The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Catherine Liszt

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

[Update: This book has certainly done more to spark conversation with friends and acquaintences than almost any other this year. Based on those conversations, this book should be considered a very high 3, a book that many people need to read, but it still remains a three because it does not demand re-reading.]

Monogamy is practically convenient but not morally required.

This book is a primer on consensual non-monogamous relationships. "Consensual" is notable because this differs from cheating, sex as trophy-hunting, promiscuity combined with self-loathing, or claiming to have an open relationship as an excuse to sleep around while keeping your partner from doing so. The Ethical Slut proposes that you consider seriously whether lifelong monogamous pair-bonding is the best way to meet your sexual, emotional, and practical needs in life. If not, the authors have recommendations for finding out what arrangement might best suit you.

At some point, the modern human being must confront the fact that our environment differs dramatically from the one in which our species evolved. It is unlikely that our neurochemistry is conducive to 50-year long monogamous relationships just because the average lifespan was not 50 years as recently as a century ago. Throughout human history we married early and at least one partner was likely to die young. "Til death do us part" means a lot more with modern medicine and hygiene.

Even accepting lifelong monogamy as an ideal, we frequently fail to live up to it. What percent of marriages will have no divorce or adultery in them? Many people are in non-monogamous relationships, only their partners have not told them yet. People who abhor promiscuity seem pretty accepting of serial monogamy, where you have at least as many partners but officially only one at a time.

The traditional family too is not terribly traditional. The modern nuclear family is rather unusual from a global or historical perspective. Two married adults and their offspring living alone? Beyond the frequent death of a parent, now replaced with divorce, families had broader kinship networks or closer ties to their communities. It is rather demanding on a marriage when that one other person has to be the perfect lover, provider, nurturer, conversationalist, parent, spouse, friend, and whatever else gets stacked on that one relationship.

The Ethical Slut is not just about sex. That is simply the biggest and hardest way that it suggests thinking beyond the pair-bond. If you can get past the assumption that one person must be everything to you in the bedroom, it seems more trivial to think about how you can expand your web of emotional support.

That assumption of monogamy is what much of the book argues against. It is something we are born into and generally accept uncritically. The frequent failures to succeed in a happy, monogamous life are taken as failures of the individual, not a question of whether it is the right model for everyone. If you have not considered the possibility of other ways of arranging your life, you have not really chosen your current way of life. It is unlikely that you will read this book and immediately set out to start swinging, but monogamy should be something you consciously accept or reject, not a default that you never need to think about. This is too important a part of your life to avoid thinking or talking about because it could be unseemly.

If your spouse comes home with this book, it is not a reason to panic. This is a good general relationship book, stressing the importance of communication, caring, respect, empathy, and working to build connections that improve the lives of everyone involved. They just don't assume that only two people are involved.

Non-monogamy demands more and more explicit communication because it transgresses the normal boundaries. You do not have those defaults to rely on. The book does not stress that this is just as important in monogamous relationships. Too often we assume that everyone else has the same assumptions that we do. Your spouse may not realize that you resent how little housework s/he does, or may not realize how much you do, or maybe you do not realize how much s/he does. One of the first points in the book is to stop assuming that anyone else is a mind reader or should just know that you are unhappy and what needs to be done to make you happy.

Talk. Communicate. Be honest and open. Respect each other. Figure out how you can get your needs met. And the authors venture to suggest that sleeping with other people might be a part of that. Or not.

Amazon link

Dan Savage's book has a section on people who swing to improve their marriages.

Tortoises by Jerry Walls

Rating - 2: not worth reading (skip it)

This book would be of use for the specialized purpose of providing a general introduction to land tortoises before further inquiry. It does not sufficiently meet the purposes for which it is labeled.

This entry in the "Basic Domestic Reptile & Amphibian Library" describes the various types of tortoises. Turtles with flippers and webbed feet live in the water; tortoises with elephant-link feet live on land. This distinction is not common in American Standard English. The book has many pictures, and it surveys all the major species of tortoises, including their different appearances and living patterns.

