February Book File: Seduction (or how I want to seduce my idols)

I swear this is a list of Valentine's inspired books to get the "unconnected" hooked up. Let's point the direction of a Cupid-esque arrow to:

Lady Chatterley's Lover
by D.H. Lawerence

Banned as pornography until the 1960's, Lady Chatterley's Lover was the book I carried around in my 1990's sexual youth. The impeccable style of Lawrence will bring any lady to her knees.

SYNOPSIS
Bold, passionate, and erotic, Lady Chatterley's Lover is a truly classic novel of the twentieth century.
Trapped in a rigid aristocratic marriage and sequestered away on the Chatterley estate, Constance Chatterley is irresistibly drawn to Mellors, the gamekeeper, whose unihibited sexuality and common touch provide a welcome panacea to her husband's neglect. Lyric and beautiful, D.H. Lawrence's paean to sexual love imprisoned by sterile intellectuality and class consciousness has earned its place as one of the most sensual stories ever told.-B&N


The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists
Neil Strauss


The packaging alone will make one feel as if a new bible had been found. Unfortunately, the information loaded into this book is for thefts of the heart and criminals of the love underworld. Yet, for any Brunette or style agent alike, the information is a great defense against the Pickup Artist. Know the game, hustler!

In another great blog, The Dolly at The Truth about Cocks and Dolls, has a short post on PUA (Pick-up Artists).

From the Publisher
In dozens of cities around the world, men meet in underground "lairs" to discuss tactics and strategies for picking up women. Afterwards, they venture into the "field"-bars and clubs-and practice, questing after the holy grail: the perfect girl. Under a pseudonym, New York Times bestselling author Neil Strauss ventured into this bizarre subculture, traveling around the world and meeting the world's greatest seducers, men who claim to have found the combination to unlock a woman's legs-and her heart. There is Ross Jefferies, a master hypnotist on whom Tom Cruise's Magnolia character was based; Mystery, an illusionist who charms showgirls and celebrities; Rick H., a millionaire who turns straight-laced women into bisexual party girls; and Randall P., a spiritualist so powerful that women actually pay him to learn how to better pleasure him.
The Game chronicles Strauss's adventures (and misadventures) undercover in this clandestine world of men who refuse to let traditional rules of dating doom them to unfulfilled lives. Along the way, there are riveting, and often disturbing, profiles of the men who have dedicated their lives to the game-and disciples who will stop at nothing to learn from them. The Game is a journey into a world that most women fear and most men dream of.


The Sex Life of Food: When Body and Soul Meet to Eat
Bunny A. Crumpacker

Is that a real name, Bunny A. Crumpacker? The book is after it's January 2006 publication. Let your mind wrap itself around why movies like Chocolat, Like Water for Chocolate, or 8 1/2 weeks were so loved and adored. Get your primitive urge cooking!

From Publishers Weekly
Sensual, comforting and "tangled into every human emotion," food has long evoked love in all its forms, and Crumpacker (The Old-Time Brand-Name Cookbook) explores how our two most raging appetites play upon each other to soothe, satisfy and seduce. Dishing out gobbets of gastronomic history candied with sweet-tart musings, Crumpacker slices into provisions from apples to wedding cake as symbols beyond mere sustenance. In her gloss, both what and how we eat are expressions of the psyche, unremitting quests to fulfill our most primal urges. She takes particular pleasure in teasing out food's more piquant associations (such as "dripping, fleshy mouthfuls" of fruit). Parsing the subtexts of American chow, she considers fast food (wolfed down in bites, it reflects our aggressive, anxious national temperament), ethnic food (oozing with "a rich, fatty kind of love") and salad bars (delighting with array and abundance), and also makes a case for the restorative intimacy of cooking. The obligatory list of aphrodisiacs appears, though Crumpacker debunks their mystique, sticking to her thesis that "we are all beautiful when we are well loved and... well fed." Though seasoned haphazardly with purple prose, Crumpacker's clever insights and lyrical aphorisms blend into an indulgent read. (Feb. 7) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

The Art of Seduction
Robert Greene

Know Thyself!




