Reading

What are you reading right now? I'm in the middle of Mansfield Park, which I've been reading on my cell phone (which has internet access). Not the best way to read books, but it works on the MAX train when I don't want to carry a book with me.

I just re-read all the Jane Austen novels except Northanger Abbey... well, I did read that in the last year, too.

Do any of you read Trollope? I'm going to get back into his novels but I'm not sure where to start.

I've never read any George Elliot. I tried reading Middlemarch, but it didn't grab me.

Books

I also just finished reading a self-help book, Passionate Marriage, which made me re-think a lot of my beliefs about intimate, committed relationships.

Basically, it explained to me what I have been doing to avoid intimacy and passion. Has anybody out there read any of David Schnarch's stuff? He has to have the ugliest last name ever.

I found the book by looking for a glbtq therapist in Portland. On one therapist's web page he mentioned that he was influenced by this guy. So I read an interview with Schnarch, and I bought the book and devoured it. I noticed that as I was getting to the end that I read it slower and slower. I didn't want it to end! Partly, I suppose because the vision it presented of healthy relationships was hopeful, but ending the book meant getting to work.

The book exclusively describes man-woman marriage, so I had to mentally translate at times. I'm not sure exactly how the dynamics play out in gay relationships, but I recognized enough of myself to have many a-ha! moments.

Of course, "...action without insight is impulsiveness, and insight without action is passivity." Or as a friend used to say: "Insight is cheap!"