Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex [Mass Market Paperback]

Nina Hartley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 19, 2006

Legendary porn star Nina Hartley's guide to thrilling, liberating, mind-blowing, soul-fulfilling, and intimacy-building sex!

Witty, smart, and frankly provocative, Nina Hartley knows sex. As a sex performer, sexual adventurer, and sex educator, she's done the fieldwork and has taken extensive notes. Now, she's ready to share her research. Let's just say that she's had all the sex-the good, the bad, and the indifferent-so you won't necessarily have to!

Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex is for sexual pioneers and enthusiastic novices. Unabashedly erotic, the book covers a lot of territory, allowing readers to sample the whole smorgasbord or just nibble at what they see as the choicest bits. To start things off, Nina includes explicitly detailed chapters on foreplay, oral sex, masturbation, toys, and games. Sexual adventurers (and voyeurs) will find chapters on swinging, three-ways, anal sex, erotic domination, sensual submission, and much more.

Nina is a strong advocate of safe sex, physically and emotionally, and she helps readers establish personal ground rules. But as a sexual liberationist and a feminist, her core belief is that, between consenting adults, all sexual behaviors are a matter of personal choice. Whether you're trying to reignite the passion with a longtime spouse, or explore new terrain with a new lover, Nina offers a variety of ideas to achieve exhilarating, deeply satisfying, intimate, and profoundly liberating sex.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Feminist, registered nurse, sex educator and star of more than 400 adult films, Hartley's sex guide is a thorough, level-headed and straightforward look at all things sexual. Eighteen witty, easy-to-read chapters cover subjects from foreplay and cunnilingus to fellatio, three-ways, domination, toys, bondage and spanking. Each chapter ends with a handy chart reviewing dos and don'ts for the acts explored in detail. Hartley's experienced and capable voice takes the mystery out of sex, viewing all manner of intercourse as healthy activity that often requires more communication and lubrication than partners realize. Intended mainly for heterosexuals and the bi-curious, Hartley and Levine, her husband, emphasize the enlightened female perspective, though advice on technique and position is useful for anyone. Unlike many other sex guides, this one does not include illustrations or photos, which makes it a comfortable choice for more reserved or reticent readers; as Hartley puts it, this is the sex guide "I wish I had owned when I turned eighteen."
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Review

Nina Hartley ... shepherds so many people to greener sex pastures. ... Guide to Total Sex will be a pleasure seeker's bible. -- Annie Sprinkle, Ph.D., porn star turned sexologist, author of Dr. Sprinkle's Spectacular Sex

Nina Hartley is a F****ing genius! -- Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, author of XXX: 30 Porn Star Portraits

Truly amazing . . . I honestly think it is the best book written about sex, ever. -- Margaret Cho

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Avery Trade (October 19, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583332634
• ISBN-13: 978-1583332634
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #38,597 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In sex, We are alike more than we think. New Study about Sexuality reveals., November 4, 2006

By 

Steve Roberts (Minneapolis) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex (Mass Market Paperback)

In my chosen field of Architecture we use what exists to create new facilities. In this book, noted Sexual Expert Nina Hartley does a similar construct in a loving funny and first person way. All of us have sexual portions of our bodies, want to have sex and most of us with another person. As Nina explains "It feels good, It is good for you, It helps your interaction with the opposite sex who you wish to create a bond".

This book is a much better education tool than anything even going back to the "Joy of Sex" from the 70s. Why?
First, Nina constantly uses her own experience as a sexual person with both men and women, she is bi,to describe what feels good and what may not feel so good.

Second, Nina explains the physical espects of how to be sexual first with yourself and then with a partner. Self loving it is called, and all of us need to love ourselves before we love others, she explains. During all of the chapters in the book her physical explanations, she does not need any diagrams or pictures, she allows the reader to feel that he or she is in an encounter. Nina uses a very easily understood method to illustrate, "Near hand and far hand".

Third, Nina both touches on sexual practices that not everyone will use but all of us have an interest in hearing about. We may not want to use Anal Sex or jSwinging, but at least we need to know what happens, why and how it is performed and how one does meet others of a similar persuasion.

Fourth, Nina explains as no one ever has, that mens and womens sexual anatomy, developed during pregnancy are the same to begin with. We all were girls first and then during pregnancy developed fully into male and female persons. I will not spoil that she says, but the portions of chapters dealing with this issue alone make this book worth buying.

Fifth, and most important. Both men and women have a most important sex organ, their brains. Nina in each phase explains the cultural reasons, the mental reasons and the psycological reasons why we both want to engage in sex and why we at the same time fear sex. Nina allows us all to make decisions about each of us are comrtable with. As she explains some of us do not like to engage in certain practices. That is fine she says, but she also says, talk it out. Only then can we agree on what we want to provide for each other and ourselves, sexually. Nina, thus allowsus to loose our fear about sex.

Every man and every women should buy a copy as part of their sexual and marital preparations. Better yet, after buying they should read this book to each other.

Nina who has a bent for humor, especially in the titles, makes this book easy to read, non scarey and a wonderful practical tool to help every person understand not only how to have sex but also why we want to.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Maybe the Best, December 19, 2006

By 

P. Finch - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex (Mass Market Paperback)

Margaret Cho isn't kidding. This really might be the best book about sex, ever. The book discusses techniques, sexual ethics, and attitude: sex as a whole. It's warm, well-written, intelligent, informative. Above all, although it is frank and completely straightforward, it is written with an awareness of the fact that not everybody... well, almost nobody... is completely secure about sex. It neither condescends nor intimidates; it accepts our foibles and anxieties while gently but firmly showing us that there's a better way.

I can't imagine anyone, from a veteran swinger to a virgin, who wouldn't get something of value from it, with just a modicum of openmindedness.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex, November 11, 2006

By 

J. Summerlin - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex (Mass Market Paperback)

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to accomplish the following:

1. Improve his or her sexlife.
2. Look at sex from a different perspective other than what has been traditionally taught
3. Find new ways to overlook common mistakes we all make in our private lives.
4. Find the inspiration to be a little more adventurous behind closed doors.

I find the psychology of sex very interesting in the United States. Here, we all try to keep it hush hush, even pass the occassional law against it, but everyone seems to be doing it and everyone seems to want more of it and a better way to do it.

This book is an excellent beginning in breaking out of that old mold and moving on with our personal lives. We owe it to ourselves, our partners, and our significant others to be the best we can be and to have an ever open mind. This book is a step in that direction.

James