The Perfumed Garden vs. The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana, both translated by Sir Richard F. Burton: …more

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by Neil Strauss Vs. The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida. …more

Today’s battle pits Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion by Izabella St. James against How To Have A XXX Sex Life: The Ultimate Vivid Guide by the Vivid Girls. …more

Today’s book battle pits The Surrender by Toni Bentley against The Sexual Life of Catherine M. by Catherine Millet. …more

Today’s book battle pits Andrea Dworkin’s Pornography: Men Possessing Women against Nadine Strossen’s Defending Pornography: …more

Masterclass: Blow-Jobs
vs.
Sex Tips for Straight Women From a Gay Man

One book is concise and British, complete with allegedly helpful pictures of female mouths on penises. The other, a chatty manual that uses phrases like “Mr. Softee” and “Mr. Stiffy.” On a regular basis.Yee-haw. Let’s learn some stuff about guys’ junk. …more

“There’s something unique about being a member of the sex worker club, an instant camaraderie that bonds one to people who would otherwise be strangers, and this chemistry is something of which Sterry can’t get enough.”

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Craig Seymour is funny, precise, and egoless: the perfect combination for a good sex worker memoirist. …more

Laura Kipnis began her career as a visual artist but is best known for her writing on a range of provocative topics, including pornography, and adultery. She is the author of the bestselling polemic, Against Love. Her most recently published book was The Female Thing. …more

My assertion is that you will not have read a novel quite like Madeleine is Sleeping because I hadn’t, until I read it. A young girl jerks off the local idiot and so her hands are burned in a pot of lye, turning her into a traveling freak who eventually uses her “paddles” to spank a flatulent man for a widow’s entertainment; or the same girl lies in her home surrounded by siblings and a vaguely concerned mother who cannot make her daughter wake. Bynum’s sentences are precise and compact (“Beatrice is enraptured by rules, especially those of her own making”) and the world they create operates with such inarguable dream logic that even a fat, flying woman is a plausible character in both the sleeping and waking realms. It’s a lovely, surprising book.

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