Janet W. Hardy

The New Topping Book is a great answer to the question many new tops have: "How do I actually do it?" This book isn't just a guide to resources and fundamentals of safety and communication, it walks you through creating a viable emotional and conceptual framework for your own domination.

The authors don't try to railroad the reader down one particular road; rather, they give you the tools to empower yourself and become confident enough to actually dive into play without excess worries or show more insecurities. This sort of comforting, non-judgemental attitude can be surprisingly rare in the BDSM community. It's super readable, very inclusive of different styles and intensities of play, and I think it's not only a good primer but a good refresher for more experienced players.

I wasn't too keen on the "interludes," which are essentially little snippets from friends or acquaintances of Hardy & Easton about their experiences. Theoretically these could be helpful but mostly they just read like smut and seemed kind of pointless. I also didn't love the inclusion of a chapter on "BDSM Spirituality." It felt like too much of a departure from the rest of the text to warrant being included, plus it was predictably new-agey and hippy-dippy and all that. So you get quotes like:

The cosmic river flows through each of us, bearing nourishment, washing away what we no longer need, making us wet.

Infusing BDSM with spiritual weight is totally fine, but I don't think it belongs in a primer for newbies. I made a concerted effort to read this chapter without judgement, but when the authors mentioned a rigger friend of theirs who saw visions of "animal spirits" and received psychic messages while tying people up, my eyes started to roll involuntarily. The conclusion is also a bit up-its-own-ass, talking about Lucifer and illuminating the darkness within and stuff like that, and I mean, come on now. We're not monks, we're people who like to flog others for fun. But I suppose it's better to treat BDSM with too much reverence than not enough.

All in all, definitely recommended as a resource for beginners. Feel free to take what you need from the text, though, and leave the rest. I can promise you the animal visions are not a requirement. show less

I love this book. Far more than a technical manual, it gets deep into the psychology of topping. It helps explain the kind of mindset you have to have for a successful kink encounter as a top. After all, everything else is secondary. You don't need floggers or props or anything but yourself to top. Also, importantly, it doesn't make any assumptions about which "types of people" prefer to top. Anyone can enjoy either role.

Look. I'm not fine with categorizing bodies into "male" and "female" without the consent of their owners, as happens in this book, or with calling people men or women based on what their bodies look like, or with rhethorical questions about what someone's gender "really" is just to demonstrate how arbitrary gender assignment is.

But. I still really really enjoyed reading this book and I'm very glad that it exists. It's fun, and sad, and relatable, and not-relatable-at-all, and it talks about show more all those things about sexuality, the ones that are not straightforward. The ones that I relate to, even though I am much younger, my life is much more boring, and my approach to sex quite different.

It's not a theoretical piece on girlfags, but a collection of anecdotes from a genderqueer girlfag's life, and that is both great and a bit confusing. Confusing, because I don't very much feel like I just read something about the topic that the title implies at all. Great, because instead of another stuffy attempt at capturing the essence of what makes a girlfag, this book upens up loads of subjects that are related to it all for this particular girlfag, and might be for others, or might not.

Yeah I like this book. show less

Kinky book club
A practical overview of what being a top consists of in the contemporary BDSM environment. Covers lots of considerations and topics including safe words, ethics, where to learn, what to do if stuff goes wrong, shadow play, and spirituality. Sprinkled throughout are recountings of various scenes by the authors and friends. An excellent resource and one I recommend both tops and bottoms should read.