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In Paperback
Now! Thursday July 28th/Friday 29th: Tracy on BBC-5's Up All Night 9:30 pm Eastern USA/2:30 am GMT with Dr. Petra and Dotun Read an excerpt |
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| Tuesday, May 24, 2005 Just heard from Melissa Gira who reviewed the Philosophy show here: http://www.sacredwhore.org/mobwhorelog/index.html "venereal disease (how quaint, the nod to the Goddess, when honey, those of us in the know have been calling them STI's like all the other healthcare professionals for at least the past half a decade)" She's got a point? Though I must be a little old-fashioned because they're still STDs to me. Monday, May 23, 2005 In her Roving Philosophical report, Amy Standen talks to two sex workers, Melissa Gira and Tracy Quan... Last week, I did a short interview for this radio show, Philosophy Talk on KALW in San Francisco... I'm listening to it for the first time as I blog. These guys John and Ken sound like my dad's friends or something, sitting around the kitchen table. Professor Debra's got some good points to make but I think she oversimplifies the call girl's lot: does she understand how HARD it is to be a call girl? What it takes? These professor types seem to think it's easy to be a call girl on Park Ave but horrible to be a streetwalker in the Third World, just like that. If you have (or want) Real Player, if you like Ella Fitzgerald (!)... listen here: http://www.philosophytalk.org/pastShows/Prostitution.htm Personally, I think prostitution can be justified simply on the grounds that "Love For Sale" would never have been composed if we didn't exist. AND... Ella would never have recorded it. Just my opinion. (How many fabulous songs have been written about philosophy professors anyway?) Think of all the statues and paintings prostitutes have posed for. To be anti-prostitute is, quite simply, uncivilised and anti-art. LOVE LOVE LOVE the gal from Brazil who called into the show! Quite an interesting conversation. Nice show. Weird show. Glad I did it. What I'm Reading Right Now? Patrick Graham's excellent piece on Sunni issues which discusses Sunni-Shia intermarriage, among other things: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/weekinreview/22graham.html Daphna Golan-Agnon's memoir, Next Year in Jerusalem: Everyday Life in a Divided Land: http://www.thenewpress.com/books/jerusalem.htm Originally appeared in Hebrew as "Where Am In This Story?" New Press has just published a translation with the Jerusalem title. What's striking about Daphna's story: how totally suppressed this point of view is in the US where we prefer to see things in terms of black and white, Arab versus Jew or Sunni versus Shia. Where we spent decades pretending that blacks and whites weren't having sex -- don't get me started -- and having laws against miscegenation. The fear of miscegenation is alive and unwell, in our interpretation of the news and perhaps, who knows, in our ideas about foreign policy. But I'm also enjoying this new mummy-lit offering by Rosie Milne, a Hong Kong author writing about London... about which, more soon: Holding the Baby There's only so much of this current events stuff a girl can take. Happy endings have a role to play in our lives. And libraries. Even if they're often fictional. Thursday, May 19, 2005 Nomi Prins (author of Other People's Money and a brilliant ex-banker) sheds new light on the concept of Investment Dating. Read it here! The next Relationship Guru?? Portfolio Dating: http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-oppri194265639may19,0,5017494.story Tuesday, May 17, 2005 Whistler, BC: Hello Tuesday Tennis Readers! I recently spoke to the TUESDAY TENNIS book group in Whistler, BC. Thanks to the initiative of Paula Shackleton who runs the Book Buffet website. We did this via speakerphone -- my first book group event -- and I enjoyed it immensely. I can't really keep up with Paula's many initiatives... there's a lot going on and "I don't know how she does it" But she does have this fantastic site and she has posted the Coming Attractions of our Book Buffet interview on her Whistler Reads BLOG. I'll post the finished interview in a strategic spot when it's ready. Thanks for reading this, er, very inactive blog. I can't believe it's been six weeks since my last effort. Now that "Married Call Girl" is on its way to becoming a real book, I expect to be blogging with more frequency. Book Buffet: www.bookbuffet.com Coming Attractions: http://www.bookbuffet.com/wp/?p=3 |