*More Than Two* in the media: new roundup

More shameless cat-pic promo

I'm still waiting to see reviews of More Than Two in mainstream media by book reviewers outside the polyworld bubble. Within the bubble, people are raving about it. But a month and a half since its official publication date, I'm not seeing a breakout yet.

Meanwhile, authors Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert have reached the desert southwest in their cross-country book tour, driving a 22-year-old vehicle with an unplanned new radiator. This evening (Saturday the 11th) they're appearing at Santa Fe's Op Cit Books.


Here's a roundup of the latest non-major-media coverage.


● Rave review by Cross at xcBDSM:

I began reading the book expecting it to be good. I expected to read a lot of things that I already knew, though perhaps articulated better than I had read before.... I planned to highlight a few passages to quote in the review and say some nice things about it.

But I was wrong.

Yes, at first, much of what I read was familiar to me. But the amazing thing about this book, and why I am ready to buy a couple dozen copies to hand out to my friends, is that it truly does break new ground. There were ideas that I had never considered before, approaches that were new and interesting.

...The book could be accurately described as a tool box. Unlike previous books on the subject which focus very heavily on establishing the shape and structure of your open relationship, this book begins and ends with two very important tenets: “1. The people in the relationship are more important than the relationship, and 2. Don’t Treat People as Things.” These two axioms are repeated throughout, and the authors give special attention to all of the individuals involved. With these things in mind, they provide a wealth of tools, techniques and strategies for successfully navigating the (still) largely uncharted waters of polyamory.

The book revolves around five central themes: Trust, Courage, Abundance, Ethics, and Empowerment. These themes provide the heartbeat for the book, and while they aren’t discussed individually or explicitly... the authors [made] sure that everything they wrote reflected them....

Read the whole article (Aug. 25, 2014).


● Jessica Burde published an article on the book, including how it came about, in the unconventional-lifestyle online magazine The Plaid Zebra:

...The authors advise that couples shouldn’t go into polyamory intending to “try” it. The book lays out some solid logic in opposition [to this] — it isn’t fair to use your new partners as guinea pigs for your relationship experiments, and polyamory is a lot like skydiving. You can’t ease out of the plane, sit on the wing for a while, cling to the landing gear until you feel safe....

“When you leave that plane,” Franklin says, “there is no going back. Even if you decide poly is not for you, you may go back to monogamy, but you’re probably going to approach your relationship differently after that, and that is okay.”

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As Eve puts it,

“The early stages of a poly relationship are very hard if you are not prepared to confront that struggle and move through it. When you hit that struggle, which is going to happen, you are going to put other people at risk. And it is really worth it to sit down beforehand and discuss [how you will handle the struggle].”...

Read the whole article (undated; September 2014).


● Review in the student newspaper of the University of Texas/ Austin:

...Any time we try to create relationships outside of traditional cultural scripts, we can expect to face problems we are unprepared to solve. But what I really appreciated about More Than Two is the authors' insistence that all the tools necessary to be successful at poly are actually just relationship tools more generally....

● An audio interview at Kinxr Podcast (with the mic going live way too soon, IMO. The interview proper begins around 11:45). Length 1 hour 16 mins. Skip ahead; it gets more solid later:




● In the Santa Fe Reporter, in advance of tonight's stop on their book tour:

Three Questions (Oct. 9, 2014):

Q: Personally, what was the most enlightening part of writing this book?

A: ...For a long, long time I had written about polyamory, but I’d never actually written my own story. I had always written about the conclusions that I have drawn about how to do poly well, but I’d never written the story of my poly experiences personally. My partner Eve decided that was an important part of this book, and that was kind of an awesome experience.

● And a nice callout in the weekend arts & culture section of the Santa Fe New Mexican: Two is the loneliest number: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (Oct. 10, 2014):

...Poly is a relationship style, not a sexual practice, and many configurations exist within it. Being poly doesn’t necessarily involve group sex or anything particularly adventurous in the bedroom, although for some people it does. Poly people are also not all pagan or into New Age spirituality, and many dislike the assumption that they are naturally more emotionally evolved or open-minded than monogamous people. Successful polyamory requires that everyone in a given relationship be willing to listen, learn, and grow to sustain long-term commitments to one another — the same as in any happy, lasting relationship....

● Eve and Franklin were interviewed from Brazil for the new magazine Revista Mandala: Amor Multiplicado – Para Quem Ama Do Um (October 2014).

● A review in Russia, by a writer who must stay anonymous, on the Russian poly site polyamory.progressor.ru. Open it in Chrome, and Google Translate will offer to turn it into machine English. As cleaned up a bit by me:

Non-monogamy for normal people

Dear friends! I know that many of you, one way or another, are involved in relationships that do not fit traditional notions of monogamy — having read Heinlein, or hiked in Sinton, or under the influence of alcohol or friends, or even maybe you came to the idea independently.

I know that many of you have not just been or are involved in non-monogamous relationships, but also that you prefer not to discuss it. Or even studiously ignore it. I have often noticed from the corner of my eye (and a couple of times not the corner) an attitude toward me among friends and acquaintances as to being an abnormal pervert, because I talk about this topic, and look for information....

So, I suggest you at least think about how to read a book that was written for normal people who just consider some conventions to be limitations....

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Moreover, the second section of this book and, in part, the third, I would recommend to all people who want their relationships to be happy, even if the relationship is strictly monogamous. What it says about the obstacles to healthy communication between people and what contributes to it, I have not seen expressed in such a systematic and concise way anywhere in literature addressed to married couples, although at one time I read a lot of it....

This book, however, has a very significant drawback: it is thick and it is written in English. And it is unlikely to be translated into Russian in the coming years, especially in light of the current struggle against spiritual buckles....

● Past coverage.

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