Oh, Playboy, always with the sex on the brain. Here’s a work-safe link to their list of the 25 sexiest novels of all time.
Here’s the top 10:
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill), by John Cleland (1748-49)
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D. H. Lawrence (1928)
Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller (1934)
Story of O, by Pauline Reage (1954)
Crash, by J.G Ballard (1973)
Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice (1976)
Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth (1969)
The Magus, by John Fowles (1965)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami (1995)
Endless Love, by Scott Spencer (1979)
Out of the 25, I’ve read, um, 5. I think I’ve got my next reading project set up.
(And there’s no way Interview with the Vampire is as sexy as Judith Krantz’s Princess Daisy, at least according to the 16-year-old self who was learning a lot from Krantz’s opening chapters.)
Portnoy’s Complaint is jam-packed with sex, but it’s almost all self-loathing, emotionally destructive sex, which I don’t find particularly arousing, no matter how witty and perceptive the prose. (I recognized this when I first read the book at the age of ten :eek:, so it’s hardly subtle.) Maybe the editors have, y’know, issues. So to speak.
As far as an addition to the list, I’ve always thought Stephen Hawking topped himself with A Timed History of Briefs.
I’ve read 6 of the top 10 and am kinda surprised - I suppose they are talking about classics or books that were controversial in their day or something. But Cervaise’s observation about Portnoy is true for a lot of these - many aren’t erotic, per se - just about sex. There’s a difference.
Lady Chatterly’s - some great scenes. Definitely worked with some girlfriends of mine.
The Magus - great book - very erotic.
Most of the others are good in some ways - The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is great, for instance - but not all that sexy, IMHO.
Why not that great paragraph from For Whom the Bell Tolls - at the intro of Chapter 37 - talk about steamy! It got Hemingway left off the list of potential Pulitzer winners and still works today.
I have to assume Vox or The Fermata - both by Nicholson Baker - would be someplace on the larger list…
Maybe this list was put together by the same crew at Bravo that did the 50 Funniest Movies atrocity. Writing about sex is not at all the same thing as being sexy. (Lolita is another deliberately unsexy novel that made the list.). Novellas (Rapture, by Susan Minot) and short shunts (Singular Pleasures, by Harry Mathews) are not even novels. And many of the excerpts on the real Playboy page are terribly written and worthless out of context. At least I hope they work better in context, otherwise…
In this particular novel is quite a lot of sex as well as the B&D, D&S and S&M. I seem to remember Interview with a Vampire had quite a few subjects other than just sex, there was some history, violence, and even stuff about vampirism.
Haven’t read a lot of the top 10. Read “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” in English Lit which ruined any pleasure I might have otherwise had. Didn’t care for the pedophilic overtones in “Interview with the Vampire.” Blech.
The sexiest novels I’ve ever read would have to include:
“Damage” by Josephine Hart (erotic and sexy) and “Outlander” by Diana Gabaldon(It was so good that I wanted to screw my husband every night).
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I read Tropic of Cancer in college (so it’s been awhile) but I remember finding it really misogynistic and, worse, boring. The End of Alice and In the Cut were both violent and the sex featured within was of the clammy-and-gross variety (IMO, anyway). Guess my taste differs from Playboy…
Blue Skies, No Candy by Gael Green was pretty sexy (and not mentioned). I guess chick-lit is beneath the Playboy folks or they’d have put Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie on there. And Larry Beinhart writes some of the sexiest mysteries ever–protagonist is a great scoundrel but he describes his exploits very lyrically. (They are probably out of print.)
Crash is sexy? It’s about disgusting, creepy, but above all boring deviants obsessed with car crashes. It’s sexy like reading OSHA accident reports interspersed with excerpts from generic internet porn stories is sexy.
I don’t even remember sex in the Wind Up Bird Chronicle. If there was sex in it it sure wasn’t the kind of sex that you actually notice.
That’s more like a list of the top paperbacks with dirty parts most easily obtained by someone in grade 7 and passed around the class before landing in the same secret drawer with the treasured copy of Playboy found in a dumpster and the condom stolen from Uncle Pete.
It kind of makes me think that whoever made this list hasn’t “read” a “book” since grade 7 and even then, only read the dirty parts. Except Wind Up Bird Chronicle. I think that one’s on the list because someone musunderstood the title and thought it must be about some kind of British sex doll.
I’ve only read three of them, but the most recent was Fanny Hill (actually listened to it on tape) and I have to agree that it was one sexy book. I also loved that it was as radical a feminist tome as Fear of Flying (which incidentally, isn’t on the list?). The only problem was that it came across a bit homophobic but hey, it WAS written in the 18th century.
Is it graphic descriptions of sex, or is it the context?
Because I have to tell you, in The Thorn Birds, when Meggie has sex with Luke, it’s graphic, almost clinical. When she and Ralph finally do the deed…it’s a poem, it’s a ballet, it’s sexy. It’s two people finally surrendering to the inevitable. It’s hot.
