The X-Rated Book Hunt

Now I've never heard of Oriana Small (aka Ashley Blue), but I do know that I like a rare book. And while Girlvert may not be the rarest of books (in fact, it isn't rare at all), the fact alone that the price of a used copy is way more than a new copy - original cover price - I knew that this fine would be the greatest of the year thus far. I snagged this copy for only $15.97 on eBay. Now before you jump on my case and say it's regular cover price at Amazon, you should check out the "usually ships within" part. See that? Yeah, homie don't play that.

Until next time, keep on huntin'.

Best Sex Writing 2012 edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel

It's simple math, isn't it? Start off with Rachel Kramer Bussel, add in Susie Bright, mix in the sex and you have yourself Best Sex Writing 2012. 

Susie Bright selected the best of the best of the year passed, and her ability to read and choose has not waned since her departure from - and the untimely death of - The Best American Erotica. And Rachel Kramer Bussel is equally awesome. 

The collection contains articles, essays, and pieces by Thomas Roche, Amber Dawn, Joan Price, Marty Klein, Susie Bright, and Rachel Kramer Bussel. The wind range of topics extends (no pun intended) the idiocy behind banning circumcision to rape culture to growing up queer in the Meatpacking District. 

In Marty Klein's piece, "Criminalizing Circumcision: Self-Hatred as Public Policy," follows San Francisco's insane idea to outlaw circumcision in infants. It's the first - can I call it pro-circumcision? - positive circumcision piece I've read. It addresses the myths that anti-circumcision "activists" tout, and explains that any "physical" lacking a circumcised man feels is strictly psychological.

In "Losing the Meatpacking District: A Queer History of Leather Culture," Abby Tallmer reminiscences about growing up in the Meatpacking District in the midst of the queer and leather nightclubs, reminding us to never take our presents for granted because they can simply be erased. 

Both Susie Bright and Thomas Roche pieces attack the laughable "news reporting" of major newspapers that fail at fact checking and op-eds how the media fails our sexual society by filling people's minds with the Christian Right-wing agenda.

Greta Christiana, on the other hand, reports how a secular lifestyle might improve your sex life over a religious one. In "Atheists Do It Better: Why Leaving Religion Leads to Better Sex," we learn that secular households tend to do it, well, better. Not only in the bedroom, but with raising children, as well. (You'll have to read the piece.)

"Grief, Resilience, and My 66th Birthday Gift" teaches us the sex life of an older woman and author, Joan Price. From finding someone to spend her life with, to the dynamic of her sex life to the grief she felt when he passed to regaining her sexual self afterward. The piece is possibly the best in the collection - in my humble opinion, anyway. 

All in all, Best Sex Writing 2012 is worth the read and a place on your shelf or e-reader.

Purchase at [[Amazon]] [[Kindle]] [[B&N]] [[Nook]] [[Kobo]]

Obligatory First Post of 2012

I have been slacking off, I apologize. Work has me, well, working. And working has made me grow tired. And growing tired fills me with ennui. Filled with ennui, I have dropped all my writing/blogging projects - including my personal blog and my Letters to Shaun blog. However, working at the library hasn't hindered my book hunting habits. If anything, working there is exacerbating it. Worse, because now I'm on a budget - a tighter budget than I was before I became a book hunter, I should add. Jyg and me and baby makes three. Babies, I am told, are expensive and writing "ad" blogs and working part time isn't going to cut it unless I execute Project: No Spend. 

Lucky for me, I started to follow Rachel Kramer Bussel whose book, Best Sex Writing 2012, is currently being read for review. If you'd also note, I reviewed Bussel's Best Bondage Erotica 2012 last month. I love sex, what can I say? It's an interesting topic. Best part of it all, these books were free of charge. All I have to do is write an Amazon review. Presto. Life is still grand.

However, you'll also note that the picture above features a copy of The Living Shakespeare. I bought that lovely piece of work for only $2. Even sweeter. Still, I have to tie up my wallet. 

Along side Best Sex Writing 2012, I'm still working through Breathers by S. G. Browne. It's not a tough read, it's the aforementioned ennui that has me dragging. The only reason I muster up the energy to read Bussel's book is the review (well, the fact that it deals with sex doesn't hurt it, either).

