Relationships / Sex

He told me I was a penguin: "tiny, adorable, and loved by everyone."

TALES FROM THE BEGINNING OF LOVE

It may be after three days together, or after three months-it's that moment when it all falls together. From heartfelt declarations to all-knowing smiles, It Was Love When .. captures that moment when love is just beginning.

- I thought to myself, "I love him more than Spider-Man loves Mary Jane."
- I was looking through his iTunes when I realized that our playlists were nearly identical.
- Suddenly he turned off the lights and told me to look up at the ceiling. Glow-in-the-dark stars covered the entire ceiling, spelling out "I love you."

Both addictive and heartwarming, It Was Love When... is a freeze frame of that moment when you realize that you're truly, completely in love.

For a new century and a new generation of readers comes a fully revised and expanded edition of a classic guide to gay sex, love, and life. Featuring 50 new illustrations.

One of the touchstones of the emerging gay consciousness when it was first published in the 70's, and a standard reference for gay men throughout the 80's and 90's, The Joy of Gay Sex has informed countless men about the ins and outs of gay life, love, and pleasure. A full decade has now passed since the last update, and while the gay community has seen improved treatments for AIDS, more positive media coverage, new forums for the expression of community, and more favorable laws, there continues to be an urgent need for this book's brand of positive and responsible advice.

Invaluable not only as a sex guide but as a resource on building self-esteem, and a coming out guide for young gay men, The Joy of Gay Sex addresses the many emotional and relationship-oriented issues in gay life, from long-term couples and one-night stands, to loneliness and growing older. It also serves as a general reference on a number of diverse topics, including living wills and insurance.

The Kama Sutra is the original practical sex manual - with advice on behavior, etiquette and relationships as well as embraces, kisses and best positions for maximum sexual pleasure.
The Kama Sutra is the bestselling sex book of all time and is considered to be the standard work on human sexual behavior. This stunning new edition of the ancient Hindu guide to lovemaking combines the classic Kama Sutra text with an exceptional collection of explicit Indian artworks in glorious full color. It is the original practical sex manual - with advice on behavior, etiquette and relationships as well as embraces, kisses and the best positions for maximum sexual pleasure. Following the original English-language translation by Sir Richard Burton, and with inspirational quotes highlighted to catch the eye, and decorative Indian motifs adding authenticity, this is the ultimate gift for lovers and connoisseurs of sensual pleasure.

The hidden truth about the French way of life: it's all about seduction--its rules, its pleasures, its secrets

France is a seductive country, seductive in its elegance, its beauty, its sensual pleasures, and its joie de vivre. But Elaine Sciolino, the longtime Paris bureau chief of "The New York Times," has discovered that seduction is much more than a game to the French: it is the key to understanding France.

Seduction plays a crucial role in how the French relate to one another--not just in romantic relationships but also in how they conduct business, enjoy food and drink, define style, engage in intellectual debate, elect politicians, and project power around the world. While sexual repartee and conquest remain at the heart of seduction, for the French seduction has become a philosophy of life, even an ideology, that can confuse outsiders.

In" La Seduction," Sciolino gives us an inside view of how seduction works in all areas, analyzing its limits as well as its power. She demystifies the French way of life in an entertaining and personal narrative that carries us from the neighborhood shops of Paris to the halls of government, from the gardens of Versailles to the agricultural heartland.

"La Seduction" will charm you and encourage you to lower your defenses about the French. Pull up a chair and let Elaine Sciolino seduce you.

Curated by Doris editor Cindy Crabb, Learning Good Consent looks at the culture of sexual consent from a standpoint both sexy and educational. Over the course of 46 pages, Cindy and friends create a well-rounded consent workshop, with all sites set on healing and helping. In a world of shady abusers, demonized victims, and one-sided dating rituals, Consent has your back. As says Cindy in the zine's intro, Talking about our experiences with consent, our struggles, our mistakes and how we've learned, these are part of a much larger revolutionary struggle.

"Looking for the perfect meaning of love? Ask a perfect stranger. That's what Karen Sorensen did on the streets of New York City. She set up a table, put out a sign that read "Love Research," and asked the passersby:

Have you ever fallen in love?
What does love mean to you?
Has your love ever been tested?
How do you prepare for love?

From a jaded inner-city teen to a five-year-old translating for his Russian Grandmother, people from all walks of life lined up to take part. Every answer won the respondent a flower--and Karen a new understanding. Hundreds of interviews and flowers later, this delightful, moving, even profound book brings together the most entertaining and enlightening reflections on the meaning of love ever gathered into one volume.

Love/luv/(noun)--because love really is in the eye of the beholder."

From the editor of the New York Times' popular "Modern Love" column, the story of love from beginning to end (or not).

Love. We want it. We need it. We pay it homage with songs and poems and great works of art. And when we lose it, there's no pain as intense or excruciating. For centuries we've been trying to figure it out, control it, or just get better at it. As the editor of a column about love for the New York Times, Daniel Jones reads thousands of stories about people's intimate relationships--the ones that soar, crash, or hum along, from the bizarre to the supposedly "normal." It's possible that he's read more true love stories than anyone on earth. In Love Illuminated, he teases apart this mystifying emotion that thrills, crushes, and sustains.

Drawing from the 50,000 stories that have crossed his desk over the past decade, Jones explores ten aspects of love--pursuit, destiny, vulnerability, connection, trust, practicality, monotony, infidelity, loyalty, and wisdom--and creates a lively, funny and enlightening journey through this universal human experience that jangles the head and stirs the heart.

In this timely, insightful, and darkly funny investigation, the acclaimed author of Against Love asks: what does living in dystopic times do to our ability to love each other and the world?

COVID-19 has produced new taxonomies of love, intimacy, and vulnerability. Will its cultural afterlife be as lasting as that of HIV, which reshaped consciousness about sex and love even after AIDS itself had been beaten back by medical science? Will COVID end up making us more relationally conservative, as some think HIV did within gay culture? Will it send us fleeing into emotional silos or coupled cocoons, despite the fact that, pre-COVID, domestic coupledom had been steadily losing fans?

Just as COVID revealed our nation to itself, so did it hold a mirror up to our relationships. In Love in the Time of Contagion, Laura Kipnis weaves (often hilariously) her own (ambivalent) coupled lockdown experiences together with those of others and sets them against a larger backdrop: the politics of the virus, economic disparities, changing gender relations, and the ongoing institutional crack-ups prompted by #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, mapping their effects on the everyday routines and occasional solaces of love and sex.