Pleasure's all mine - Confessions of a Professional Submissive
by Joan Kelly

This was one in the series of sex related books I picked up this weekend. Started reading it right away as it was a fairly thin book say around 200 pages finished it by the second day. I love smaller books because that means I can get through them faster. And this one was lived up to my expectations in the sense that the book is fast not a slow dreary monologue but a fast moving account of how Marnie got into the business of Bondage and Submissiveness.

Different people different pleasures and this book raves on about the pleasures of Dominatrixes and Submissives or Dommes and Subs as they are known in the business. The book starts with Jean just breaking out of a Submissive relationship with her partner and attending a help group meeting for Submissives and Dommes. It then follows her life through when when joins Dominion a brothel for the S & M types. Eventually she leaves Dominion when prettier girls come to work there and she does not get enough business.

By then she is addicted to the lifestyle with easy money and has quit her day time job as a secretary, and she is one of those few in the sex industry who perhaps look at it as an easy way to make money. Having quit her "job" as an independent contractor at Dominion she starts working independently and strikes out big, flying between LA and New york and servicing clients on both coasts.

It gives us an account of what happens in a typical sub's transaction with her Master. Interesting stuff that I would rather not write here. I would recommend you to read this only if you are curious or interested in the B& M lifestyle. This book is just erotic enough to maintain interest at the same time short enough to not make it monotonous.

Piercing : a modern anthology
by Housk Randall

What is the first picture that comes to your mind when you hear Piercing , a pierced earlobe ? nose ? ear rim? navel ?

Well there's more to it than I ever thought, there are piercings for the penis, its head(Yes right a hole through the head of the penis) , foreskin, Labia, clitoris, nipples , scrotum , lips, tongue, chin, eyebrows, testicles and practically anywhere ever else on the skin.

This book is a pictorial , meaning it is full of excellent photos of people with the strangest of piercings imaginable accompanying with their own description of how they got initiated into piercing. How it eventually became an addiction in these people so much so that they wouldn't feel complete with these accessories.

What struck me the most in this , and partly the reason why I picked this book is the kinds of people and the reasons why they do piercings. I mean there were a fair share of goths, and maniacs with crazy spikey hair. But many were typically mainstream whom you would never ever doubt, for example the 55ish looking accountant , buttoned up in a 3 piece suit. You would wonder what he is doing in a book like this until you look further down to see his zip open and see him proudly displaying his pierced pecker. Or the pretty Pakistani born Designer in London, who started piercings from the bottom up (meaning starting with the clitoris, Navel , and went on to pierce her lip and nose).

There were people whom you wouldn't ever doubt of doing something this naughty unless you see them here, obviously in delight with the thrill of hiding a secret, of being a vixen in sheep's clothing. This is what drives so many mainstream people into piercing. Nowadays of course it is so common that piercing is loosing its edge as a point that made people stand out. As one of the people in the book said. "These days everybody and their mother has their nipples pierced"
Looking at all the reasons why people did piercings and subjected themselves to so much pain, the only common reason I could conclude was they wanted a feeling of difference from the normal, trying to be and do something different. As for the book, it is pretty graphic not the sort of the book you would want lying on the coffe table with kids around, but definitely worth a look at other times.

Yakety Yak: Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle

By McGilton Russell

Russell McGilton, You are bound to like this man by the end of the book, I have been searching the net for ages looking for ways to contact Russell to thank him for writing such a hilarious travelogue. As usual it got to my reading shelf being a travelogue with a difference, Bombay to Beijing on a bicycle, well technically speaking he did not do the complete trip on a bicycle, but frankly speaking I don't think it would matter unless you are one of those who go back an verify every little thing that they read.


Read the initial introductory pages of this book which explain why Russell started on this trip here.

From there on the books gets even more interesting as he actually sets on his trip and arrives in Bombay. On the flight sitting next to him is an inquisitive Indian who doesn't understand why must one cycle when there are trains, while Russell learns that the local politicians had just changed the name of the city from "Bombay" to "Mumbai" and along with the old name plates go his dreams of the title of his planned Book, "Bombay to Beijing". Once in India just like all foreigners he is dismayed by the poverty and difference in classes, the crazy honking traffic, pollution and the general hustle bustle of Bombay.

Hailing from India it makes it all the more interesting for me to read about my home town when viewed from a different perspective. Especially when no matter where he goes he is pestered with a single question " Hello Sir , Which country?"