This year, however, I do plan to read my 50 books as per the GoodReads Challenge. Because I started working at the children's department at the local library, I've opted to make this the year of the YA book. Not that I'm going to solely read YA novels, but there will be a stress on them. Hopefully, however, this won't turn out like last year's "year of the religion" theme. Heh. Am I right?

Oh well, until next time, keep on huntin'.

 Now that X-mas has come and gone, it's time to look forward to Valentine's Day.

Books in the Mail

My final BetterWorldBooks order of 2010 shipped in today, consisting of three books - two of which land on the naughty list. 

• Do Me: Tales of Sex & Love from Tin House - (inside flap) Do Me gathers the smartest, sexiest fiction and essays from the award-winning journal Tin House. In this collection, the stories do more than just titillate; Tin House authors explore sex from all angles: first moves, breakups, blind gay cruises, furrie conventions, married sex, bad sex, on the phone, and in pools, fun houses, Vegas hotels, and public parks. Hilarious and irreverent, Do Me puts a new spin on bedtime reading and its essential fare for those who crave food for the brain as well as the libido.
• Zen Sex by Philip Toshio Sudo - (inside flap) In zen, every moment is a chance to lose ourselves in the substance of life, every encounter an opportunity for spiritual awakening. In this passionate and inspiring guide, Philip Toshio Sudo explains the zen of sex.\\"Don't try. Do,m:" say zen masters. Put technique aside. Stop fretting over sexual frequency. Love your body. Frolic. Tease. Make love. All it takes to be a good zen lover is a giving heart, and the awareness of the life force coursing through our bodies. Zen Sex will help you cultivate that love within the capacity for feeling ecstasy and giving joy that is nothing short of divine. (This continues on, but that's the gist of the book.)
• Gravity by Tess Gerritsen - (inside flap) Emma Watson, a brilliant research physician, has been training for the mission of a lifetime: to study living beings in space. Jack McCallum, Emma's estranged husband, has shared her dream of space travel, but a medical condition has grounded and embittered him. He must watch from the sidelines as his wife prepares for her first mission to the International Space Station.\\Once aboard the space station, however, things start to go terribly wrong. A culture of single-celled organisms known as Archaeons, gathered from the deep sea, is to be monitored in the microgravity of space. The true and lethal nature of this experiment has not been revealed to NASA. In space, the cells rapidly multiply and soon begin to infect the crew - with agonizing and deadly results.\\A recovery attempt ends in catastrophe; the NASA shuttle crashes, and the space station is left dangerously crippled. Emma struggles to contain the deadly microbe, while back home, Jack and NASA work against the clock to retrieve Emma from space.\\But there will be no rescue. The contagion now threatens Earth's population as well, and the astronauts are left stranded in orbit, quarantined aboard the station - where they are dying one by one...

They all seem like interesting reads, don't you think?

Thoughts on the Sexual Revolution

"Born in 1969, I missed the sixties and, for the most part, the seventies," begins David Allyn in his book, Make Love, Not War - The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History. "But I have always been fascinated by stories of the days of sexual liberation."

Like David, I have always been in awe from what I heard about sixties and seventies, knowing that I missed out on the most important part of history in the 20th century - possibly the most radical times this country - world - will ever see.

While I'm still reading the book - which I purchased back in 2006 in order to cite passages from it in a research paper entitled "After Kinsey" for my Beat Generation class - I noted somethings I found rather irksome. Just to name one, the American Civil Liberties Union.

In the book, Allyn reports that:

Although the American Civil Liberties Union was founded to protect freedom of speech, ACLU officials in the fifties shied away from attacking the censorship of sexual materials. The group's executive director assure critics that the ACLU had never intervened in federal efforts to stop the mailing of "smutty post cards," strip-tease pictures," or "nudes." As far as he was concerned, the federal government had every right to suppress such literature. As another ACLU official stated, "Nor do we believe that the obscenity laws are interfering with freedom of the press in any way."

I know organization alter their beliefs and practices over the years, and the ACLU is no different, but what irks me most is how they were not willing to stand up for actual freedom of speech during that point in American history, yet are so willing to aid teens who create what has been dubbed child pornography (as you can see, this is social commentary - of sorts - on the present day ACLU).

Perhaps the ACLU doesn't see its own stupidity of past and present. Or perhaps they have lost touch with what really matters. I don't know. I seriously hope, however, that they crumble or reform into something that makes sense.