two new altsex books

Yesterday, in one day, I read the new anthology Whipped, edited by Carol Queen. It's femdom erotica. I read it in one day because I realized that it was due at the library and I couldn't renew it. I liked the stories, some of them I liked a lot, but I didn't think it was very well edited. There were some of those erotica moments where you wonder, "When did his pants come off? When did she pick up the whip? How did they get to the bed?" and I'm inclined to put problems like that at the door of the editor.

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This morning, after a few weeks of work, I finished Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent. If you haven't seen it in the bookstore, this book features a woman who decides to go undercover as a man to find out how men operate. Her journey lasts a year and a half and ends with her having a nervous breakdown.
I found this book somewhat disappointing. It was very bleak. I had to keep putting it down because I would get depressed. In this world, most of the time, we find what we're looking for, and Vincent is no exception. She is down on men when she starts writing the book, and is even more down on men by the end of it, although she's come to pity them to some extent. I'd give it three stars, at most.

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