The book then moves on a swiftly , with Russell's experiences as he meets another cyclist and they join to cover the route till Kathmandu together. In Kathmandu he is joined by his beautiful blonde girlfriend with whom he then cycles to Ladakh. On the way things don't quite well and the stress of the journey and the pressure of Indian pestering takes its toll, with Russell breaking up with his Girlfriend. Then he moves on by flight to Hongkong and from there rides on to Beijing.
In between these pages are hilarious accounts of his experiences with villagers, bad hotels with peeping toms, cycle breakdowns, friendly people to assist in roadsides, frustration over his inability to find a single private moment in a country crowded with a billion people, fighting freezing cold and snowfall on roads in China. In China is when Russell gets lucky again and hooks up with another petite babe who takes his nude picture on the great wall of China.

This is a very fast moving humorous book , especially when coming from a horny and pervert author:) He paints a factual not so pretty picture of India as it really is, I recommended it to another cyclist and he got through it in less than a week and came back with genuine compliments for the book . In all an excellent, hilarious, must read book !

A Year in the Merde
by Stephen Clarke

I found this book about a Brit's impressions on life in Paris, very very entertaining, Its a genuinely laugh out loud kind of a book with written in style by Stephen Clarke under the pseudo narration by a character Paul West. For those who don't know Merde is not the name of some posh suburb but actually is the french translation for "Shit"

I picked it up because it promised humour starting from its cover, the back cover said "A Year in the Merde is an almost-true account of things that may or may not have happened to him in the ten years he has lived in France, depending on who is asking the question. He originally published the book in an edition of 200 copies, with the intention of selling them through his website, giving them away to friends or offering them as fuel for his neighbour's Bastille Day barbecue."

Well I can't really write anything better than what has been written about this book in so many places, to get the hang of the storyline see this or go here to read a better informed review on the book.

For my part I just enjoyed the book thoroughly, the way he takes potshots at the French and their language , work(or actually Strike) culture and their little idiosyncrasies. For someone like me whose idea of night life is a good book or some good company , he paints a good picture of the hot an happening night clubs in Paris and his sexual misadventures. In all I found it immensely entertaining and can be a good read if all you are looking for is a hearty laugh.

The year of yes : the true story of a girl, a few hundred dates, and fate.
by Headley, Maria Dahvana

Now this is one of those books where a cute dumb blonde is unable to find love and hence goes sleeping around / dating with every moving thing in the town. Right from Cab drivers to tram drivers to homeless vagabonds to actors, writers, old retired men, Lesbians, Gays, and whatever other kinds there are.

The book is entertaining in a strange way that you get to see some one else's life standing from the sidelines. Though her sexual and other exploits are fairly adventurous, I wouldn't be tempted to go so far to get whatever freakish pleasure she got by dating around so many guys to find "TRUE LOVE". It gives a nice picture of the Big city night life (the book is set in New York), if you are interested in that sort of thing.

At times it just appears to weird to be true, and now I don't remember whether it was non fiction/ based on her real experiences or if it was just pure fiction. Either way the book is worth a read, it is indeed entertaining but falls somewhat short of the standard set by books like "Does my bum look big in this" which are of similar nature.

Towards the end after dating every possible candidate on New York city, when Maria finds her so called "true love" it is a divorcee, a Pulitzer prize winning writer whom she meets after a long Gap. Given that she devotes so many pages to other men, I would have preferred to know more about this final guy and whether it did actually work out for her with the writer, her so called "True Love". This detail is actually missing as the books ends on a note and maybe she wants us to assume like the endings in typical Bollywood movies... "They married and they lived happily ever after"

Overall, the book is entertaining and has decent humor in its pages, reading it in Public trains and buses, I have been stared at more than a couple of times having burst out laughing loudly while engrossed in it. But finally I wouldn't buy it, I buy only those books at full price which can be read over and over again, or which are of enduring value. IMHO, this book does not meet that criteria, its not worth buying, though it can definitely be read once. (For the uninitiated IMHO means "in my humble opinion")

Doing It Down Under

by Richters, Julia; Rissel, Chris

The book begins with an introduction of the author Julia Ritchers who has worked for 20 years in the field of Sex research and the education. Perhaps her biggest shot to fame was the Condom project :-) which included a World first - a Study to measure men's erect penises to check appropriate condom sizes.

The Book in general is a result of a extensive telephonic interviews involving more than 111,290 phone calls to 19,307 Australians between 16 and 60, who agreed to reveal intimate details of their sex lives.

Read a detailed review of the book here or some additional details here.


The book is food for those who are curious about figures and statistics, when I mentioned to a friend on the phone that I am now reading this book, immediately came questions on statistics which I actually couldn't bother to remember. All this in spite of the fact that the information he had asked was just a few chapters behind, and I had just read it all.

