Friday, July 06, 2012

Better Shit To Read Than That Twilight Fanfic Fucking Nonsense

Many people have been asking me, "Amber, if we shouldn't be reading Fifty Shades of Grey to make our naughty parts tingle, what should we be reading instead?" The thing is, I can't actually answer that for you because you know a lot better than I do what you like in your word porn. I can tell you what I like, and you can go check that out, or not, as the mood strikes you but if, say, you are really digging tentacle porn this afternoon, my suggestions aren't going to be a whole lot of help to you. You might want to just google that.

Having said that, I've given a lot of thought to what sorts of things I've read that might appeal to people for reasons similar to why this book piece of shit apparently appeals to people, and I've made you guys a list. Keep in mind that most of my suggestions aren't going to be for novel length erotica. For the most part, I tend to read collections of short stories instead. This is just a personal preference. I find that on the whole, for writing of that length, either the plot suffers or the sex does. Or I just have a really short masturbatory attention span (ok, fine, it's probably this). The longest suggestion I have is the erotica classic Story Of O. It is the quintessential BDSM novel, but as such, might be a bit much for people who aren't looking for something as hard core as that, such as Christian Grey, who listed "permanent marking of the body" as a hard limit in his (never signed) contract, so probably won't be terribly down with the scene where O gets branded. An easier read for him might be He's On Top: Erotic Stories of Male Dominance and Female Submission, a collection of short D/s stories edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel. There is a companion book to that one featuring the opposite situation: She's on Top: Erotic Stories of Female Dominance and Male Submission, which I haven't read, but I suspect is just as good (or maybe better if you love reading about pegging).

If it's not BDSM you're after, and you're just looking for erotica aimed at and/or written by women, you could do worse than the Best Women's Erotica series, an annual collection of short stories edited by Violet Blue (I couldn't find the 2012 version on Amazon for some reason, but here's 2011, and here's where you can preorder 2013). And as long as we're on the subject of Violet Blue, she has also edited a series of books featuring fantasies for couples, including Taboo, which I ran to my living room to read after the first sex scene in Fifty Shades just to make sure that I still enjoy sex. I was genuinely concerned E. L. James had permanently destroyed my sex drive.

Of course there are also tons of sex blogs out there in internetland, including my own. But since I can't really link to that here as it would defeat the entire purpose of my having separated it from Bizzybiz in the first place (you are welcome to try to find it, but good luck with that - my friend Fish has been trying to find it off and on for years without much luck, and he knows me better than most people), I can instead recommend Pussy Talk, Easily Aroused, Remittance Girl, The Erotic Writer, and the incomparable Monmouth who I know in real life and who is also very good at finding delicious beer and/or snacks. I also follow mega porn star James Deen on Twitter, but his tweets aren't really that sexy and seem to be mostly related to him dressing up as a baby panda, though he does post links to his blog and photos of who he banged on camera that day.

Hopefully you'll find something on this list to interest you (or you were sucessful at your tentacle porn googling) and that it will keep you occupied until the reviews for the next book start, which I'm hoping will be next week, since my roommate, my lover AND my partner in fun Mrs. Sizemore will all be out of town and I am otherwise going to be BORED AS FUCK. And boring as fuck, unless you want to spend the week reading stories about my cat vs. the vacuum and how I can have ice cream and cookie dough for dinner since the bartender won't be here to stop me. Right, I didn't think so.

20 comments:

Rachael said...

For what it's worth the lit erotica story website was always my go to for stories - whatever your taste!

Meep said...

For a book on bdsm written by a Londoner (not me) who *does* know what she's talking about, you could do worse than 'London leather' by penny Armstrong. It's on amazon :)

Anonymous said...

Literotica.com is indeed a great source for just about any fetish erotica.

For real-world BDSM guidance that would totally shame Mr Grey's unenforced contracts and communication fails, the book Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns by Philip Miller and Molly Devon is a good starting place. It's about 10 years old now and somewhat more geared towards the US scenes than elsewhere, but it introduces the core concepts of power play with humour and common sense. It helped me a lot when I was starting to play.

Quvonda said...

hahah. cat vs. vaccum cleaner sounds awesome. Mine used to fight the broom and blow dryer. she liked jumping in my pile of trash right before i was about to pick it up..........she doesn't like brooms anymore hahaha.

Laura said...

This list has the benefit of having my books on it, although I live in terror of someone taking my own work as neatly apart as the 50 Shades books have been here. That said, I can't help but enjoy the eviscerating.

http://www.alternativelifecoach.com/what-other-books-are-like-50fifty-shades-of-grey-a-kinky-reading-list/

Britany Z said...

