The Joy of Sex

When I first surreptiously read this book as a teenage virgin, it seemed to me to be the very epitome of every daring and breathless thought that passed through my hormone-addled brain. The explicit pen drawings seemed so much more raunchy than photos, much more so even than the Playboy posters I had secretly stashed in my room. I only had to look at the book's (fairly innocuous) cover to be instantly swept into fantasies I hardly yet knew the meaning of. Now looking at it 30 years and an infinite amount of life experience later, it seems so disappointingly humdrum.. The world has moved, sex has moved on, and the drawings which were so arousing then now look like examples of 70's kitsch (beards and long hair, please!). However that show more doesnt take anything away from the book's enormous significance in its era. It was a revoiution, so controversial, so ground-breaking for many couples. Still in print, and still selling well, humdrum or not, it still rates as one of the most important books of the later 20th century. show less

My husband (then my boyfriend) and I worked our way through this book back in 1976. Found some of the positions almost impossible to achieve then - would be totally impossible now, rofl! Groundbreaking in its day, seems incredibly tame now.

Somehow this book came to my possession shortly after I got married. (I bet its magical appearance had something to do with my mother who was a wise, progressive soul.)

It was a revelation.

This was very daring when I first riffled through it in the early 1970s, but less so when I bought a copy in the late 1980s.

A classic updated. Still prefer the illustrations original version with its aging hippy types. But I like the honesty, humanity and the lack of sleeziness of this book still. Everyone would benefit from having a copy of this on their bookshelves.

A little bit of extra knowledge when you thought you already have enough is never late to get. I would like to find it when I was younger and to give it to everyone I know, especially to some people. It is a good "dictionary" to keep it on the side table and shuffle it from time to time.

well timeless it most certainly is not.

I can only imagine this being helpful to fifty-plusers.