The Joy of Gay Sex

View other editions of The Joy of Gay Sex.
View books by Charles Silverstein, Felice Picano.

Change the title please - Rated
This book is a serious disappointment. It has very little about the sexual act, and anyone looking to this book for ideas or instruction about gay sex will be extremely frustrated to find the book should in fact be called the 'joy of possible situations or experiences you may have if you are a gay man'. As I perused the particularly fatuous cod psychology of the section on Daddy/Son modelled relationships I could clearly hear the sound of the bottom of a barrel being scraped. This book could only possibly be helpful to someone who had absolutely no experience of gay life, I suggest that kind of person is not the book's target market and the publishers should change the title.

Practical and Sensual - Rated
What can I say about this book? Like being held in the arms of a muscular lover this book provides reassurance and comfort to all of us in the gay community that revel in our physicality.

Far more than an instruction manual, The Art of Gay Sex is an essential guide to opening up the sensual you.

I can't say that The Art of Anal Sex is an art that I've personally mastered, but as long as I keep looking at the pictures and working hard I'm sure it achievable.

It's a beautifully concieved and illustrated book, completed with the love and fits perfectly between my copy of Spartacus and Will & Grace DVD boxed set (Vol 2).

Familiar Friend Brings Reassurance - Rated
I like this book, always have,in each of its editions and the latest is like the return of an old friend after a facelift and a trip to the healh farm. The picture of the front seems to be the same one chosen for the upcoming Gay Man's Kama Sutra from Terry Sanderson, but no matter.

It no longer teaches me anything new, but it did. It just has that sense of being a "must have" book like a car maintenance manual even if you don't fix your own. I like pencil drawings instead of photographs, but I do miss the old Greek and Roman mosaics in the front. It is nice to dip into and read a section or two, just to have the book......and I have bought maybe three editions over the years before disposing of each one; then hesitating and buying yet another replacement copy. I decide to live without it and move on, but am drawn back to buy another copy.......stupid really, but it has a reassuring quality about it.....simple, forthright, clear, and it makes gay sex seem almost mainstream and yet, its appearance on a coffee table would make others blush at the very sight of its title.

It is the original gay-lifestyle manual; I like Jack Hart's Gay Sex; and probably will find Terry Sanderson's Kama-Sutra fun to read; but TJGS is without question the book to accompany Spartacus on the modern man's bookshelf as a statement to himself symbolic of a rite of passage and identity.