The Mammoth Book of the Kama Sutra

In this updated and expanded edition of the Kama Sutra, a total of 50 positions are illustrated and explained for the modern reader, featuring both the techniques in the original plus a number of modern ones. Each explanation is accompanied by a specially commissioned illustration for easy reference that allows the reader to gain a better understanding of the position. Also included are a number of stories of how some of the positions developed as well as a full history of the Kama Sutra.

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Setting the stage for Felix Gomez’s hard-boiled third adventure (after 2007′s X-Rated Bloodsuckers), a dying alien tells the vampire PI to find Goodman and save the Earth women. Felix is already on a case, collecting pages of a manuscript called The Undead Kama Sutra that supposedly shows how to increase a vampire’s psychic energies and healing abilities through sex. The search has led Felix to the Florida Keys and researcher Carmen Arellano. After a guest at a vampire resort dies by alien energy blaster, Felix and Carmen track down the mysterious Goodman, a retired army colonel somehow connected to the disappearance of three other women. When Carmen is kidnapped by aliens, Felix must save the day. Curiously low on sex given the title and the example of previous volumes, the story collapses in a deus ex machina that may leave even Acevedo’s fans less than eager for Felix’s next escapade. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of (more…)

Tracing the celebrated sex manual from its palm-leaf manuscript origins in third-century India to contemporary coffee-table book, travel writer McConnachie adeptly explains that in addition to teaching 64 erotic techniques, the seven-volume Kamasutra Book details every aspect of a rich man’s lifestyle, including grooming, home decor and entertainment. The treatise on pleasure also offers a rare ancient depiction of women’s social and sexual lives. The author relates the tale of the famed British explorer and Orientalist Richard Burton, who brought the work to the West. An Indian Army officer in the 1840s, Burton devoted himself to the study of Indian languages and sexual culture. Around 1870, as a British consul, Burton became involved in a project to translate obscure erotic classics into English (though contrary to popular belief, he did not translate the Kamasutra Book himself) and masterminded the work’s promotion in a repressive Victorian climate.

The Book of Love: The Story of the Kamasutra (Kindle Edition)

Years ago, a bunch of us were sitting around drinking when I heard a friend murmur two sentences I have never forgotten. “You know, guys, sex is the greatest thing in the world.” He paused and we were all about to nod in agreement. He was, after all, a noted and knowledgeable ladies’ man. Unexpectedly, though, he then added, with infinite wistfulness: “But it’s just not that great.”

There, in that gulf between the reality and the dream, lies the domain of pornography, the sex industry and the masturbatory fantasy — of Viagra and the midlife crisis. Our Western myths of love are seldom about fulfillment; they are all about yearning. In Plato’s Symposium we are told that the gods divided the original ball-like human beings in two, and that we consequently spend our lives searching for the other half who will complete us. So-called romantic love, which first blossomed in 12th-century France, revels in passion delayed, forbidden or otherwise thwarted. Its real theme is desire.

But for the Western imagination, the East has long represented an escape from this pervasive sexual unhappiness. Baudelaire spoke of tropic realms of “luxe, calme et volupté”; Hawaii and Tahiti once beckoned as Edens of innocent voluptuousness. From the 18th century on, the Orient, in general, seemed a perfumed garden, offering the tender attentions of geishas, bare-breasted island girls and pretty boys. Here, amid erotic graciousness, the darkness of sin was unknown. And yet, even this scented, sensual wonderland turned out to have its guide, its bible: The Kamasutra, sometimes subtitled “The Hindu Art of Love.”