Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

What, no John Donne?

And how, exactly, is Chaucer erotic?  Seriously?  Sample Chaucerian sex scene:

And sodeynly anon this Damyan
Gan pullen up the smok, and in he throng.

While there’s something to be said for a direct approach, it’s not precisely EROTIC.

Emma Holly can write scenes featuring stuff I don’t normally get turned on, bondage, domination etc, and suddenly I get it.

Emma Holly!

Bridget Midway. Her Love My Way helped me finally understand, and even be turned on by BDSM. As a former sexual abuse investigator, this was no mean feat.

Some poetry does it for me e e cummings “I like your body when it’s with my body” http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-like-my-body-when-it-is-with-your/
and John Donne “To his Mistress Going to Bed” http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/elegy20.htm

The first erotic romance author I ever read was Susan Johnson so she has a special place in my heart along with her red leather dildos and jewel necklaces that double as sex toys.

Honestly with current romances Im enjoying the underlying D/s sexual tension in Madeline Hunter’s latest more that something labeled erotica that just seems to have superfluous sex games that don’t add anything to the relationship.

Right now, it’s all about some Louisa Burton in my house. Like Sandra D said about Emma Holly, she writes about sexual scenarios that are not necessarily my thing and makes me totally get it. Or maybe I just love the idea of naughty succubi and genies and satyrs. Seriously, go get her books!

HA! Security word: Function69. Hell, yeah.

Seriously!  Freud?!  I guess I’m just so squicked out about his complete turnaround regarding early traumatic experience in the role of hysteria that I just can’t picture Papa Freud as erotic.

Now Molly Weatherfied?  Hot!

Robert Herrick.

THE VINE.
by Robert Herrick

I DREAM’D this mortal part of mine
Was Metamorphoz’d to a Vine;
Which crawling one and every way,
Enthrall’d my dainty Lucia.
Me thought, her long small legs & thighs
I with my Tendrils did surprize;
Her Belly, Buttocks, and her Waste
By my soft Nerv’lits were embrac’d:
About her head I writhing hung,
And with rich clusters (hid among
The leaves) her temples I behung:
So that my Lucia seem’d to me
Young Bacchus ravished by his tree.
My curles about her neck did craule,
And armes and hands they did enthrall:
So that she could not freely stir,
(All parts there made one prisoner.)
But when I crept with leaves to hide
Those parts, which maids keep unespy’d,
Such fleeting pleasures there I took,
That with the fancie I awook;
And found (Ah me!) this flesh of mine
More like a Stock then like a Vine.

Anais Nin! (damn laptop…no umlauts). She’s been a favorite of mine for some time.

I completely second Emma Holly.  Didn’t know I’d like menages and m/m so much until Strange Attractions.

I also love Robin Schone.  The Lady’s Tutor remains the most sensual book I’ve ever read.

Megan Hart is a new one for me. In reading Dirty, now reading Broken, she can suck me into the story so much I forget where I am.

Away12 really suits the day I’ve had. My brain is away…

Love the Herrick. Thank you Kiku (and thanks, spinsterwitch, for the nod to my evil twin Molly Weatherfield)

I am going to have to third (or fourth, or fifth… or somethingth, I’ve lost count) Emma Holly. Just reading the parts where no sex is happening in her novels is hot. She writes prose that is very tied to the senses and I just find that hot. ::Fans self just thinking about it now.::

And this comes at a very opportune time, as I am just re-reading “Strange Attractions” and being blown away by sex between two guys, and sex between two guys and a girl. Two guys and a girl (or as I call it in my fantasies, “The Me Sandwich” (Me Sandwiched between two hot guys)) is one of my biggest fantasies.

Spamword: Charge37. Yeah, I get quite a charge out of reading Emma Holly’s books.

No Anais Nin? The only reason I can figure they’d omit her is because they worried it would come off as to obligatory?? Though I am pleased to see Lady Caroline included. She stalked Lord Byron well before the days of the Intratubez and is an inspiration to groupies of hot clubfooted, silver-tongued poets.

