I hate to be anti-book—any book, really, even awful ones—but Fifty Shades of Grey barely qualifies as a book, and it’s utterly dreadful to think that a Twilight knockoff that started as Twilight fanfiction (!) is now sold in bulk across the world when there are so many good books out there—salacious, sexy, erotic books at that. But, like I said, I hate to knock on something when it’s more productive to offer an alternative. So: a list.
This list is subjective, occasionally weird, and hardly complete (feel free to point out what I’ve left off). I’ve only included works that I’ve read in part or in whole. I’m clearly aware that certain stuff like D.H. Lawrence, much of Updike, and infamous classics like Walter’s My Secret Life are not on here—if it’s not on here, I haven’t read any of it. I vouch for everything else.
- Song of Songs (Old Testament)
- Juliette, Marquis de Sade
- Justine, Marquis de Sade
- The 120 Days of Sodom, Marquis de Sade
- The Pearl, William Lazenby (ed.)
- The Story of O, Pauline Réage
- Delta of Venus, Anaïs Nin
- Little Birds, Anaïs Nin
- Lost Girls, Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie
- The Soft Machine, William Burroughs
- Story of the Eye, Georges Bataille
- The Garden of Eden, Ernest Hemingway
- Ada, or Ador, Vladimir Nabokov
- Fanny Hill, John Cleland
- Poems of Sappho
- Crash, J.G. Ballard
- Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
- House of Holes, Nicolson Baker
- Blood and Guts in High School, Kathy Acker
- Satyricon, Petronius Arbiter
- “Penelope”/Molly’s monologue from Ulysses, James Joyce
- “Nausicaa” from Ulysses, James Joyce
- “Circe” from Ulysses, James Joyce
- Boccaccio’s Decameron
- Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
- Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller
- Women, Charles Bukowski
- Poems of Catullus
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare
- Kama Sutra
- Naked Lunch, William Burroughs
- The Ways, Caracci and Aretino
- Vox, Nicholson Baker
- Ars Amatoria, Ovid
- A Feast of Snakes, Harry Crews
- Casanova’s letters and memoirs
- Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales
- Snow White, Donald Barthelme
- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
- Briar Rose, Robert Coover
- Frisk, Dennis Cooper
- Song of Myself, Walt Whitman
- Hotel Iris, Yoko Ogawa
- “Wild nights! Wild nights!”, Emily Dickinson
- Various selections of Robert Crumb
- Dream Story, Arthur Schnitzler
- A few choice passages from Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives
- Venus in Furs, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
- The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
- “I started Early – Took my Dog -“, Emily Dickinson
Biblioklept 