One message the book presents well is that you probably should not have a tortoise as a pet. Every page mentions difficulties in raising or breeding tortoises in captivity. They have specific diet and habitat needs, and your house and backyard are unlikely to accommodate them. It is tragic to take a creature that can live for more than a century and kill it in a few years because you do not know how to take care of it.

This book will not serve as a guide for how to raise a tortoise of your own. It has some comments about houses, heating lamps, and foods, but there are not enough specifics to act upon. You might use this to pick out what sort of tortoise you want and see it that would be feasible, but you will need another guide to keep it alive. That makes sense, given the range of tortoise habitats.

The writing level seems a bit high. The book is classified as a juvenile guide, but the second page says:

On each side of the vertebral row and between the marginals is a row of large costals (often but less familiarly called pleurals). Thus the marginals are paired scutes and so are the costals. In some tortoises there is an unpaired cervical (also called nuchal) scute between the anteriormost marginals and directly over the center of the neck. The most posterior marginals on each side (over the tail) are the supracaudals, important scutes when they are fused into a single scute in a few species.

Perhaps today's children are better schooled in tortoise physiology than I was, but that seems like a harsh introduction. Conveniently, you can understand most of the book without knowing what a scute is or grasping the significance of paired versus singular pleurals.

Also, there are a lot of comments about and pictures of tortoises having sex. While far from salacious, know before you give this to your kids that there are several references to turtles having loud sex. There will be giggling and/or ewws, and there may be questions.

For my part, I could have used more close-up pictures of tortoise parts. The pictures do a great job with showing different shell shapes, colors, and patterns, but the differences in tortoise flesh are less dwelt upon. The legs look like they might have come from frogs, elephants, or armadillos, and the claws were often hard to see. I am perhaps alone in this curiosity about variances in tortoise flesh, but there is more to them than their shells.

Finally, tortoises are adorable. The babies are tiny and the adults are grumpy. Resist the urge to pick them up and take them home with you.

Amazon link

The same author wrote The Guide to Owning a Tortoise, which might be more of what you want if you want one. I have not read it.

Bipolar Disorder Demystified by Lana Castle

Rating - 2.5: parts of it are worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

This is closer to the first-person perspective on mental disorders that I was looking for. The first few chapters were of use to me, and mayhap something in the book will be of use to you. Odds are that you know someone who has some form of bipolar.

Ms. Castle takes a holistic approach to discussing bipolar disorder. She gives some personal perspective and goes on to describe mood disorders, therapy, drugs, and treatment options. She extends this to recommendations about how to eat, sleep, pray, and raise your children, which may go a bit far for some. Then again, people respond to different things, and a bit of imposition from the outside could help create stabilizing life patterns.

A problem for the book is a lot of "not" without tying it all back together. Being bipolar is neither A nor B; it is not caused by C or D; neither E nor F is the silver bullet solution. There are several sections of FAQ/dispelling myths, but they are largely phrased as "why extreme opinion X is an incomplete picture." I am debating whether this is ironic or apt given the subject.

The goal, stated variously, is to achieve a sort of balance. Some combination of drugs and/or group therapy and/or positive visualization and/or family support and/or ... can keep one from careening to destructive extremes. There is not, however, a clear picture of what is necessary or sufficient for a problem or solution. Many nots, many fragments, limited integration.

I am hesitant to accept some numbers put forth in the book. Besides the skepticism you should have for statistics from advocates, I work with survey data, so I wonder about the claim that a third of Americans have some form of bipolar disorder. On a second thought, this could be true by definition. Under a normal population distribution, about one third of the population falls one standard deviation or more from the mean on any axis. If we call one deviation "mild bipolar disorder," two deviations "bipolar," and three "acute bipolar disorder," then we should expect about one-third, five percent, and one percent to fall into each of those categories.

Of course, "mild bipolar disorder" seems like a fair description of a lot of people anyways. Occasional high highs and low lows, usually with more low than high and possibly switching rapidly between them? The definition seems nebulous enough to be stretched at the margins, without touching the core of people who really do have emotional problems they are biologically incapable of controlling on their own.