I also really like Anna Clare, who wrote 3 books I’ve been able to find.  My favorite is her historical with werewolves, FLOOD, from Black Lace.  It isn’t like most of the werewolf stuff out there.

Great thread!  I have to second ee cummings and Megan Hart and add…

Jacqueline Carey.  Her work isn’t overtly erotica but oh holy goddess she turns me on.  A lot.

I’m going to throw in a vote for Joey W. Hill.  She can be hit or miss sometimes but when she hits it’s a home run.  Natural Law and The Vampire Queen series ftw!

Kresley Cole writes incredibly hot romance novels.  She has two series: the Immortals After Dark series (fantasy) and the MacCarrick Brothers Trilogy (Scottish Regency).  I highly recommend both series.  The stories themselves are gripping, and the sex scenes just blow me away!

I just finished the second in the Vampire Queen Series. Submissive men aren’t my thing but I found thier relationship really really interesting and found myself liking it more than I ever thought I would. But I really disliked some of sex outside thier relationship that just seemed to be there to up the erotic value and nothing else. 

Spam: Town59 -Yep the were really going to town in that book.

Karen Marie Moning…great name for a romance writer, yes? She’s one of the few authors who I can read regarding “time travel”. Her stuff works for me…at least according to my husband who keeps buying me her books!

For me it’s Opal Carew. I really enjoyed her first release TWIN FANTASIES and can’t wait to read SWING.

1. Boswell got the clap NINETEEN times. And at least six of those times were after John Hunter published a paper concluding that the clap and syphilis where different phases of the same disease. Fraudulently, obviously, but he did some pretty serious research: he actually gave himself the clap and syphilis by poking pus from the pustules into his own penis.

2. I love Edna St. Vincent Millay for eroticism: “What my lips have kissed and where and I why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh upon the glass and listen for reply, and in my heart there stirs a quiet pain for unremembered lads that not again will turn to me at midnight with a cry… (Sonnnet XLIII)

3. Rilke, especially the end of the fifth elegy:

Angel: if there were a place we know nothing of, and there,
on some unsayable carpet, lovers revealed what here they could never master, their high daring
figures of heart’s flight,
their towers of desire, their ladders,
long since standing where there was no ground, leaning,trembling, on each other – and mastered them,
in front of the circle of watchers, the countless, soundless dead:
Would these not fling their last, ever-saved,ever-hidden, unknown to us, eternallyvalid coins of happiness in front of the finally truly smiling pair on the silent carpet?

Lora Leigh!

I think she’s romantica not erotica, but I love me some Shiloh Walker.  And I don’t do erotica so much.

Emma Holly, Angela Knight and Lora Leigh.

Hm. Depends on my mood. Emma Holly certainly writes some spicy spicy goodness.  For m/m I do like JL Langely. Samantha Kane.

And the crack is alway so good: JR Ward.

As others have said, definitely Emma Holly.  I just got a new one by Kate Pearce called Simply Sexual that is currently rocking my socks as well.

And Sarah McCarty!

Emma Holly absolutely. I also love the Sylvia Day historicals. No tricks, no surprise guests, just really hot writing.

And Larissa Ione’s short stories.

Whew!

heh. Shot36. I’m not even touching that :)

Poetry:  I agree on e.e. cummings, definitely. “it is so quite new a thing”!

Jacqueline Carey gets me, regardless of the genre boundary thing.  The Kushiel books are hawt!  And I love the romantic sex scenes in the Outlander series. 

I haven’t read a lot of really explicit erotica, but I have enjoyed some Shiloh Walker recently.

This thread has certainly given me some ideas about what to read next!

I definitely second Karen Marie Moning! I never thought I’d be interested in time-travel, but she is such a great writer that I was pulled in completely from the beginning.

