Elevate Difference

Reviews of Cleis Press

The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus: How to Go Down on a Woman and Give Her Exquisite Pleasure (2nd Edition)

The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus is described by the author as a sex-positive, no-nonsense explanation of cunnilingus. The book includes information Violet Blue acquired from guidebooks, the internet, and surveys she sent to people from diverse backgrounds in the United States, Europe, and Canada.

Best Lesbian Romance 2011

Best Lesbian Romance 2011 is just that: some of the best lesbian-themed romantic short stories you’ll read this year. Beyond just lesbian romance, this interesting compilation seems to center around variety.

Hide and Seek: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exibitionists

Sometimes a sexually arousing or a sexually fulfilling experience does not necessarily have to involve physical contact with another person. This is the premise behind the erotica anthology Hide And Seek: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists, in which the characters in the scenarios that enfold find sexual fulfillment and release from viewing others in the throes of sexual passion (be it with an attractive partner or with a vibrator).

Best Lesbian Erotica 2011

As the title indicates, Best Lesbian Erotica 2011 is a compilation of short erotic fiction from a variety of authors, both established and obscure. What the title fails to express is that this is not just yet another compilation of middle-of-the-road lesbian erotica. This edition, unlike others before it, centers on lesbian outsiders, the ones whose radical gender bending and subversive sexuality sometimes makes the rest of us just a little bit squeamish.

Best Bondage Erotica 2011

As the title would imply, this erotica anthology contains solely stories that involve bondage, the use of restraints for the purpose of sexual pleasure. Along with the use of bondage in sexual encounters comes the play of submissive and dominant roles. As one might expect, nearly half of stories in this book stick to standard dominate/submissive heterosexual roles, with men tying up women in various scenarios and then sexually dominating them.

Girl Crush: Women's Erotic Fantasies

Truthfully, I wasn’t expecting to like Girl Crush. I wasn’t expecting well written girl-on-girl erotica. I wasn’t expecting to have my breath taken away. My first crush was Elizabeth; she was my assigned seventh grade science lab partner. She was so beautiful that I was embarrassed to sit by her. I spent the whole semester in awe, watching her when she wasn’t looking, trying to talk to her, longing to touch her. I was smitten.

Fast Girls: Erotica for Women

Fast. The word itself is a contradiction. By definition, fast can mean unrestrained and held tight; reckless and secure; promiscuous and faithful. A fast girl can be one way and then another or often both at once. A fast girl can be wild, even when caught in the firmest of knots. In Fast Girls, fast means quick thinking and quicker action. Fast girls see what they want and take it, cleverly making the most of circumstances around them.

Best Lesbian Erotica 2010

The photo on this anthology’s cover, of two near identical women in rapturous embrace serves to convey the collection’s reoccurring theme: sex with one’s doppelganger. While the majority of stories in this collection do not adhere to this theme, two of the most unusual tales in this collection do. As one would assume, the stories within this collection often veer outside of the clichéd, cookie-cutter lesbian erotica setups.

Lesbian Lust: Erotic Stories

The stories featured in Sacchi Green’s edited collection of lesbian erotica are intensely sexual. As the name of the volume, Lesbian Lust, implies, each of the stories focus on the deep sensual and sexual desires of the characters featured in them. The narratives are varied in their settings, characterizations, and kinds of sex offered for the reader’s (and their companions’) interest.

Best Lesbian Romance 2010

This is a light, sweet collection of short stories featuring women in love with women. I'm thoroughly impressed by the diversity of the stories' characters. Each story is very different from the next. I read about the lives of queer teenagers, figure skater dykes, gay cattle ranchers, and butches racing their cars. There were women of different ages, races, and personalities. There was even a story with vampires and shapeshifters. Some characters were traveling.

Making the Hook-up: Edgy Sex with Soul

What business does a White woman like me have reviewing a collection of erotica by African American authors? I figure when it comes to erotica, it's matter of whether the story turns you on or doesn’t, and I can’t see that race has much to do with that.

