I remember once, in high school — it was just after French class, not that that matters — I got in a conversation with two or three other girls who were earnestly trying to convince me that the female orgasm couldn’t have been invented until the Renaissance. No way, they said, were ladies having a good time in the Middle Ages or before. I tried just as earnestly to talk them out of it, though this was before I read Shakespeare (“Graze on my lips, or if those wells be dry, stray lower where the pleasant fountains lie”) or Chaucer or any of those bawdy old reprobates who had known any number of enthusiastic women in their days.

I’m remembering this as I re-read Peter S. Beagle’s book The Folk of the Air, wherein one character is occasionally possessed by a ninth century Viking named Egil. “Egil didn’t think much of our civilization, the little he saw of it. He thought it was probably all right, for people who didn’t really care a lot about anything.”

Yes, quite right, I thought when I read this. I don’t much care about anything, none of us do, not like people used to do. And I bet it all comes down to how much cynicism we have now, how jaded the world is getting as civilization goes on repeating, not like how things must have felt when all the love-and-springtime metaphors were brand new.

Only now I’m realizing of course that’s nonsense. Cynicism isn’t new, and love-and-springtime metaphors were old the second someone first said them. I don’t go around feeling all the time because I haven’t had to, yet; you wait until things start happening to me and then I’ll be feeling all over the place.

It’s just like that old argument about the orgasms. It’s just like the first time you discover music or sex or the pleasure of laughing with your friends and you think whatever your parents knew was a dim shadow of this, this thing you’ve found out all on your own. I don’t think people change so much from era to era. I don’t think we change at all.

Incidentally, The Folk of the Air is a very good book that I think stemmed from ideas for several different very good books. You’ll like it if you are or ever were very into the Renaissance Faire and can still think of it without blushing for yourself. It also has a paragraph I’ve been quoting for years, a goddess talking about humanity, as follows:

“There is nothing like you anywhere among all the stones in the sky, do you realize that? You are the wonder of the cosmos, possibly for embarrassing reasons, but anyway a wonder. You are the home of hunger and boredom, and I roll in you like a dog.”

I just finished reading Blue Latitudes, Tony Horwitz’s nonfiction best seller about Captain Cook. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Horwitz presents a ton of information about Cook, from his globe-encompassing routes to small details about the man (Cook was tall, and did not seem to understand the point of religion). He also travels to many of Cook’s landing sites, comparing Cook’s first impressions of places like Tahiti and Hawaii to the modern day islands, noting how colonization and Christianity have changed island cultures almost beyond recognition.

Lest you think this book is dry, this is the paragraph where I tell you about Roger, the English ex-pat who lives in Australia and follows Horwitz around on his journey, drinking and attempting to “pull crumpet.” Roger’s comedic booze-and-babe commentary is so well-timed that you feel he must have been invented by the author, or at least greatly rewritten from the original. He seems like the imagined Brad Pitt to Horwitz’s humble Edward Norton: a handsome, rugged man’s man who can go off and have man-fun while Horwitz schleps from Cook scholar to Cook scholar. “He was tall and broad-shouldered, with sun-streaked blond curls, and blue eyes set in a perpetually tanned face,” Horwitz writes breathlessly.

And Roger gets to say all the things Horowitz can only hint at. After a page of restrained description of modern Tahitian slums, tense with the attempt at being non-judgmental, Horwitz gives way to Roger’s complete disregard for political correctness. “It’s an utter shitbox,” Roger says. “The architects who designed this town must have been unemployable anywhere else.”

Strengthening the “imaginary friend” theory, Roger does not manage to pull crumpet until the epilogue, despite his sun-streaked curls. After all, you can’t have your imaginary friend leaving you to roll on the beach with some island princess. You’ve got to have him with you to provide wry, occasionally slurred commentary.

In some ways, Roger is the crew to Horwitz’s Captain Cook. Cook referred to his crew as “the People,” and like Roger, the People were cheerfully, drunkenly lecherous, only kept in line through great exertions on Cook’s part. Then again, Cook himself was not above a souse-up now and then. “Can we make a friend more welcome than by setting before him the best liquor in our possession?” he wrote in his journal.

I heartily agree, and that is why all guests to our home are offered glasses of the most expensive bottle of two-buck Chuck money can buy.

Blue Latitudes is an excellent combination of armchair travel and history. You might also like it if you like some of the more hapless characters in Christopher Moore books.

Before I lost the book, I was reading Michele’s copy of Eclipse, the third in a series of vampire/werewolf/teen novels by Stephanie Meyer that we both enjoy. (The first two were Twilight and New Moon.)

The above description (vampire/werewolf/teen) is intentional: in these books, teenage girls really are the third monster. The books chronicle the love triangle between a teen girl, the vampire she loves and the werewolf who loves her. The vampire loves her back, so there are a lot of scenes where they almost kiss, or kiss a little. Except he also wants to eat her and it takes all his self control to keep from ripping her heart out at any moment; if they kiss too much he is liable to lose control and kill her. This means love scenes generally go:

[KISS!]

Vampire: Knock it off!

Girl: Ooh, sorry. I am bad.

As the reader is frequently reminded, if the girl can’t keep her immense attractive powers in check, the vampire will do her some serious violence. And it will be all her fault for being just too tempting. Does this rationale sound familiar? You may have heard rapists using it. She should never have worn that dress/walked down that street/tried to kiss her vampire boyfriend. It was all her fault.

Now, the werewolf does not want to eat her. But he is new to the werewolfing game, and it is all too easy for him to lose control, turn into a wolf, and attack whoever is nearest. Which means she better not make him mad! Again, sound familiar? Domestic violence, anyone? She made him so mad, he just couldn’t help beating her up/rending her with his fangs and claws. It was all her fault.

I feel a little sick for loving these books so much, but I really enjoy the main character in spite of her manifest flaws. Other than her relationships with supernatural guys, she is sane, logical and responsible. She does her homework and tries not to make her parents worry. It’s pleasant to spend time with such a nice, normal girl.

In short, I cannot help reading these books. The main character is too darn likeable. It is all her fault.

You’ll enjoy this series if you like the supernatural sex appeal in early Anita Blake novels, the sexual tension between Buffy and Angel, or rationalizing violence against women. You might also like them if you really enjoy Anne’s sensible and slightly boring character in Persuasion, but I make no promises.