There’s only one author who makes my girly parts tingle. What I like is that when I’m not in a mood for tingling, she still reaches the parts other authors can’t:

P L Nunn

You may be scarred for life but you’ll be thankful for it :)

Shakespeare. Pfffft. Erotic author my bottom.

I’ll second Carey, and add Charlaine Harris, particularly all scenes that feature Eric.

W. H. Auden:

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit’s sensual ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

I second Lisabea’s JL Langley vote.  “My Fair Captain” was my first e-book, because I could not resist the regency+space+gay sex premise.  I was a bit worried that it would be the “hilariously bad” type of “worth it”, but it ended up being the “so OMG amazing” type of “worth it”.  I’m glad I have it in e-copy, because I’d've worn out a hard copy by now.

I’ll likely be scoffed at for this, but I still have a soft spot for D. H. Lawrence.  Ah, Mellors…

You people are missing a major point—the list is of authors who LIVED IN LONDON. 

And where, pray tell, is Samuel Pepys?

Incidentally, Boswell’s LIFE OF JOHNSON is not exactly sexy—they are actually thinking of his journals.

Oh, and Tam—the seduction in Chaucer’s TROILUS AND CRISEYDE is sexy, IIRC.

Ann—Shakespeare is so erotic!  Try the poems, especially “Venus and Adonis” and “The Rape of Lucrece.”

Hey, props for putting Kureishi on there. He usually freaks me out, but he also wrote the script for My Beautiful Laundrette and that has one of the steamiest sex scenes I’ve ever seen. (He wrote it, not directed it. But he still should get some credit!)

Seconding votes for Millay and Donne. I must confess, if Andrew Marvell had sent me “To His Coy Mistress”, it might have worked. Keats I find incredibly romantic, but not especially erotic. (But I haven’t yet read many of his letters. So that may change.)

Sarah Waters and Emma Donoghue are both incredibly erotic at times. And parts of Brideshead Revisited, even though there’s nothing actually said or done (dammit!) get me a little worked up. In a good way. I’ve never liked any of Emma Holly’s books enough to hold on to them, but the erotic elements are really good all the same.

I LOVE Emma Holly! And also Emma Wildes.

Oh, massive thirds for Donne, especially “To His Mistress Going to Bed” (try here):

License my roving hands, and let them go,
Behind, before, above, between, below.

Who else can make prepositions sexy?

Link is moderately NSFW.

Wry Hag, I was thinking of D.H. Lawrence, too.  Why was he not included?  Haven’t they read “Love on the Farm”?

...
And down his mouth comes to my mouth! and down
His bright dark eyes come over me, like a hood
Upon my mind! his lips meet mine, and a flood
Of sweet fire sweeps across me, so I drown
Against him, die, and find death good.

*swoons*

I am going to go real old school.

Judith Krantz(SCRUPLES), Jacqueline Susann (VALLEY OF THE DOLLS), Harold Robbins (GOODBYE JANETTE), Irving Wallace (THE FAN CLUB)

I am a sucker for the salacious draped in luxury and scandal.

Maybe I have a fondness for them because they were my first, stolen from my mom and read under the covers…

Good times ~A

John Donne
Philip Sidney
Emily Dickinson
Christopher Marlowe
Marilyn Hacker

I’m thinking Pablo Neruda.
I want to learn Spanish so I can read him in the original.
Had a buyfriend once who read Neruda (in Spanish, that is) for me. I didn’t understand one word in ten, but damn, it was hot!
English translations also work tho’ ;>

Boyfriend, dammit!

because I could not resist the regency+space+gay sex premise.

Yay to Sarah Gray! OMG. I am the biggest MFC whore ever.

Portia DaCosta
Cleo Cordell
Emma Holly - hit or miss for me
Good ol’ Anonymous

One of the first straight erotica books I bought years and years ago was The Devil Inside by Portia DaCosta (a Black Lace book).  I loved that book and still mourn the fact that I left it and a box full of Black Lace titles in my ex-husband’s attic when we separated.  Woe…  Woe…

The last couple of Portia/Wendy’s I’ve read have been paranormal.  That’s not necessarily my cuppa, but that’s okay.  I still have plenty of her other titles in my porno box.