I'll definitely have to check some of these out. Your review on 50 shits cracks me up. Are you subjecting yourself to doing the other two books?

Anonymous said...

For what it's worth, I recommend "Taming The Beast" by Emily Maguire. It has a plot, an interestingly flawed heroine and a hell of a lot of darkness. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Taming-Beast-Five-Star-Paperback/dp/1852424842/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341516354&sr=8-1

Jacki said...

Thanks for the review of this piece of crap series. As for me, I'm going to reread the 'Beauty' series by Anne 'Nasty Lady' Rice. Her series makes my lady parts tingle.

CageFightingBlogger said...

A good place to look for erotica is the fiction market database duotrope.com. It's a searchable list of fiction and poetry markets. It's searchable by genre, so you can find the erotica magazines only. You can also order this list by the ratio of acceptances to rejections. If you find a list of the most rejected erotica magazines, there's a liklihood they'll be eccellent. If they're online magazines (a subcategory you can also single out with search tools) they'll be free to read right here on the net. Enjoy! P.s. I've not read 50 shades but the erotica you'll find online will range from dogshit to pure awesomeness.

sweetpea said...

So jealous that you know Monmouth! (best sex blogger around, i think..)

Also, finding out James Deen has a blog (and reading it)has totally ruined my perception of my favorite porn star..I thought he'd be all moody and intellectual..instead he writes and sounds like a dumbass!!!
Spoiled the dream! :/

Anonymous said...

http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/fifty-shades-of-grey-row-ends-in-court-as-boyfriend-takes-saucy-revenge-1.973872?referrerPath=home

This might not be the right place to comment but I thought it might interest you...I thought this might place the popularity of 50 shades of grey into a bit of local context. When the 'media' finds humour in abusive and controlling behaviour, what can you expect? I can't quite get past the casual reporting style and awful pun. Nothing like a small-town rag to minimise a serious issue. Nice.

2stopspastBarking said...

Just seen this on Facebook with the comment "Advice for those who find the relationship in 50 Shades of Gray 'romantic' " http://stoprelationshipabuse.org/educated/warning-signs-of-abuse/

Unknown said...

They aren't necessarily erotica, but if you want some kink with your well told story, Tom Robbins is a good alternative to this garbage.

denise said...

Anais Nin's erotica is brilliant, and usually does it for me. You can spend a lot less money and experience less blinding rage if you pick up the Penguin Great Loves edition of Eros Unbound, a sampling of her erotic stories.

Also, the vast majority of Henry and June, her diary entries chronicling her affair with Henry and June Miller while she was in Paris is good for those who want a novel-length piece.

Here's a whole list of her naughty-parts tingling tales. I feel creepy for typing that:
http://www.powells.com/s?kw=nin%2C+anais&class=

I work for an independent bookseller in the midwest, and I have to exercise extreme self control as to not fly across the counter and strangle people whenever anyone buys a copy of 50 Shades. Your blog has made me snort-laugh in public. Thank you.

William Crimson said...

Hey Amberance,

Thanks for the recommendation.

One of the reasons I started writing erotica was because I couldn't find anything I wanted to read on-line. I had already read the classics (which you mentioned), including Story of O. I haven't read 50 Shades and I doubt I will 0 figuring, at this point, I would rather write than read. Seems that readers either love or hate it.

I'm a huge fan of the "Best Women's Erotica" series. I would also really, really, really recommend the Sleeping Beauty trilogy by Anne Rice. Someone else mentioned Anais Nin - beautiful erotica. The story of how Anais came to write the stories is also fascinating, but that's a another story, I guess.

:-)

Will Crimson @ Erotic Writer

Anonymous said...

How did you know I google tentacle porn???

Remittance Girl said...

Thank you Amberance,

It's an honour to have a recommendation from you. I think one of the best places to read consistently high quality erotica is at the ERWA story gallery http://www.erotica-readers.com/GD/S/Erotic_Fiction.htm.
And the archives go back many years and have stories from some of the best erotica writers out there.http://www.erotica-readers.com/GD/Treasure_Chest.htm

Anonymous said...

Thank you for all the great posts on 50. You now have provided me a quest to find your site. Your humour is priceless!

Thank you for the reviews and recs!

All the best.

Jonesio said...

Literotica does contain a lot of badly written, amateur nonsense though that actually even makes this fifty Shades drivel look like the work of someone who knew what they were doing...

Might I suggest, for some light relief, this parody of Fifty Shades - there are a lot of them out there but this one is seriously funny: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008QNE5S6/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B008QNE5S6&linkCode=as2&tag=modernistdepot-20

Easily Aroused said...

Amberance,

Thank you for the lovely endorsement - I'm touched.

~EA