Recommendations for erotica

August 6, 2009 4:56 AM

Recommendations for erotica

I'm interested in reading erotic novels but I need a bit of guidance. Virgin Books are the biggest erotica publisher in the UK and I've dipped into a few of their titles at random but they've been uniformly awful. Google has not been my friend either because there is a lot of chaff out there. So I am looking for (ideally) a good reviews/recommendation site or (failing that) individual recommendations for novels, authors or publishers.

I'm a straight male interested in the porn rather than romance end of the spectrum and when I say novels I mean actual printed books. Bonus points for science fiction or fantasy recommendations (although I am not after a million recommendations for Jacqueline Carey).

posted by ninebelow to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

IMHO the best erotic novels are from the most literate novelists: e.g., Burgess, Davenport, Nabokov. There's a book, "The Oxter English Dictionary," that purports to define unusual words by exceptional writers, but, via its examples, serves as a guide to erotica.
posted by RichardS at 5:36 AM on August 6, 2009

Anaïs Nin?
posted by K.P. at 8:20 AM on August 6, 2009

Alberto Manguel's Gates of Paradise anthologies may be worth checking out, as they anthologize short erotic fiction by a number of writers.
posted by KokuRyu at 8:49 AM on August 6, 2009

Response by poster: I do like erotic novels by mainstream literary authors but I am after something less highbrow, more commercial. So less Nin and more porn.

In MeMail someone suggested customer comments on Amazon and Good Vibrations but these are primarily sellers and the reviews are hit and miss.
posted by ninebelow at 9:36 AM on August 6, 2009

Sci-fi and fantasy? Well, have you checked out Laurel K. Hamilton's two series, Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, and Meredith Gentry? They're a mix of well-written action and porn. I have no idea how well written the porn is, because I'm not exactly a connoisseur, but the stories were over all good, and she's honestly one of my favorite over the top action writers. I just had to stop reading because I couldn't take the porn anymore (and also I understand that Anita Blake gets truly ridiculous in the later books). Also, with Anita Blake, the porn doesn't really get going until the third book, but the Meredith Gentry series has it in the initial premise.

There's a ton of paranormal romance out there, but I can't recommend most of it one way or the other, because that's not what I look for. I know the first book of Kim Harrison's series is shit (not the shit, just shit), but I haven't tried any of the other ones out there. But as far as the writing goes, Hamilton is pretty good over all.
posted by Caduceus at 10:17 AM on August 6, 2009

Response by poster: I should have explicitly stated: no paranormal romance.
posted by ninebelow at 11:24 AM on August 6, 2009

You might try Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty trilogy. It's under her psuedonym A.N. Roquelaure, start with The Claiming of Sleepy Beauty.
posted by Kattiara17 at 11:14 AM on August 7, 2009

I'd recommend Guillaime Appollinaire's Amorous Exploits of a Young Rakehell and pretty much anything in the Wordsworth Classic Erotica series. Also, The Pearl.
posted by mattbucher at 2:36 PM on August 9, 2009