Words matters ...

First of all "Happy New Year" ... I know I'm a bit late with my well wishing, but I was otherwise engaged ... the time around Christmas and New Year is after all a time for running around in circles with family and friends. I sometimes wonder if perhaps we would enjoy the "getting together" more if we stretched it over just a few more weeks!

I probably haven't thought that through .... it is after all precisely the Christmas and New Years "thing" that get everybody to put priority on the "Getting Together" ... at the same time!    

Anyway here we are in the year of 2013 ... I'm not going to join the journalists and commentators in the newspapers and on TV in listing wishes for the new year .... and I'm not going to let you in on my New Year resolutions .. I'm quite sure that it won't be of any particular interest to you even if I do think that words matter a great deal.

But I am going to give you a few choice words anyway ... wife, partner, my better half, my significant other, my heart, my soul, my happiness, the joy of my life .... do you get it? I'm not trying to talk in riddles here I'm just giving you an intro to this Blog in HOFFpost that I found quit catching ... come back here when you have read it.

It's not that I would actually take offence if anyone called my partner "my friend" ....  I do think that just about anybody would know that she is more like the girl than the friend in girlfriend ... if you get my meaning, but I can't help wondering if the words "partner" or "wife" is really the most adequate term to use about a committed lesbian relationship .... I mean we could after all be talking "business partner" and wife ... well somehow it's just so related to the word husband that I do wonder if this is really the most suitable word to express the commitment and recognition  ?

I guess that it is an individual thing how we choose to describe our relationships in words .... at the moment I haven't got a finite opinion, I'm leaning towards "spouse" or "life partner", but I do like "girlfriend" a lot too ... it's kind of cool if perhaps not political correct!

On the other hand ;-) it's the little things in life that makes the greatest differences but I don't necessarily think that those little things are always words.

Anyway we are here for the reading not the wording so let me get you up to speed with my current reading. I just finished "Trick of the Dark" by Val McDermid - I'm told that this is one of the few novels besides the Lindsay Gordon mysteries that McDermid has penned with lesbian protagonists. I found it to be quit an enjoyable read even if it's not one to have you searching for you girlfriends hand to hold at night.... hey I'm talking the absence of drama/horror here not ....

Furthermore I'm close to finishing Emma Donoghue's "Landing". This is "gay friendly" too - as in the romance of a long distance relationship between to women - it's been a smooth reading so far .... I'm still hoping for a LHEA ending, but you can never be quite sure when you leave the world of strictly lesfic romance behind and venture towards general fiction .... even if "Landing" seems to be somewhere in the middle.

Somewhere in between these books I've been looking in on Radclyffe's "Tomorrow's Promise", and I dipped my toes in "Love's Melody lost", but this last fic is not one I ever really acquired a taste for ... I don't "get" why the blind pianist "Graham" (one of the two lesbian main protagonists) should be described quit so manish. On the other hand I do take a fancy to Adrienne the female navy officer in dress whites that we get antiquated with in "Tomorrow's Promise".

I also stole a glance at Fingersmith's "Beginnings". This is one of those "love never dies" kind of stories of girls meeting as kids and becoming best friends, getting separated ... just so that they can find each other again years later through an angsty story that we get to follow ... I like it ;-) and if time hadn't run out on me last night I would also have looked in on French and Fry in "Cooking on High" by Creme Brulee ... don't miss the chance to get in this mix of drama and cooking fumes ... it's very enjoyable !