Enduring Appeal of the Pilgrimage Experience

Tags: novel viewpoints, travel

I just returned from India, and part of the trip included visits to beautiful South Indian Hindu temples, which were very crowded because we unknowingly arrived during the local pilgrimage season. Groups of men lined every dusty road, rested in fields, dodged through city traffic and eventually jammed the temple grounds with devotion. They were dressed simply and minimally, carried …

Honor Valentine’s Day With Romantic Mysteries

Tags: books

Happy Valentine’s Day reading! First, a bit of personal background: My husband and I went on our first date 42 years ago on Valentine’s Day. It was a disappointing event, to be honest, but there was enough spark to encourage another outing, and the rest is history. It seems appropriate to celebrate the romantic holiday with some romantic-mystery/mystery-romance genre mating. Maybe start …

Amazon’s Z Explores the Passionate, Tumultuous Life of the Original Gatsby Girl

Tags: fitzgerald, gatsby

She was beautiful, impulsive, carefree, and determined to make a name for herself. Zelda Fitzgerald, the subject of a new Amazon series, was the iconic woman of the 1920s Jazz Age and the inspiration for many of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald’s female characters. Her reputation as a party girl undermined her talent and her intelligence, and her complicated, self-destructive …

By Grace Mercado at Foodtrients.com With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, our thoughts turn to adding a little more love and romance to our lives. Can certain foods boost romantic relationships and enhance sexual desire? According to St. Thomas Aquinas, aphrodisiac foods had to produce good nutrition and a “vital spirit.” In other words, the nutrients that contribute to …

Star Couples with Major Age Gaps!

Tags: celebrity, romance

Age is just a number, especially in Hollywood. We’ve rounded up our favorite celebrity couples who have serious age gaps. But, really, when you love someone who cares how old they are! Nick Offerman and Megan Mullaly This amazing couple meet back in 2000 and their 12 year age gap doesn’t mean a thing! Megan Mullaly (who is older) and …

Why do Humans Flirt?

Tags: flirting, romance

We have all seen those Animal Planet or David Attenborough shows that explain why animals of all shapes and sizes flirt, be it a bird of paradise doing a little dance or a rhino showing off how big and buff he is. But, the human – the wisest and most sophisticated (debatable in some cases) of all creatures, is very …

Time Flies When You’re Getting Older

Tags: writing

By Katherine Sharma I recently read a fiction work that played with time and memory. With the turn of a page, the reader was taken from long, intense passages of youthful experience to brief words of graying regret, and I recognized with dismay a similar warping in my own time perception. Simply put, as we grow older, time seems to …

In the Dead of Winter, Embrace ‘Nordic Noir’

Tags: foreign, nordic, novel viewpoints

January, that month of bleak and often icy landscapes, should help you appreciate the ‘Nordic Noir’ mystery writers of Scandinavia. Many American readers immediately think of Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series, but there are many other excellent mystery and crime fiction authors from Sweden, Norway, Finland and even Iceland, and 2016 saw a number …

A Seductive Menu that will Leave Him Weak at the Knees

Tags: dating, food, romance

You’ve done the legwork, you’ve flirted and you’ve finally convinced him to pop around for a home-cooked dinner. You don’t feel that your mom’s recipe for ‘macaroni and cheese’ will do the trick, so you plan to prepare something that is sure to bowl him over. However, you have no idea what it is that you want to cook… He …

Tinder…The Time Sucker

Tags: apps, dating, online, tinder

The average user time on Tinder is 77 minutes. If your thumb is tired from all that swiping, here’s a list of other things you could do with all that time. We all know dating apps are widespread and pretty much a necessary evil to let other humans know we’re good to go. What we just discovered, according to a …