Reader Book Recommendations (Day 2, for Advanced Students)

Damn, I love smart people.

Not only did you not find it odd that I got so brain-sparked by Sex at Dawn you came right back with, "Yeah, you liked that? Then read this." I love it when you're all bossy like that.

On the off-chance there are others out there who think reading a book about human mating habits is a fine way to pass an afternoon, I offer a list of book recommendations from readers, most of them inspired by the Sex at Dawn post. Happy reading! (Helpful hint: tuck book behind regular book like The Help to give appearance of being less pervy and/or nerdy).

[note: if you buy a book or two through the links here, Amazon will toss me a couple of pennies. But I'm not gonna tell you what to do.]

--mjs writes: I love Sex at Dawn and wish that it was required reading for teenagers along with Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies by Michael Bader, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence by Esther Perel, and Sex, Time, and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution and The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image by Leonard Shlain.

-- Anonymous: I really liked Sex at Dawn. It changed the way I view the world, and turned me into a skeptic overnight. The book is jam-packed with great stuff, and along with The Ethical Slut (Dossie Easton and Janet W. Harding) has really changed how I look at women's sexuality, from a male's perspective.

--Agrees Sarah:  Check out Robin Baker's Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles We want the security, therefore monogamy, but our bodies can override the tightly held ideal. Sometimes even thinking about "temptation" can scare the monogamous.

--Agrees afungi:  Sperm Wars is a better book imho, as it looks at modern human physiology to draw conclusions about human sexual programming. For instance, most sperm can't fertilize an egg, and in fact is there only to kill the sperm of other men.

--rederekp:  The Myth of Monogamy: Fidelity and Infidelity in Animals and People (David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton).

--Ninja Mike and someone called weeeeeeearggggh both recommend the work of Geoffrey Miller, specifically The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature

--JLW:  The Evolution Of Desire  by David Buss is another good read on this topic.

Plus 2 others in a similar vein:

--Jerry T: My wife and I found a book that talked about the uniqueness of each female and male genital anatomy and how the appearance described the personality of the man or woman, The Sexual Practices of Quodoushka: Teachings from the Nagual Tradition by Amara Charles. 

--IBWMW Minister of Science: I'm a big fan of Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sexby Olivia Judson and Why We Do It: Rethinking Sex and the Selfish Gene by Niles Eldredge. Both are a tad more science-y (OK, a lot more - anything authored by someone named Niles just screams nerdy) than the ones you have, but what do you expect from the IBWMW Minister of Science?

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go find some books.

xoxo
jill

Coming next:  Insistent throbbing arousal pressing against our sweet swollen wetness, aka Reader Recommended Smut! There's still time to suggest your favorite.*

*Unless it's one of those Harlequin Romances about having a secret baby with a billionaire. Because I read one, okay two, of those the other week and they were--as pretty much anyone with a testable level of intelligence could have told me beforehand--really really bad. If I hadn't been so busy furtively hiding them under The Vagina Monologues (which was actually my least embarrassing library selection that day), I would have seen that they had "Billionaire and Babies" scrolled across their covers in telltale pukey Kotex box-style font. So it was my old damn fault. Also my fault that I had to read both of them to definitively--like 100%--determine their badness.

(photo source)