graphic for the late 19th century). In less crude terms, I’ll say what I think Ellis is saying and that is this: sex may seem highly biological and messy (he uses “evacuation” instead of the much more common modern term that also starts with “e”) but it has to be more if it comes with such a high intensity of emotion.

I can't believe how many times I've been experiencing something in my own life and then pick up a book that I have just started reading  and it's like the passage was meant for me to see:

The relation of love to pain is one of the most difficult problems...why is it that love inflicts, and even seeks to inflict, pain? Why is it that love suffers pain and even seeks to suffer it?

Picking up the book to read more of the "Love and Pain" chapter from one of this books I find myself more fascinated with the non-personal related aspects of it all and get sucked into the leaning and human interest parts. Reading and learning has so often been able to pull me out of myself and realize how universal alienation can be.

I am so glad I still have more Kayla Bashe stories to read. She is an amazing author and I love the way her characters care about each other and touch readers' hearts.

Graveyard Sparrow offers intriguing mystery, but it is the love that blossoms between Katriona and Anthea that pulls you into the story, head over heels. Whether they are about loneliness or love, so many of the passages get it just right:

--It was hard enough to interact with people in the first place. But when you weren't sure what they wanted to share and what they were hiding, interaction became nearly impossible.

--She thought she wanted Anthea around for the rest of her life. If she holds onto me any longer, people will think we’re betrothed, Anthea thought.

Also a huge plus is that Graveyard Sparrow takes place during the Regency era and, for all its dark side, has a charm and character well-suited to its time. This is a must-read for anyone who likes their romance chaste and their plots compelling. :)

Except for reading Elle for the book reviews, most of my adult life I have shied away from fashion magazines, not because of the fashion itself (though I know nothing about nor care for it that much) but because of the sex articles.

The degree to which some details are shared doesn't offend me (to each her own, right?) so much as it makes me feel completely inadequate and unadultlike. Sometimes, I feel as clueless as I did as a pre-teen.

Growing up, I used to think it was cute that my mom had to spell out words like "bra" and "sex," until, looking back now, I realized I knew little about either because they were two words that dare not ever speak their full name in our house.

I stopped believing in the stork around the same time I stopped believing in Santa, but still I had no clue about sex (no clue!) until middle school. I guess I thought babies popped up from flowers like in an Anne Geddes photo shoot or that two adults (as the narrator in Paul Zindel's Pigman imagines about his parents) bumped into each other accidentally in the bedroom and (bam!) a baby would soon be on its way into the world.

Just when it seemed it was time for my parents to finally explain, to finally explain it for real, "family life" (that was what they called it in the early 80s in my middle school) came along and 7th grade health class turned the silliest possible rumors about sex (you don't even want to know what some of the kids were saying) into sterile, sometimes uncomfortable, biological truths.

I had read a forbidden copy of Forever before middle school, but I honestly didn't get what the two characters did together. I thought it sounded funny more than anything else. It seemed about as romantic as a science experiment with rabbits gone horribly wrong.

My parents meant well, I'm sure, as they were both shy and sheltering when it came to that other "s" word. But I doubt they would have been able to get away with that approach these days. It seems like the age kids find out about sex (though hopefully aren't actually having it) gets younger every year.

My mother would still never dare talk about sex, or "s-e-x," with me now and not just because there's nothing to talk about and I would be mortified to, even if there were. Just as she doesn't seem to truly believe (much less accept) I'm gay, no matter that it's been almost twenty five years since I tried to come out, she seems to believe if you don't talk about something, it doesn't exist.

Maybe I've picked up some of that along the way because instead of reading the articles with interest, I kind of snap through the pages fast until it feels safe again to look at the magazine. How adult is that?