javachik, I'm sorry if I made it sound like I was trying to convince you, everyone is looking for something different in a book.
Oh no, you totally didn't.
Buffy: How bored were you last year? Giles: I watched 'Passions' with Spike. Let us never speak of it.
'Beneath You'
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
javachik - Jan 31, 2011 4:52:49 pm PST #13793 of 28282
Our wings are not tired.
Amy - Jan 31, 2011 4:57:18 pm PST #13794 of 28282
Because books.
The sex scenes (in a non-genre, non-romance novel) that have always stood out to me for their realism and eroticism are Scott Spencer's in Endless Love.
Erica Jong wrote a good few in her time, too.
Consuela - Jan 31, 2011 5:11:47 pm PST #13795 of 28282
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix
Second the Jennifer Crusie stuff. Also, to be fair, Crusie doesn't bait-and-switch the way JD Robb does. I picked up the one Robb book looking for near-future mystery, and every couple chapter the action ground to a halt so Roberts could show off her porn-writing chops again.
It got old.
I like sex scenes when they say something about the characters; Gabaldon stopped saying anything new about Jamie & Claire back in book 2, I think. There has to be a point, or it's just gratuitous. Which, if that's what you're into, fine.
javachik - Jan 31, 2011 5:12:01 pm PST #13796 of 28282
Our wings are not tired.
I loved all the stuff in Judy Blume. My teen self couldn't get enough of sex scenes.
Ginger - Jan 31, 2011 5:13:39 pm PST #13797 of 28282
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda
Jennifer Crusie's sex scenes tend to move the plot forward or tell us something about the characters, so they're better than most. Also, something like the bed falling down might happen.
Aims - Jan 31, 2011 5:18:08 pm PST #13798 of 28282
Shit's all sorts of different now.
The sex scenes in "Welcome to Tempation" were utterly fantastic and high-larious.
meara - Jan 31, 2011 6:00:39 pm PST #13799 of 28282
I like sex scenes when they say something about the characters; Gabaldon stopped saying anything new about Jamie & Claire back in book 2, I think. There has to be a point, or it's just gratuitous. Which, if that's what you're into, fine.
Yes. This. I mean, sure, every once in a while I want to read some porn-without-plot type erotica (er, except most erotica i own has SOME semblance of a plot...). But it's usually more interesting to me if there's been some plot and buildup and so on.
Jennifer Crusie I've enjoyed some, but I haven't been back since reading the one with the stalker, which just made me ill, and I didn't find interesting or hot at all. Too realistic for my romances!
I've been loving Victoria Dahl's contemporaries. I think "Talk Me Down"? And there's two others--I think I also have "Tie Me Up" (?) and don't have the third one (I think I didn't like it as much)
Consuela - Jan 31, 2011 6:10:50 pm PST #13800 of 28282
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix
I haven't been back since reading the one with the stalker, which just made me ill, and I didn't find interesting or hot at all. Too realistic for my romances!
Yeah, I didn't like that one as much. But Lie to Me and Welcome to Temptation are great fun, with no icky subtext that I can recall. Oh, and Fast Women is good, too.
erikaj - Feb 01, 2011 3:49:35 am PST #13801 of 28282
Always Anti-fascist!
Yeah, Erica Jong can be good... Philip Roth, sometimes, although lately he's too angry. I don't know...I read good ones sometimes, but they don't always stick with me... Tom Robbins: They are often silly, but he really seems to enjoy women's bodies and make sex seem like something you might want to repeat...he has been writing the same book for a while, but I liked it the first time. I would argue that the initial Kensie/Gennaro coupling really did move the plot forward because of the triangle with Phil.
erikaj - Feb 01, 2011 4:00:17 am PST #13802 of 28282
Always Anti-fascist!
I'm gonna sound like a pervert for mentioning this one, but "In The Cut," Meg Ryan was really surprising, in a good way, in the movie, too. But erotic-thriller people didn't go to see her, and her fans, besides me, I guess, don't really love the murder and mayhem. But that whole book was pretty hot, imo.