Elizabeth Hoyt does such a masterful job of integrating sex with the story, and making her characters real and funny, I can’t get enough of her.

When I’m in the mood for dirty fun, I like Jane Lockwood.

IMO men write porn, or occasionally romance, but rarely erotica…I’m not sure they know the difference.  So a list of mostly men…pfft.

My favs…Susan Lyons, Lora Leigh, Amy Lane (Vulnerabe), Jory Strong (Angelini), Jet Mykles (Heaven), and Shelly Laurenston.  Hit and miss…Emma Holly (Strange Attractions, yum), Linda Howard, and of course the crack that is JR Ward.  Portia DaCosta is in my TBR, and gotta get My Fair Captain.

Ann S…PL Nunn.  Yeah, her art is great, but not sure I’d label her writing erotica.

Security word “wife35” yikes!

IMO men write porn, or occasionally romance, but rarely erotica…I’m not sure they know the difference.  So a list of mostly men…pfft

Denni~Josh Lanyon does NOT write porn. Give him a try. His m/m mystery novels have a wonderful romantic vibe and are lovely, erotic,and never ever pornographic. I recommend The Dark Horse.

OMG spam:deal69 HAHAAHAHAHA

I second the vote for PL Nunn! Oi, the stuff she can do for my panties… ^^;

Emma Holly
Jacquline Carey
Cathryn Fox
Angela Knight

I don’t understand the lines between Erotica, Romantica (is that a real term?), etc.

For poetry, you might read Pattiann Rogers’ poem ‘Rolling Naked in the Morning Dew’ from her book “Firekeeper”. I’ve heard her read it and leave an entire room holding its collective breath only to to all pause, take a breath and burst into frantic applause. I won’t type it here (copyright and all . . .)

Oh, Anais Nin made me think dirty, dirty things from age 16 on.  Delta of Venus and Little Birds are great, but Henry and June is my favorite.

Jaqueline Carey’s Kushiel books (9th one this summer!) are hot, but not “I’m gonna go in the other room” hot.

Emma Holly however… HOT HOT HOT.

I want to like Lora Leigh—I do with the right editor, and when her heroines aren’t so “oh, that’s BAD!”.  Whey they’re like “oh, people think that’s BAD, but I’m pretty intrigued by being sandwiched between you and your hot friend”, that’s when it gets good.  Also, if all her men weren’t ALPHA MALE RAWR and all her women weren’t so OMG GIRLS ARE GROSS, I’d be even more intrigued.

Everytime the Smart Bitches have an erotica discussion, I fill up my library holds—I have the comments in one window and the library catalog in another.

spam word: price43: yeah, I can’t pay the price to buy the books because I’m in college, and college=poor.

