Tagged: books

02 Apr

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Blog Posts About “That Book”

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That book whose title I won't mention.I told myself I wasn’t going to write about the Porn for Women book anymore because I’m sick of feeding their first page Google ranking while my blog languishes in purgatory for this particular term. But I can’t help it. Today I found the Chronicle Books blog which has a number of posts by the authors of “that book.”

One asks women to submit “fantasies” for future books. Readers have happily responded with more apparently unattainable dreams about men being nice to them.

What’s more interesting is that they’ve responded to the feminist criticism in their Amazon reviews and at Feministing. I’m not sure the response is as comprehensive as it could be, but it’s nice to hear their point of view nonetheless.

I’m still not sure where I stand with this whole thing. Yes, it’s a joke, I get it. And yes, it does play on stereotypes and maybe that’s a bad thing. Yes, I’m frustrated that “porn for women” is now associated with housework, when I’ve been trying hard for years to get people to take it seriously.

And I’m definitely pissed off that there’s a top ten spot in Google for a certain search term that will forever belong to “that book.” Yes, I know that’s kinda petty.

Here’s my previous post on the topic. I’ll try and leave it alone now.

Filed Under: Feminism, Popular culture

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25 Feb

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Best American Erotica 2008

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Best American Erotica 2008Amazon has gone a little beserk and printed a large chunk of Susie Bright’s introduction to Best American Erotica 2008 on their site. Not that I’m complaining, of course, because it makes for great reading. A snippet:

Nowadays, I don’t think there’re mainstream novelists who haven’t been asked what role sexuality plays in their fiction — or why they’re pussyfooting around, if they continue to avoid it. It’s the stuff of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winners.

It’s not so much that erotica has made a narrow genre successful — although that’s true too — it’s that writers now don’t hold back “the sex part” anymore when they write about…anything. The omission was always unnatural and deceptive, and now the lie is laid bare. Sexless stories about human relationships are dishonest. How did anyone write about love, life, or death and manage to avoid it so neatly? It was a hoax, and thankfully behind us.

This volume is a “best of” the best ofs, a collection charting Susie Bright’s 15 year tenure as editor of the Best American Erotica series.

If you’re up for some intelligent reading that will turn you on, you might want to have a look.

Filed Under: Erotic Fiction

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14 Feb

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That Porn For Women Book Is A Bestseller

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That Porn for Women bookThis article discusses the appeal of a man who likes to do housework and says that the Porn For Women book has now sold 140,000 copies. There’s now a calendar and a sequel book on the way called “Porn for New Moms.” I’ll bet that’s going to cause a feminist furore when it comes out.

In case you haven’t heard of it, the book features fully clothed men doing housework, accompanied by captions like: “Put your feet up, I’ll do the dishes.” It incited a fairly big discussion on the whole concept of porn for women last year.

Interestingly, the piece has weeded out the woman behind the book, Heather Peterson. She’s from Cambridge, Massettchusetts (or however you spell it) which explains why the author is the “Cambridge Women’s Pornography Cooperative.”

Here’s what she had to say about men doing housework:

“This is a humorous book, but it does manage to convey some of the things that women really do fantasize about. When a man is willing to step up to the plate — and wash it for you — you’re going to think about him in a very different way. It’s not just that he’s domesticated. It’s that he recognizes that these things have to get done. That they’re not just automatically going to be done for him. And that’s hot.”

Yes, that’s hot. But I don’t think it’s porn.

Filed Under: Sex and Women

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28 Jan

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Mammoth Book Of Women’s Fantasies

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Mammoth Book of Women's FantasiesHere’s another book chock full of lusty reading if you’re in the mood to stimulate your imagination. I like this one because it’s really all about straight-out fantasy, and it’s always hot to read what gets other women off.

Official blurb: The Mammoth Book of Women’s Fantasies is the newest addition to the lustily successful Mammoth Erotica series featuring the year’s—and the world’s—best erotic fiction. Featured in this steamy collection are stories on a par with other popular Mammoth titles, which included work by notables such as Anais Nin, Anne Rice, Patrick Califia, Alison Tyler, Cara Bruce, Alice Joanou, Poppy Z. Brite, M. Christian, and Carol Queen. Selected from stories by more than 4,000 authors of erotica from around the world, these artful excursions into women’s libidos represent the current states of desire in Great Britain, the U.S., Canada, Australia, and France. All of the selections share a standard of excellence and elegance that takes their often humorous, sometimes dark, and always original fictions far beyond tired conventions.