The Barnes & Noble Review
According to Ovid, "The first thing to get in your head,/is that every single/Girl can be caught -- and you'’ll catch her if/You set your toils right."” In this intensive study of the seducer'’s art, bestselling author Robert Greene teaches us how to catch elusive lovers by wooing more strategically. Whether the object of your desire is cold, critical, or simply flighty, Greene'’s comprehensive guide to the power games of love will teach you to draw your lover to your lair.

The first lesson in Greene's passion primer is character; we cannot seduce without understanding our own archetypal roles and those of our swooning victims. "“All we need to do to realize our potential is understand what it is in a person's character that naturally excites people,"” Greene urges. With a sense of our own charms, we become more magnetic -- we begin to draw lovers toward us almost effortlessly. Greene delicately divides seductive types into nine basic categories -- the Siren, the Rake, the Ideal Lover, the Dandy, the Natural, the Coquette, the Charmer, the Charismatic, and the Star -- and instructs us in the fine art of radiating each type'’s enticing charms.

Greene next teaches us to recognize the character type of prospective seducees. With a sense of what our love objects desire, Greene hints, we can easily insinuate ourselves into their fantasies. And once we have matched our own charms to anotherÂ’s longing, we are ready to take them, step by step, into our own desires. "Create a false sense of security,"” Greene urges. "Send mixed signals." The heat of seduction is caused by friction, by the thrust and recoil of emotional intimacies. With Greene'’s advice, everyone can create a delicious drama in which to ensnare some darling object. All it takes, according to Greene, is a tenacious grasp of fundamental laws of seduction: the time-tested steps that we all must take to lure another.

Greene's lessons of love are illustrated with quotations from the great masters: Ovid, Shakespeare, Baudelaire, and others. His laws are shocking, amusing -- and they encourage us to think calculatedly about the spells we cast on others. As in Greene's bestselling 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction teaches us to manipulate others with erudition, style, and finesse. (Jesse Gale)

The Lover
A Novel by Marguerite Duras
A Film directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud



I discovered this film on a first date with a boy named George. He picked me up in an old Buick with whitewall tires that went 45 miles on the 405 freeway. It was to be one of the more important dates of my life. Not only did we watch a film that was to remain in my sentimental heart for all the days left in my life, George gave me the second most beautiful kiss of my life. I can still remember the scent of his cologne and looking at the inperfections of his teeth. George was the pick-up artist, the seducer, the teacher, and the lover in one body. In the months to come, George moved to San Fransico and broke my heart when he never returned a single one of my letters. I think I cried for a month. Years later, I was in Santa Monica and I noticed from outside the Z Gallerie where I worked for a nano-second a familiar face. It was George. He was playing bongos on the bench with his eyes closed. I touched his shoulder and he opened his eyes. He knew me in an instant. He wanted to have coffee with me that moment. I wanted to kiss him but my broken heart was too betrayed. I lied to him instead. I told him that I was happily in love and my life could not be better. He told me he was living with a woman that he wanted to leave. He started playing his bongos and stopped to look at me. He said we could still have coffee. I told him I had to go. I have never seen him since but, I've never forgotten our long kisses on the carpet of my family's front room or that date that began it all, a movie in hollywood that was playing The Lover.



On the seduction of Idols

Love is dependent of the nature of connection. Brando can scream his mind out under the elevated trains of Paris as much as Liv Taylor can kiss herself in an Italian mirror. And yet, Bernardo Bertolucci never wrote a book. He's a genius of cinematic storytelling that has graced our cinematic culture with some of the timeless images the world has seen. When I was young and in high school, I had wanted to train with Bertolucci. I spent my days at the beach writing letters to him and talking about the promise of my talent. Those letters have long been scattered into the ebb and tide of the sea but my desire to seduce my idol has never left. Over ten years later and I find myself with limited days in which I have to find him. But, I am planning a trip to Italy this summer and perhaps I may find him walking along the Italian shores waiting for me to arrive. The greatest wonder of love is the ability to dream.