Lets Talk About Sex

In honor of Valentine's Day (hint: it's next week, guys!) our current book display is about Love, Sex and Valentine's Day. Actually, it is just about love and sex because I couldn't find any books of Valentine's Day, but I know you'll let it slide.

Here are a few of the most interesting:

The Kama Sutra and The Perfumed Garden
Vatsyanyana and Cheikh Nefaoui
Hey guess what...there are actual words in this book, not just the pictures you might already be familiar with. The Kama Sutra is actually a Hindu sexual treatise from the 4th century AD and it isn't just about sexual positions. It is more like an essay on sexual etiquette, telling the reader just what is permissible. The Perfumed Garden is an Arabian work from the 16th century and is much more poetic. Both provide and interesting look at sexuality in different cultures.

The Well of Loneliness
Radclyffe Hall
This book definitely falls into the "love" category. In fact, the only sex scene in the entire book consists of the words "and that night, they were not divided." However, it was banned anyway because the couple in question are both women. This is a classic of lesbian fiction and was groundbreaking for being the first novel to condemn society for its unfair treatment of gays and lesbians.



Outspoken Women: An anthology of women's writing on sex, 1870-1969
Edited by Lesley Hall
The "sexual revolution" may have started in the 1960s, but women were writing about sex long before that. This is a pretty interesting look at women's attitudes about sex from the Victorians to your grandmothers.