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)

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.

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.

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.

My favorites are probably written by Laura Kinsale, and in part because she's so good at building the sexual tension before anything actually happens.

sj, I just finished Masques. It was better written than the first one, but not quite as compelling, to me. Still, both were good, solid stories.

Found on Twitter - site with free mini books and Storygami - stories combined with origami.

sj, I just finished Masques. It was better written than the first one, but not quite as compelling, to me. Still, both were good, solid stories.

You had read the original version? I hadn't. Were there significant differences?

I couldn't get into Masques and quit after about the first 75 pages, which is too bad, since I love Briggs. But it didn't grab me.

They are not GREAT sex scenes, but for me, Valley of Horses by Jean Aurl holds a soft place in my heart, because even though I kinds snorfle at them now, they were the first explicit sex scenes I ever read, and they introduced me to oral sex, multiple positions and the idea of the female orgasm.

Although it took me quite few years to successfully visualize that the Clan style of "presenting" was simply doggy-style. It was obvious to an adult, but reading it as a 13 yo, I just couldn't get what it would look like. Was she bending backwards with her knees spread? That sounded painful and awkward!

My first ever sex scene was in Erica Jong's Fear of Flying. I found it on the bookshelf where I was babysitting when I was 12. Really sad when it disappeared the next time I went back. I hadn't gotten to finish it.

sj, I think I did. I don't remember. I just think this most recent release was a little more awkward than the second one.

Edit: No, I'm wrong. When I was about 10, I read a Readers' Digest Condensed version of some book about Vietnam that had a GI having pretty explicit sex with a Vietnamese girl in it. Mom and Dad used to subscribe to the series.

While it reads a bit purple these days, one of my favorite love scenes ever was Father Ralph and Maggie's first time in The Thorn Birds. Back then, it was like the most romantic thing evar. (Of course, the fact that Father Ralph was portrayed on screen by Richard Chamberlain didn't hurt either.)

Looking back at it now, I understand that McCullough did such a magnificent job of drawing out the tension and inevitable fall from grace of a priest/man who so desperately wanted to be the perfect priest and finally has to acknowledge he's just a man with ordinary desires and even in that, the desire has to be this transcendent thing. She really made a very arrogant character if not sympathetic, then understandable. I also thought she did a great job delineating the various stages depicted throughout the novel so that I never got pinged by any potential ick: the Meggie/Father Ralph relationship as child/family priest was very different and distinct from the Meggie/Ralph relationship as adults.

One of my current favorite love/sex scenes is between Sebastian and Hero in WHERE SERPENTS SLEEP by C.S. Harris. Lot of layers in a relatively short and not terribly explicit scene.