Chicken Soup for the Skeptic's Soul: The Joy of Sex

I bought the hardcover edition of The Joy of Sex several years ago. This morning I picked it up and read it from cover to cover. I enjoyed it greatly. The new edition is beautifully printed with elegant line drawings and full color photographs. It preserves the quirky charm of the original edition, but this may be its biggest flaw.

Alex Comfort essentialy invented the modern sex manual when he wrote the first edition of The Joy of Sex in 1972. We can thank Comfort's pioneering efforts for the sagging shelves of sex books we enjoy in our bookstores today. Still, some of his advice sounds hopelessly dated. My favorite anachronism is a sexual position he calls the "Negresse." I'm not sure how that made it past the editors. Supposedly "completely updated for the 21st century," the book has a distinctly 70s feel. I find it charming, but some of the other Amazon reviewers don't.

Despite its flaws, this book deserves its status as an enduring classic. Comfort's approach to sex is humane and thoughtful. Reading his descriptions, you get the impression of a sensitive field scientist with a knack for philosophising about human nature. Other sex books get so wrapped up in the mechanics of sex and so enamoured with graphic depections of sex that they lose some of the human perspective. Comfort's book holds on to it tenaciously. A book with a wise and unbothered approach becomes even more welcome at a time when you can see images of every imaginable sexual act on the internet. There are better technical manuals on sex. Read Comfort's book for context and for beautiful drawings. Above all, read it to learn how take your time and savor lovemaking in all its varieties.