Fix It, Make It, Grow It, Bake It: The D.I.Y. Guide to the Good Life

Fix It, Make It, Grow It, Bake It is packed full of just about as much information as the title suggests. The book is generally a fun and easy read, with crafting suggestions and healthy recipes. It is not, however, the bible I’d hoped it would be. While there are many recipes for making your own toilet bowl cleaner, there’s little helpful advice on things like how to garden.

Orgasmic: Erotica for Women

I remember flipping quickly through the pages of my friends’ romance novels in high school looking for the juicy parts. The sexy parts. I had been told the books would be like "porn for women," so I assumed there would be something pornographic in the material. Alas, as soon as I found a creamy white thigh slipping out of a slit in a skirt, it was magically the next morning and the characters were talking... again. So, I gave up. Fortunately, Orgasmic addresses the need of female-oriented erotic literature more directly.

Best Sex Writing 2010

As a fairly obsessive sex educator, S&M activist, and informal researcher, I didn't expect Best Sex Writing 2010 to make me think nearly as much as it did. I'd imagined it as an anthology that would hit all the usual bases and say the usual sex-positive things: Sex work should be decriminalized! Open relationships can work! Fetishes don't have to terrify us!

Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch/Femme Erotica

So, I sometimes forget that reading erotica and looking at BDSM queer porn in the library of an Ivy League university is not necessarily standard practice. Lucky for me, I go to Brown, where I’m concentrating in Gender and Sexuality studies, and have somehow managed to legitimize studying sex manuals with postmodern theory in order to (supposedly, so they say) get a degree next year.

Lesbian Cowboys: Erotic Adventures

Lesbian Cowboys: Erotic Adventures is a collection of fifteen short stories that, as promised, feature lesbian cowboys. On average, the stories run approximately fourteen pages or so, which results in the feeling that there is not much in the way of plot or character development.

Bottoms Up: Spanking Good Stories

Although I would not say I have a particular propensity for spanking, I am fascinated by various kinks or sexual fetishes, and like to support writing that allows people the space to explore their desires, even if it just in a fantasy realm. I am also usually not the biggest fan of erotica, as I have found many of the collections I've read to be either quite stale or laughably cheesy—neither of which are very steamy.

Girl Crazy: Coming Out Erotica

Stories of self-discovery and coming out comprise the overwhelming majority of lesbian imagery in literature, television, and film internationally. Many of us lesbian types truly wish we could get a bit more exploration beyond those murky borders, but I know of few people who actively dislike the coming out story. After all, if it is done well, it can be quite romantic and caters to the notorious lesbian love for nostalgia.

Boy Crazy: Coming Out Erotica

Boy Crazy is a series of firsts: first coming out of the closet experiences, first feelings of sexual awakening, first realizations of “otherness,” first times falling in love... the list goes on and on. In a series of otherwise unrelated stories, multiple authors tell the tales of coming out and first encounters, all from the perspective of boys, of young homosexuals' way of perceiving the world.

Deflowered: My Life in Pansy Division

As I was reading Jon Ginoli's retelling of the rise of pop punk's first openly gay band, Pansy Division―from his perspective as the lead singer―I found that whenever I left the book on the table, with its bright pink cover labeled with stickers reading “promote homosexuality” and “sexual anarchist,” I could only imagine there were a few raised eyebrows in the small town Northeast Ohio coffee shop where I read. And I can imagine that these raised eyebrows and perked ears listening to the unabashedly queer lyrics―something they were most likely not accustomed to―was one goal.

In Praise of Indecency: The Leading Investigative Satirist Sounds of Hypocrisy, Censorship and Free Expression

This is the first of two books Paul Krassner put out this year and, in my opinion, the better one.

My Miserable Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy

Andrea Askowitz doesn’t mince words, and this book’s title is just the start. In My Miserable Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy, Askowitz takes her readers on a blow-by-blow tour through her first trimester, back to her “before pregnancy” days, and then all the way through her second and third trimester, her delivery, and her postpartum period.
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