I would treat this as a reference book. I have no idea if it is a particularly good one, as I have little knowledge in the field. When its holistic approach touches other fields (diet, exercise), the recommendations are not far from the reigning orthodoxies, so you could use this as a summary or just consult a more focused resource.

Amazon link

Heavy Metal and You by Christopher Krovatin

Rating - 4: worth reading multiple times (buy it)

Rating - 3.5: worth reading, parts worth re-reading (borrow or buy it)

Stargirl for boys, from Stargirl's perspective. If Stargirl were a boy. And a metalhead. Who got wasted and swore a lot.

Slayer-loving boy meets Shakespeare-loving girl. Alone together, they're great. In his world, she cannot deal with the anger and lack of sobriety. In her world, he cannot deal with the phoniness. Why does he need to be the one to give up himself to fit her better?

When you read Stargirl, you want to smack the lad. Really, what is wrong with him? "I love you because you are unique and special, I just wish you were more like everyone else"? Here, you get that from the perspective of the one giving up things for his beloved, so you really want to smack her. Stop being mean to our poor, delicate metalhead; we want to shelter and protect the boy with the spiked bracelets.

What comes more to mind is an old Onion article, "Girlfriend Changes Man Into Someone She's Not Interested In."

It is a simple and brief story, about 180 pages. You will be driven to keep reading, particularly as things start to go off the rails. We start with unalloyed joys and work our way through increasing pangs as she seeks less him in them.

The voice and events are genuine. The voice because it is Mr. Krovatin's, as the story might well be. Let us speak of the voice first. It is more expressive and introspective than you are likely to expect from a metalhead. It shows great sensitivity and worries that lie hidden beneath the surface. It assumes that ignoring class, drinking, and making an ass of yourself are perfectly normal aspects of life. In short, it is a teenage boy.

You pick the thing that defines you. At some point in your youth, you latch onto something that will be a driving force in much of your life, be it a sport, fashion, or science fiction. For many, music is a significant force if not the primary one. Each brings with it an entire identity package, based on the subculture that adopted that focus. For some, this will be a passing phase in life, but for that time at least it really is central to one's identity. This is a good example and explanation.

The events are probably familiar to you: the flush of first infatuation, the flow of a developing relationship, the rise of conflicts. Notable here are the small barbs, the unthinking cruelties of "things we need to fix about you." The role of expectations is related, the details and responses you assume the other person knows. Giving up smoking hearkens back to the early question about Santa Claus: there is a correct response in her view of how this relationship works, and it is his job to guess it.

Two friendship-related bits bear mentioning as well, with reference to other titles. When a new romance starts, friends are usually jettisoned to make time. That is explicit here, in the way it was not in Stephenie Meyer. It is apparent well before the altercation at the end, making Sam a more aware character than Bella.

That altercation is the other bit, which immediately reminded me of a similar scene from An Abundance of Katherines. For the ladies in the audience, yes, that is the rare but genuine discussion of male emotions. Upfront, direct, and confrontational: you work out who was a jerk, why, and can we not do that again? And then you go back to talking about what you did with each other's moms last night.

*.5 ratings must be explained. In this case, the book is worth re-reading, but I plan to skip the music descriptions, as one might skip the sections on Sumerian linguistics while re-reading Snow Crash. The attention to detail is interesting and relevant to the characters, but unless you care about the details involved, you can mentally substitute "Sam talks about music here" without losing any of the story. What is important is that something is important to him. Update: Enough of them are worth re-reading, and a few are integral. There is not enough that is skim-able to make it a 3.5. My mind is hereby changed.

Personally, I am not terribly metal. I never had a need for that. I found Holden Caulfield useless too, so perhaps Mr. Krovatin and I would not get along well. (I get the point, I just don't need it in my life.)

Final note: I like the use of play, pause, and rewind to indicate the main story, asides, and flashbacks. It works nicely. As does the appearance of the title in the book.

Amazon link
Author's MySpace

Updating with a comment I forgot to make: The book may not age well due to pop culture references. The explanations of heavy metal are sufficiently thorough, but I think Chris Krovatin would like to live in a world where, twenty years from now, no one will be able to understand the term "Avril-y."