A good memoir here that made me take a good look at the intimacy my husband and I share. The author gives her husband a great 40th birthday gift of a year of sex every night. Great gift, right? After that year, she says to help your marriage, double the amount of sex you are currently having with your husband. A good read for all married women. ( )

I thought this book would be an interesting book about relationships and the strains that the modern world puts them under. Instead I found myself getting annoyed at the writer especially her apparent inability to use the word 'sex'. If she found it so repellent why did she not use the phrase 'making love'. Her use of the word 'imtimacy'made me think of silly 'tweenagers' giggling behind their hands at anything related to sex.This woman is over 40 for gods sake!
It seemed to me to be the author shouting "oh how wonderful am I " and "aren't I so good to my husband by doing this". But what is so good about the sex when it seemed to me that the majority of the time it was a case of 'oh lets get it over with for tonight'. Quality not quantity should count more in my opinion. Perhps we will one day get a book from her husband entitled 'Good sex does not necessarily mean lots of it'. Ha Ha ( )

I picked this up and started glancing through it and soon I was sucked in. Not because it was so good, but because it was so strange. The idea sounded intriguing enough, what WOULD happen if a couple had sex every day for a year? Your not going to get the answer you want to that question.

This is mostly the thoughts of a middle class, white, conservative, Christian, American woman living in the suburbs. She's fairly shallow, very self centered and self absorbed, and somewhat immature. She seems to think everyone in the world feels exactly like she and a few of her friends do. Which is not to say that she's entirely unpleasant. She can be fairly funny and charming, despite the fact that she tells us explicitly that she is both of those things at least a dozen or two times. The book was written with a co-writer, and it seems to me there's a strange contradictory feel to it, like all the parts don't quite mesh. There's a lot of statements of how she doesn't like sex, and an equal number saying how much it has enriched her life.

There's no sex in this book. I don't mean that there's not any graphic descriptions, I mean it's not often even mentioned, and when it is 90% of the time she uses the word "intimacy" instead. Intimacy is not a synonym for sex. And this is not a couple deciding to embark on this experiment, this is her giving her husband a "gift" of sex for a year. "The gift" is how she refers to sex the other 10% of the time. But it becomes apparent later on that she feels "the gift" is such a huge sacrifice on her part (and she tells us MANY times how great of a person she is for doing it, and congratulates herself a lot for "getting through it") that she doesn't really need to be pleasant about it.

Oblivious is a word that comes to mind. She seems to insult and belittle her husband throughout the book and not notice, or think she comes off as funny and charming doing it. At one point he basically tells her to shut up and stop talking about the bills and errands during sex. She simply says she is trying to multi-task, like any modern mom, might as well try to get something useful done while their at it, and you can't blame a girl for trying. No, I'm not kidding, that's what she says. In another cringe worthy episode her husband says it would be better if she didn't just lie there and grimace. She explains that her sacrifice is more than enough already, and he should just close his eyes if he doesn't like it, she can't be bothered to do more. These are episodes she relates to the world. I'm not sure how she thought that would appear to other people.

I have to say that the previous paragraphs make the book sound much worse than it is, even though it's all accurate. The book is not without merit, but part of the appeal for me was a glance into the mind of someone so foreign.

If she has another book I predict it will be about her divorce, and how she never saw it coming. ( )

One of those annoying, unfinishable books that are completely misrepresented by their premise. This is in no way a 'memoir of intimacy' - no great insights about the nature of maintaining sex in married life - instead it's a little like being forced to read a year's worth of the 'Muller family newsletter; you know, the kind that some families send out with a Christmas card every year that details Every. Little. Thing. that happenned during two-thousand and whatever. So, if the idea of a listening to a years' worth of ramblings from an upper middle class white Southern soccer mom whose most interesting vice is watching Bad Television (presumably Jerry Springer-type shows) floats your boat, this one's for you. But trust me: your life is far more interesting. And I don't even know you. ( )

My mother was an anglophile and slightly obsessed with etiquette. I have no less than seven books on etiquette on my bookshelves which are a testament to her collection and my inheritance. I have a hard-cover and a soft-cover version of Debrett's Correct Form but her own personal favourite was Barbara Cartland's Etiquette Handbook which comes with charming illustrations by Francis Marshall - very 1960s fashions - hats, gloves, Parker furniture..it's all there....

There are I think three taboos in society - or polite society - subjects that should not be discussed at the dinner table - politics, sex and religion....maybe there is a fourth - money.....Having said that, I do not think that these subjects should not be discussed but I guess having them defined as taboos makes it difficult for people to talk about them with ease or frankness without being labelled/villified or rousing strong emotions in the reader/listener.

This book is supposedly about sex. The author, Charla Muller, promises her husband sex every day for a year as a birthday present - the gift that keeps on giving so to speak. The book is meant to be an account of that year and the consequences or outcomes of the promise.

You can imagine the titters that the proposal to read this kind of book arouses at a bookclub comprised entirely of women....."A year? Could you last a month? A week?" and so on.

Trying to prepare for some kind of structured discussion as the bookclub convenor was nigh impossible. I did try to find a book-club reading guide for the book but all I found was a 13 week Bible study guide here
http://charlamuller.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/365-nights-a-guide-for-christian....

Ah! One taboo mixed up with another. Crikey!

And remember - this is a bookclub - so we tend to focus on the quality of the writing too.

What does one look for when assessing a book? For me ultimately it is the following - Does it deliver on the promise and is it readable?

I admired Charla's intention and thoughtfulness with regard to the gift for her husband. I also admired her intention to write about it and share her experience with the world. Because despite this being a taboo, I think it is a worthy discussion to have - how couples negotiate sex in a relationship in today's society.

But this book did not deliver for me. I felt embarrassed for Charla. It was not the quality of the sex I felt embarrassed about....oh no...., for that was left behind a misty veil. And lest you think I have a prurient interest in her sex life - all I can say is, if you purport to write a book about sex...well shouldn't that actually be the subject matter??? Instead much of the book was filled with the minutiae of the challenges of an affluent lifestyle - and that left me alternately embarrassed for the western world and frankly a little cold.

The unanimous consent of our group was, as one of our members said...

"Page 102 sums up (and also identifies when I could carry on no longer)...I quote the best line in the whole book (because I couldn't have put it better)..."I loathed myself when it was over because I could not get that time back. It was lost forever in that diminishing black hole called Charla's brain." ( )