The difficulties with clear classification and definition of erotica, ‘romantica’ and pornography arise because the situation is so fluid.  It has been changing continually over the last 50 years, because of the changes in society, and the consequent changes in the legal position regarding censorship and the as yet unsolved question of what constitutes ‘obscenity’.
In the 1950s, you could not, in a mainstream English-language novel, describe any acts in which a sedate married couple might engage on their conjugal couch; the author had to close the bedroom door on the reader.  The very possibility of classifying a book as an erotic novel rather than a pornographic one has really only existed since the changes to the obscenity laws that were enacted at the end of the 1950s.  Prior to that, any fiction with overt sexual description was automatically regarded (wrongly, in my view) as pornographic and obscene.
The legal test-case in the UK was in 1960, when Penguin Books decided to test the new Obscene Publications law by putting out Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover in paperback: the book had been in print since 1928, though published on the Continent.  Raunchy English-language novels were often available in editions published in France or Germany, and consequently available only to the wealthier sections of society. A paperback at 3/6d placed it within reach of hoi polloi – there are social and class implications running right through this topic, in the visual arts as well as literature.  Penguin won their case, on the new legal grounds of ‘literary merit’ forming a justification for the explicit sex.
If we go back to the basic definitions from the etymology of the words – always a good thing to do – ‘pornography’ means ‘writings about whores’ and ‘erotica’ means ‘matters pertaining to sexual love’.
Prostitutes engage professionally in a series of sexual acts with men whom they do not know personally, and with whom they therefore cannot feel any emotional ties. Writings that describe a series of sexual acts between people whom the reader never gets to know, or even to recognise and tell apart, and does not care about, are pornographic. However, the prostitute, and the actors in a pornographic text, may find the sex acts perfectly agreeable, and may be engaging in them voluntarily; indeed, with enthusiasm.  Written pornography thus consists of a sequence of descriptions or vignettes of sex acts, often barely connected with each other in terms of story and plot, and taking place between characters that are interchangeable ciphers.  The aim is solely to arouse lust in the reader. 
Erotic activities must, by definition, involve personal, emotional ties of some kind, because the definition involves love. Agape is spiritual love, eros sexual, physical love. The Happy Ever After ending is not necessary: that belongs to romance, whether erotic or otherwise (‘romantica’ is a hideous portmanteau word presumably implying ‘erotic romance’ – the basic premise of an erotic novel with a romance plot.  It is not a helpful term), but if a reader is to feel anything emotional, as opposed to physical, from reading a book, characters have to be rounded;  they have to evolve and develop, they have to be real and interesting people. This is why Cleland’s 1749 classic is not pornography, but erotica. (Moreover, it is also a romance). 
Erotica should therefore follow the usual rules of novels in having a proper story, with a beginning, a middle and an end, and believable, well-drawn characters who grow and change during the course of the story. The reader may still be aroused to lust, but will also enjoy a specific narrative.  ‘Erotica’ must also imply novels in which the principal theme is the sexual relationship of the leading characters;  they are about the sexual relationship above all else.  This differentiates true erotica from the many other novels, common today, in which the main story arc is about romance, suspense, mystery, family relationships – any one of a dozen genres – but in which sexual description, where it occurs in the text, is open, graphic and detailed.
There seems to be a widespread view today that ‘erotica’ must include descriptions of adventurous and inventive sexual practices. This seems incorrect to me, but it has arisen because we now regard it as so normal that we are able, legally and openly, to buy books that include explicit sexual description, that it is easy to imagine that if erotica is something different, it must be about ‘different’ sexual practices.  In fact, the types of sexual practices described are a completely separate issue, but as it would be hard, though not impossible, to sustain a whole novel on the basis of one couple in the missionary position with the lights out, then erotica probably does tend to display more variety.
Things get even more complex with the visual arts.

How have I never been to this site until now? What is wrong with me?

Lora Leigh most times does a great job

“the crack that is JR Ward” oh oh yes

I’m not certain I have anything new to add here as you all seem to have covered the basis, but what a great new playgroung I have found!!

Lora Leigh (her menages…who knew?!, and I love her Breed series)
Angela Knight (my fave is Jane’s Warlord)
Emma Holly (sometimes…but I did like The Countess’ Pleasure…not the ending, though, but the sex was hawt)
Elizabeth Hoyt (esp. The Leopard Prince, and The Serpent Prince…red heels??!  I never knew that could be hot)
Laura Kinsale (esp. Shadowheart)
Connie Brockway (esp. All Through the Night)
Jacquelyne Carey’s Kushiel series (I would have thought The Sundering was hot, too, but she didn’t let any of those hot bad guys have sex *cry*)
Robin Schone (I can’t get my hands on a copy of the Ladies’ Tutor…anyone can help?)
Julia Quinn

There’s more…I can’t remember.
spamword: actually82…yes, I could probably list 82…