Posted by red on June 16th, 2008 in Review

In A Nutshell: With such an ambitious title, you would think the book in question would be epic in length – rivaling a dictionary or a fantasy novel with a dragon on the cover. Instead “Sex: How To Do Everything” by Em and Lo from DK publishing is a succinct reference book on, well, everything to do with sex.

What’s Awesome: Great information on a lot of topics to do with sex, presented in a very user friendly and approachable way. With great photography to boot!

What’s Not So Awesome: Hmm, not much actually. I learned quite a few random things from this book, but you know, it’s not how to do EVERYTHING…but no one book should be able to do that, and besides, who wants to read an encyclopedia. That’s not sexy. But, anyways, I would have liked to have seen a beefier chapter on anal sex.
Rating:

The book is a large hardcover, your basic coffee table book with a delicious twist. It is also brief and to the point, clocking in at under two hundred pages including an index (yay!) and lots and lots of full page photos. There are nine sections in the book, covering the whole gambit of sex: seduction, anatomy, manual/oral/vaginal/anal sex, sex toys, fantasy and sexual health. Within each section, the topics covered are laid out in a simple “how to” fashion – lots of bold headers and pictures used to illustrate the ideas.

The neatest thing about this book is the fact that although it is a how-to book, it doesn’t make a point of saying prescribing formulas on how to do specific things. So, for example, the small section on dirty talk in chapter one gives a variety of suggestions to get you talking dirty – essentially, just enough to get you going. As the description on the back of the book calls it, you get “cheeky ideas” instead of “stodgy homework assignments”.

The book does, however, provide distinct directions for a few topics in amongst all the cheeky ideas. In the Manual Sex and Oral Sex chapters, there are diagrams that show how to use your fingers or tongue; in the intercourse chapter, there is a step by step (with photos) of how to do the clitoral alignment technique). There’s even a step by step of how to tie “rope cuffs” (aka a two column tie). But by and large, the book is more about good ideas and nudges in the right direction than really in depth explorations of specific topics.

But now let’s talk about the photos in this book – wow what great photography. The images, in addition to being very sexy, had a raw and real feeling to them. There are a lot of couples, and a good variety of eye candy – something for everyone, I think. There are so many photos in this book, flipping through it is a pleasure, and very easy to do. I found that I buzzed though the book quickly the first time I read it – between the photos and the very digestible tidbits of information, it was a easy and entertaining read.

Overall, I have found this book to be very informative and approachable. It’s the kind of reference book that most would find useful keeping around, as a quick reference for how to do a simple wrist tie, ideas for sexual positions, information of sexual health, or ideas galore at a variety of ways to spice up your sex life.

Did I mention the photos? Damn, I love the photos in this book…