The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices [Hardcover]

Brenda Love (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 18, 2004

What other people do for their pleasure is often shocking--and fascinating. That's why Brenda Love's authoritative and entertaining book is so mesmerizing. From adultery and birth control to computer sex and pubic hair sculpture, Love probes more than 700 topics, including both norms and extremes. 150 line drawings.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

One person's erotic stimulation is another person's excuse to say, "I'm outta here." A study of neurological cycles, imprinting, and primal needs shows how people form their own unique recipes for love. Hardly any garment or activity escapes Brenda Love's encyclopedia. Writing exhaustively and without bias, Love has created a reference source for those intrigued with the full range of human sexual expression. To enrich the content of more than 750 entries, she has consulted with or quoted from, wherever possible, the practitioners.

Readers learn about such "practices" as concubinage, mock marriages, power tools (including a list of those suitable for sex games), sadism, and suturing. The entries, along with 150 original illustrations, are certain to expand both your consciousness and your vocabulary: you will learn about flatuphiles, fornicatory dolls, and frottage, plus infibulation (surgical closure of the labia) and inunction (using lotion for arousal). In this entertaining guide through sexual facts and fancies, Brenda Love--licensed pilot, skydiver, and columnist--writes: "It is the aim of the encyclopedia to provide objective information about how human beings behave; where you draw the line must be your own informed choice."

From Library Journal

Chances are this book won't stay on the shelf long; browsers, voyeurs, and, especially, censors will be attracted by its title. What they will discover is an odd assortment of 700 entries, ranging from the ordinary (birth control) to the ridiculous (pie throwing) and the perverse (power tools, whipping workshops). A large number of the entries refer to sadomasochistic activities, and an introductory note warns that some of the listed activities may be dangerous or lethal. The book's advisory board includes a "kinky" blacksmith and the slave of an "understanding Master." All in all, a marginal purchase for public libraries. (Illustrations not seen.)-- Ilse Heidmann Ali, formerly with Motlow State Community Coll., Tullahoma, Tenn.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Barricade Books (May 18, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 094263764X
• ISBN-13: 978-0942637649
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,356,142 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Brenda Love, Ph.D., (born December 13, 1950) is an American writer, international lecturer and sexologist. She is a leading authority on paraphilias, fetishes, sadomasochism and unusual sex practices. She has documented over 600 sex practices in the Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices and it remains the most comprehensive and valuable research available today for therapists, physicians, educators, and law enforcement agencies.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This entry is excellent, April 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices (Paperback)

This book is excellent. It gives you down-to-earth information on every aspect of sex. It is written clearly, cleanly, informatively, and in plain english - with no hype. It is not a textbook, but yet written to be informative. It covers every, and I mean every, aspect of sexual activity. It is illustrated. The illustrations are a little small, but they are there, and they help. You cannot know everything in this book. I learned, and I am 60, before I got to page 60. Thank god we might have finally got over our national fear about sex and on to dispensing all the information about it. It is both wonderful, and yet a little scary, to think that all of this exists, but it is necessary to let us know that it does. An infomred population will at least know what it is up against, and how to adjust to it's good points and bad ones. This type of information was a long time coming, in this wonderful form. This is a great addition to any home library, for both research, as well as inquisitive needs and questions. Thank you Ms. Love.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Generally good, but with some sloppy research, October 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices (Hardcover)

Love's book is handy as a reference or for just flipping through, but be careful about using it as an authoritative source. I found a handful of mistakes, including its listing of snuff films as real. This has been an urban legend/hoax for decades, and its inclusion here makes me wonder just how well-researched the rest of the book is. For example, that section came from an article in Penthouse on Satanism, perhaps not the best source for such material.

(For a more accurate view of the snuff film hoax, you might pick up a copy of Nadine Strossen's book Defending Pornography, where she tries to dispel the rumor that won't die. Or Susie Bright's article in the San Diego Reader (18 November 1983). Or Kim Mohan's survey of horror films Nightmare Movies, which the original film was. Or the May/June 1999 issue of the magazine the Skeptical Inquirer.)

Other than those sorts of oversights, the book is fun to read, in part just to convince yourself that there are weirder people than yourself out there!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible things people really do!, May 31, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices (Paperback)

You probably don't expect to find yourself compulsively reading a book called an encyclopedia of anything, but then you probably don't expect to be reading about men who coax angry bees to sting their penises in order to make the organ swell and become more sensitive. The 750+ listings here will propel you from amazement to amazement as they carry you from abduction as a sex act to zoophilia (sex with animals). You will be repelled and excited, entranced and titillated, shocked and sucked right into the world of sexual extremes and oddities. And, all the time, you'll be making mental notes of which entries you just have to tell this or that friend about. Maybe not a book everyone will be comfortable having on the coffee table, but one you'll want within ea