California State University Dominguez Hills’ R+J (2023)

It was always my intent to incorporate theatre and film reviews to Read House Review. While I could go back and begin with my very first film experiences as a child – which are already covered in my original teaching philosophy – or my first theatre experience with UCSB’s She Stoops To Conquer, I decided

Nicole LePera’s How To Do The Work

Instead of listening to the body – after all, symptoms are it’s way of communicating with us – we seek to silence it. How To Do The Work seemed to me like New-Age Hippy psychology. I have spent the last few years really critically reviewing contemporary psychology trends, so I expected a lot of this

Hotel (2001)

Wikipedia states this is a “British-Italian comedy” and a “horror-thriller” which I find as an amusing attempt at stating that it’s a genre defying film. Written and directed by Mike Figgs, Hotel (2001) does not have the cult following that it deserves. I found myself intrigued and repelled by this film enough to let it

Alexandra Solomon’s Taking Sexy Back

Although sex is something you (usually) experience with another person, your sexuality is yours. Alexandra Solomon’s Taking Sexy Back is a very reaffirming book on the complicated nature of women’s sexuality. Having surveyed quite a few of the books within this genre, I find her to be reasonable but a little generic. However, I did

The State of Affairs

“But when we reduce the conversation to simply passing judgment, we are left with no conversation at all.” One of the most controversial books in the last two decades, Ether Perel’s The State of Affairs quickly joined Mating in Captivity on my bookshelf. Her first book primarily addressed sexuality in the twenty-first century. The State

Esther Perel’s Mating in Captivity

“Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.” Reviewing Esther Perel’s Mating in Captivity feels a little like reviewing anything written by Brené Brown. Alas, it will not be a perfect review, so I may as well confront it directly. It’s more than a little

Ian Kerner’s She Comes First

I found Ian Kerner’s She Comes First at a Book Off store. It had been on my reading list since Pauline Réage’s Story of O inspired me to add more risqué books to my book shelf. To give you a brief summary: Kerner literally dumbs down the art of cunnilingus for the novice apprentice and

Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room

“But language is wine upon his lips.” This review will definitely not do Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room justice. Norton Critical Editions typically include excepts, if not complete, literary reviews of the text. I have to make the distinction between the layman’s reviews that I write for Read House Review and the type of literary reviews

Lara Adrian’s Midnight Breed Series

Lara Adrian’s Midnight Breed Series is one of the longest book series that I’ve been a great fan of reading. I started with Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. Then, I moved on to reading Sherrilyn Kenyon’s The Dark-Hunter novels. I didn’t get too far into Kenyon’s work; she’s got so many books out! Also, there’s

Gary Chapman’s Things I Wish I’d Known Before We Got Married

I went through a phase recently in which I read a lot of relational books, and I think I may return to that trend at some point because it’s the one area in contemporary literature that I think I actually quite enjoy. My interest was partly driven by my own consideration of the value and