Get it here.

Filed Under: Erotic Fiction, Porn for Women

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19 Jan

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Best Women’s Erotica 2009 Submissions

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Best Women's Erotica 2008Violet Blue has posted her call for submissions for Best Women’s Erotica 2009. The deadline is 1st May 2009 and the guidelines look pretty similar to last year.

I really liked what Violet had to write about creating a top quality erotica collection that reflects women:

Let’s give women readers what they really want (as sales have shown). Let’s show mainstream publishing (who are still afraid of publishing books like this) that real, hot, authentic female sexual experiences in all their wet and raw and SMART and romantic and hardcore fucking glory — that all of it sells the hell out of these books because it’s actually who we are. Our sexuality isn’t corporate fiction’s dry version of “risque” like Sex and the City: we’re empowered and erudite porn sophisticates, we love real sex, vibrators don’t scare us, and we love sexual adventure. Female erotic pleasure, in all its permutations is the centerpiece.

I submitted a story for last year’s collection but it (ahem) didn’t make the grade. Actually, it wasn’t as good as it could have been because I left writing it until the very last minute and, having looked at it since, there were bits that needed editing and other bits that didn’t quite work.

That’s my excuse, anyway.

This year I’m going to give it a bit more thought and start earlier.

Meanwhile, Best Women’s Erotica 2008 is out now.

Filed Under: Erotic Fiction, Porn for Women

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20 Dec

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Best Women’s Erotica 2008 Is Out

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Best Women's Erotica 2008The latest Best Women’s Erotica book is out, once again edited by Violet Blue. I haven’t had a chance to read it but here’s the official blurb:

Best Women’s Erotica 2008 delivers risky, romantic, heart-pounding thrills. Joyful, daring, and authentic, these 21 steamy stories revel in erotic adventure, from the sparks between strangers to the knowing caresses of long-time lovers. In “Penalty Fare,” a Londoner rides train after train without a valid ticket, until, on an early morning journey to Bristol she finds the conductor who knows just how to punish her for trying to skip the fare. In “Winter Heat,” a woman finds that each year, the winter’s first snowfall reminds her of a cold night when she was 18 and the stranger who taught her that “passion can be found and shared in the most unusual of places.” And in “You Can Do Mine,” Céline finally gets to try out her purple dildo and leather harness with her new lover Leo, the first man to give the right answer when she tells him “you can do mine if I can do yours.”

Amusingly, Amazon lists the “Key Phrases” for this book as: pussy lips, butt plug, hard cock. The reviews and “see inside” pages on Amazon are all from the 2007 edition of the book, which is a bit strange.

I haven’t compiled any Christmas gift guides but I think this might be one you’ll want to buy for yourself.

Filed Under: Erotic Fiction

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11 Oct

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Kushiel’s Tattoos

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Tattoos inspired by the Kushiel fantasy books.I’m re-reading one of my favorite books at the moment: Kushiel’s Dart. It’s a fantasy novel set in an alternative Renaissance Europe – one with a different history and set of religions. The cool part is that on top of all the swashbuckling adventure, intrigue and romance, there’s lashings of down-and-dirty BDSM sex. The heroine is a courtesan and an anguissette – one who experiences pain as pleasure. Thus the story is often punctuated by lushly described acts of flagellation, subservience, bondage and rough sex.

More fun than your average dungeons and dragons fantasy, I have to say.

The basic moral code of the main religion in this book is “Love as thou wilt” – a very pagan philosophy. This means that homosexuality and kink are considered to be normal, and Kushiel's chosenprostitution is a holy act. Those who serve the goddess with sex are often marked with tattoos on their backs as a sign of their service.

Clearly I’m not the only fan of her work. Jacqueline’s site features a special gallery with photos of fan’s Kushiel-inspired tattoos. Amazing stuff, indicative of the kind of passion a lot of people have for these books.

Author Jacqueline Carey has since written four sequels to Kushiel’s Dart, and I’m rereading the original trilogy prior to delving into the second one.

