Pornology - book discontinued by Running Press Book Publishers - review by Kayla

I picked up this book against the reviews on the book since the title seemed cute and the topic seemed right up my alley. I honestly was expecting something akin to Violet Blue's "Smart Girl's Guide to the G-Spot", but what I receive was something completely different. It wasn't "different" in a bad way. It's different in a "think of this more like a fiction book" kind of way. Don't expect to learn anything about porn in a non-fiction manner. Instead, think of this as a fiction book to a woman's journey into the "adult world".

I was really, really surprised that the average rating on this book was two stars. I fell in love with it really quickly after opening the first cover. This book is basically a woman's account of her "dive" into the adult world. The book is a soft-cover book with black-and-white inner pages that includes 238 pages divided into 13 different chapters. The chapters are roughly based on her list. The author is Ayn Carrilo-Gailey, and the book is published by Running Press. The book is not a how-to as much as an entertaining memoir of this girl's journey into the adult world.

The book is focused around a "adult to-do list" that the author (who is a habitual list writer) writes down after her boyfriend accuses her of being pornophobic. The list includes things like "visit a strip club", "watch a porn", "meet a porn star", "host a sex toy party" "test vibrators" and things like that. Along with her close group of female friends (called the "Naughty Knitters"), the author is left to try and navigate her porn-to-do while recently having been put back on the market by the previously mentioned boyfriend.

I love the author's writing style. Really, I do. I ended up snickering in public places a lot more times than I'd like to admit. Maybe this is because I'm a sex toy reviewer and know what to expect from sex toys or maybe it's because the situations are just freakin' hilarious, but I ended up giggling - a lot. The author's writing style reminds me a bit of the Bloggess in the funny way that she looks sarcastically at the world while still keeping a light-hearted sense of humor about herself. Another reviewer mentioned that the author seemed full of herself, but I just didn't get that vibe from the writing.

So you want to know what hilarious things to expect? Well, the author's mother walked in on her sex tupperware party to buy a "Cactus Cake Pan" and "A Soup Stirrer" since her English wasn't that good and her mother was clueless. (A penis cake pan and rabbit vibe respectively) The author's first visit to an adult store leads her to try on these "cute wooden bracelets" - only to find out they won't come off. It also leads her to try on some "lip plumping lipstick" - only to find out that it's not for pumping up anything. At the strip club? She learns that, if you put in a twenty, you don't get to make change from the stripper's g-string, and all sorts of giggle-worthy things. The author's fun-loving and amusing outlook on the normally-portrayed-darkly view of pornography is a nice, refreshing surprise.

Of course, we get a plot line through the book as well. While the book is navigating through her porn-to-do, she's also finding herself crushing on a guy she met at the adult store, and the book basically focuses on her attempts to get this guy as well. However, the book is not pornographic in any way. There is no pornography or anything else. If I honestly had to classify the book, I'd even put it more as a "chick literature" type of book that wasn't bubble-headed but instead, is fun and lighthearted while dealing with a normally ignored aspect of our daily lives.

So if you look at this book as being a neat fiction look into a woman's journey into the adult world, it's a great book. I'm not sure why EF puts it under informative, and it just isn't a how-to book. (For the record, the book calls itself a "relationship narrative", so it doesn't think it's a how-to book either.) If you look at it as a fiction book, it's humorous, fun to read, and it was hard to put down. I'd highly recommend it.