Best Women's Erotica 05 - erotic fiction by Cleis Press Inc. - review by Desdimona

I read erotica because I love words and language and I love sex, and for me, written descriptions of sex can be an incredible turn-on. If you've ever cracked the spine of a novel on the "dirty parts," then you might know what I'm talking about.

But why, you might ask, should one go to the trouble of buying a book like "Best Women's Erotica" when there is plenty of smutty writing available on the Internet for free? I would argue that collections of "Best Women's Erotica" (or "Best S/M Erotica" or "Best Lesbian Erotica" or what have you) are worth their price because they offer something that the Internet doesn't: quality control. Instead of having to scroll through a lot of poorly written or juvenile stories (stories that sometimes feel, to me, like the equivalent of bad porn where the actress's breasts and the orgasms all look fake), I can pick up this book, lie down on the couch, and know that I will read a story that was specifically selected as being of good quality. Speaking of "picking up the book," that is another reason that I prefer printed erotica to the electronic kind -- it feels like so much more of an escape for me to lie down on the couch and lose myself for an hour in a book of erotica than for me to spend an hour in front of my computer screen.

So, it's clear that collections of erotica are very much worth their price and the space they take up on my bookshelf. What about this particular collection of erotica? Like any collection that contains stories by a variety of authors, it provided a very diverse experience. Some of the stories did not do it for me, mostly because they didn't include enough actual sex.They started to tease me a little, which was nice, but I prefer my erotica to go beyond just teasing. Luckily, enough of the stories in this collection DO go beyond teasing for me to come away from reading this book feeling satisfied.

My favorite stories in this book were those that described situations that I would almost certainly never find myself in -- there is one story that involves a waitress and a handsome customer having sex on the hood of the customer's car in the restaurant parking lot, and one incredibly hot story in which a woman goes camping with a gay male couple she is friends with and the trio ends up being something more than friends. I got very wet reading these stories and eventually had to put the book down, pull down my damp underwear, get out my Eroscillator and my Njoy Pure Wand, and bring myself to a loud, satisfying orgasm. I considered my orgasm a tribute to the quality of this collection of erotica.