Filed Under: Erotic Fiction, Popular culture

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05 Oct

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Enchanted: Erotic Fairy Tales For Women

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Enchanted: Erotic fairy tales.Browsing Amazon I discovered a book of erotic fiction that’s piqued my interest. Enchanted: Erotic Bedtime Stories for Women, by Nancy Madore, takes 13 standard fairy tales and gives them a dirty twist. Think threesomes with Snow White, Prince Charming and a maid, or lusty liaisons between Beauty and the Beast.

Now, there’s something about the very idea of this that fascinates me. So many “children’s stories” have an undercurrent of sexuality that’s never really expressed. Lusts at hinted at but never realised, although I’m sure they find their way into the blooming erotic mindscapes of young women all the time.

Feminists have already thoroughly analysed the problems with fairy tales and the underlying sexism behind them, so I don’t need to go into that here. And fairy tale romance, too, has taken its fair share of criticism for the same reasons, which means that this book is probably off-limits to those wanting to keep their sexuality politically correct.

Even so, there’s something about the very idea of this book that’s appealing. Who doesn’t want to imagine the steamy trysts between your average beautiful heroine and dashing young prince/pauper/7 dwarfs? I mean, think of the possibilities! Glass coffins, slipper fetishes, bedrooms atop tall towers… and don’t forget the wolves in drag.

Very kinky! I think I’ll have to buy this book.

Filed Under: Erotic Fiction

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04 Jul

1 Comment

Now They’re Pushing Romance Novel Addiction

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I just had to laugh at the opinion piece by Shaunti Feldhahn proclaiming the serious dangers women face if they read romance novels.

I was concerned to learn that many romance novels are not as harmless as they look. In fact, some marriage therapists caution that women can become as dangerously unbalanced by these books’ entrancing but distorted messages as men can by distorted messages of pornography.

Oh my God! Batten down the hatches! Man the liferafts! Grease the yardarm! We’ve seen the form of the antichrist and it’s title is Kiss From A Stranger*.

Yep, the growth in erotic fiction titles hails the downfall of womankind, it seems, causing us to lose our grip on reality and making us think that men can be “strong, rugged and breathtakingly handsome, yet sensitive, patient listeners and utterly unselfish.” Dangerously unbalanced indeed.

Having bought the lie that “there is a neurochemical element with men and porn” the author follows up with the similar conclusion that romance novels must also be “addictive.”

The paper has published a fairly weak rebuttal by a so-called left-leaning columnist, but I prefer this comment from a reader:

Gosh, I had no idea women’s brains were so flimsy and vulnerable. Better shield them from the dangerous influence of romance novels and erotica, huh?

* This is the actual title of a Barbara Cartland novel.

Filed Under: Erotic Fiction, Porn

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18 Jun

2 Comments

Book: One For The Girls + Metro Article

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Cover of One For The Girls. Surfing Google news I found this article at the UK’s Metro Magazine about women enjoying porn. It’s got all the usual semi-amazed discussion about the idea of women actually enjoying smut, plus a short interview with Anna Span.

Nothing new there, although it has brought to my attention a new academic book by Clarissa Smith called One ForThe Girls. It’s a look at women’s experience of porn via the UK magazine For Women, which was published in the 1990s. The official blurb says:

Significantly this book moves beyond the usual rehearsal of claims about readers’ vulnerability to ideologies hidden in the text and uses readers’ designations of ‘sexy’ and ‘pleasureable’ to underpin an alternative theorisation of pornography. Exploring readers’ responses to nude male pinups, explicit stories and sexy articles, the book traces the patterns of response hidden behind the title ‘porn reader’.

There’s an interesting review of this book here.

My first reaction to this book was… not fair! She stole our name!

Then I thought that perhaps this book has been in the pipeline for a really long time, possibly before For The Girls came into existence. Why else would this academic choose an incredibly out-of-date magazine, now defunct, as her official example? I’ve never seen a copy of “For Women” magazine and it’s really difficult to find any reference to it on the internet.

It sounds like this book is a worthy addition to the discussion surrounding porn for women but it’s a pity the author restricted herself to one example from the world of old media. The internet has created so many more opportunities for women to explore explicit material, and opened up a greater debate about where feminism fits into an enjoyment of porn.

I originally wanted to write a non-fiction book about the grown of women’s porn and even got started on the first chapter. And then I realised I’d much rather be making the smut rather than sitting back and academically musing about it.

Although I must admit, this blog does both jobs for me.

Filed Under: Feminism, Porn, Porn for Women

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