If you ask me today I cannot remember a single number in all those hordes of statistics mentioned, except for the fact that the current generations are loosing their virginity at an earlier age and they know more about sex and condoms than what their parents did at their age. And if you think of it , I shouldn't have had to read a book to know this, its anyway obvious when you look outside.

Overall I reckon the book is worth a single glance or may be as a reference guide if Sexual practices of Australians is your thesis topic in graduation. Apart from that book has a kind of a research report flavour which it is actually. I must appreciate the very asexual and stoic manner in which such a raunchy topic is discussed in the book.

Why men can only do one thing at a time and women never stop talking.

Allan + Barbara Pease

Well to be put frankly, the book is nothing more than a collection of cliches and some men versus women forward emails that are doing the rounds
for example
1) the mail with differences about how men and women use the shower
2) or the jpeg about the sizes of various parts of Women's brain(biggest being love / commitment) versus Man's brain(biggest being S#*)
3) or difference between the telephone call durations between the sexes.

In fact you can flip open any page at random and you are sure to find some quote cartoon or the whole page that you have already read in an Email forward. I don't understand the point in putting that into a book. I guess there are enough dumb people out there to buy these. If you see the author's home page
you can see around six books on similar flimsy lines. I hope at least the content is different / better in those.
The book has a typical humor/comic feel to it and viewed in that context only it is readable. I mean what else can you expect from a collection of funny quotations and quotes. I would not buy this book and would not recommend anyone to buy it either. Luckily the book is only pocket sized and has around 100 pages with loads of graphics so takes only maybe two hours to read.

Maybe I was wrong in expecting Allan and Barbara Please to read as well as a John Gray book(of the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus fame). I wonder whether this book deserves a mention here , since the title of the page is memoirs of books well written, and the well written adjective cannot be applied to this book even by a stretch. Just putting it here so that others don't get fooled into buying this :-)

The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage


Now isn't this a title that prods your imagination, when I first saw the book in the recently returned section in the library it caught my attention just as it is doing to you. I am not normally a reader of writings by distraught women writing against MCP (For the not enlightened that was (Male chauvinist pigs), but I just picked this book on a whim because it offered short stories of 5 - 8 pages and I find it convenient to read small stories at a time. Just so that you can skip those that don't look pretty good and keep moving ahead hoping to find something better.

Fortunately I didn't have to do that for this book, none of the 26 stories were so off putting to for me to skip them. The stories are what the title promises, no disappointments there, only the truth about Sex, Solitude, Work, ,,,,etc.

For all the Male brothers out there, pick this book because this would give you the other perspective of what it feels to be on the other end of the nightly consummations. What happens when a few years after marriage the kids and family take precedence over sex and romance. The book and its writers are based in in America so many of the examples (for example living in ) are not really relevant in the Indian context, but nevertheless the after marriage monotony is the same all over the world so it still makes an interesting read. Generally speaking Read it if you can get it from a library or borrow from a friend, I wouldn't spend my money to keep a "Bitch" in my house.

Title: Callgirl: Confessions of a Double Life
Author: Angell, Jeannette


I picked this book because the cover design and the title looked interesting, and the book lived up to what it promised in the cover : Confessions of a Double Life

Reading it you have a strange feeling that the she is talking to you in person and challenging your notions about the sleaze and the sex industry. This book will change the way you think about call girls, ( i.e. if you think about them all the time, this is a must read)

An interesting look at the life of a woman leading a double life - as a college professor by day, and professional call girl at night. Provides some very good insights into why people do, what they do.

The most touching part for me in the book is where, she is with an old male friend to whom she confesses about her working as a call girl and looks forward to his support, and in the midst of the conversations out of the blue he lays down some cash on the table and asks her to give a B***J**. Now If you though she is already a Call girl, so whats the harm in giving another BJ. You ought to read this book, Big time!!!!

The description of what goes on in her mind then is really moving. Do you find Psychiatrists analyzing offering to analyze people in their free time ?? or Scientists coming and doing research when they go home??
Get off !!! my friend !! If you think call girls are nymphomaniac lesbians, you have been watching too many porn movies! Its just a Bloody JOB,,,, and they can't wait until it gets over. If she screams your name in ecstasy , it doesn't mean she's enjoying it. It just means that she is being good at her job and that you are more likely to call her next time.

In all if the purpose of a book is to give the reader a different perspective, this book more than serves the purpose.

Rating : 7 out of 10