Erotic Fiction

[boshobosho]

So I like to have a broad base of books on my shelf. I have your standard "classics", some sci-fi, a hefty lot of fantasy, some horror, and a smidge of non-fiction. So I figured my last bit to pick up..is some erotica.
I grabbed two books at Borders from what is called the Nexus line, and was not too enthused.
Does anyone have any recommendations?

[Jonathan Bogart]

Can't go wrong with the classics. John Cleland's Fanny Hill, Anaïs Nin's Little Birds and Delta Of Venus, anything by Pierre Louÿs. More recently, I quite liked Nicholson Baker's Vox.

[jesse_custer]

I find it more uproarious than erotic, but anything by the Marquis de Sade.

[DWEarhart]

Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty trilogy, which she wrote under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure.

Hayooooooooo.

[Athena Bast]

Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty trilogy, which she wrote under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure.

Hayooooooooo.

I second this along with Belinda by Anne Rice under the pseudonym of Anne Rampling. It's like a modern day Lolita. Exit To Eden by her as well but I'd recommend Sleeping Beauty and Belinda before that.

There's also The Story of O by Pauline Reage. I haven't read this but it's deemed classic erotica.

[JeffreyWKramer]

Personally, I find Rice's erotic writings almost as tedious as I find her other stuff, but YMMV.

Count me also as another that doesn't find de Sade's work particularly erotic. In some spots it's so awful that it is sort of hilarious, and a lot of the rest of the time it's just tedious and repetitive. Particularly awful are the all-too-frequent passages in which the various characters take a break between episodes of hedonistic excess to engage in the most juvenile sorts of philosophical ruminations. All in all, de Sade's work is marred by the most dire sin possible for erotica: It's boring.

THE STORY OF O is very much a classic, but probably not much to the taste of those not at least somewhat interested in male dominant/female submissive sadomasochism, and might be somewhat extreme even for some that are interested in that topic. It's not particularly graphic, but some find it disturbing.

TOPPING FROM BELOW by Laura Reese is an erotic mystery-thriller and probably qualifies more as truly "classic" erotica than anything else in the field in the past couple decades. Many who really enjoyed that one consider Reese's follow-up novel, PANIC SNAP, to be a huge let-down.

Many fans of BDSM porn enjoy CARRIE'S STORY and SAFE WORD by Molly Weatherfield, BREAKING THE GIRL by Kim Corum and Laura Antoniou's MARKETPLACE books. Personally, I gave up about halfway through the one MARKETPLACE book I tried, and I found Weatherfield's stuff pretty tedious, but I found BREAKING THE GIRL okay. Not Faulkner, mind you, but as erotic fiction goes, it does the trick.

A lot of people I talk to that like erotica are quite fond of Reggie Chesterfield's TURNED OUT! I can't speak for it personally, as I've not read it, though I think I have a copy somewhere that someone gave me awhile back.

[Inkthinker]

Seems like Laurell K. Hamilton's works might qualify as erotic fiction, given how much emphasis she's placed on sex and sexuality and sensuality. Her Anita Blake books start off fairly chaste, but that changes up by about halfway through the series (reflecting, according to Hamilton, her own late-blooming personal idiology regarding sex over the years as she wrote them). Her other well-known series, the Meredith Gentry books, start off with a good deal more erotic content than the Blake books did.

Both series fall under the "supernatural detective" genre at the bookstore, I believe.

[boshobosho]

Seems like Laurell K. Hamilton's works might qualify as erotic fiction, given how much emphasis she's placed on sex and sexuality and sensuality. Her Anita Blake books start off fairly chaste, but that changes up by about halfway through the series (reflecting, according to Hamilton, her own late-blooming personal idiology regarding sex over the years as she wrote them). Her other well-known series, the Meredith Gentry books, start off with a good deal more erotic content than the Blake books did.

Both series fall under the "supernatural detective" genre at the bookstore, I believe.

I've read a few of her books. I'll pass.
As to other posts, I have read the first of Anne Rice's sleeping beauty books.
And from reading other posts, I do wonder why so many of these books delve into BDSM.

[JeffreyWKramer]

I've read a few of her books. I'll pass.
As to other posts, I have read the first of Anne Rice's sleeping beauty books.
And from reading other posts, I do wonder why so many of these books delve into BDSM.

Traditionally, particularly as one gets into the 20th century, a disproportionate amount of erotica was written to appeal to more "underground" sexual interests, including BDSM and homosexuality. Erotic fiction was itself marginalized and, by and large, often had to be published and distributed on an "underground" basis until the 70s, and marginized sexual groups in particular didn't have a lot of "legit" outlets - if all you wanted to fantasize about was boobs and butts and vaginas and maybe some screwing, you could find that more easily in more mainstream sources - and thus tended to traditionally be big supporters of the erotica publishers.

It's only really been in the past decade or so that this trend has really started to turn around, as more overtly sexualized - and often quite explicit - "vanilla" erotica has become a dominant (possibly *the* dominant) sales niche in romance/erotic fiction. If one looks at the "romance" bestsellers these days, most contain erotic content more explicit than the stuff one would often find in the "underground" days of erotic fiction. It ain't just the sappy Harlequin stuff any more, as Corrina pointed out to me a couple years ago.

Interestingly, there is a growing amount of overlap between the new mainstream erotica and the content that was more associated with the traditional, underground erotic press. There's a fair amount of same-gender sexuality and BDSM content in a lot of the current stuff, which, fueled by changes in attitudes toward alternative sexualities, seems to indicate something of an artistic convergence of these different trends in erotic fiction.

[Athena Bast]

I've read a few of her books. I'll pass.
As to other posts, I have read the first of Anne Rice's sleeping beauty books.


the second book is better than the first one. the third I found forgettable.

Rice has a tendency to start good and then quickly fade out.

Belinda is very good for her.

[Excelsior]

Amazon top 20 search lists

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Wicked Pleasure (Bound Hearts) by Lora Leigh
Decadent by Shayla Black
Surrender by Kimberly Zant
Dangerous Secrets (Avon Red) by Lisa Marie Rice
Enchanted: Erotic Bedtime Stories For Women by Nancy Madore

[Sheepish08]

Georges Bataille´s Story of the Eye is infamous for its raw eroticism although shouldn´t be read by the faint hearted - it borders (and excells) in total perversion that some might find rather offensive. You have been warned . . .