XXX 30 Porn-Star Portraits is a 143 page book that includes interesting information about popular porn stars. The book is larger than your average-sized books in size and honestly may not fit on some shelves. The book is actually about twelve inches tall and ten inches wide. The book is a paperback book published by Bulfinch (which is printed in Spain.) The entire book is printed in color on high-quality photography paper. I honestly wish the company would have chosen a hardcover for this book since I feel like that would have increased the value more. This book was published in 2005 and includes some of the major pornography stars from that time.

The outside of this book, while showing no nudity, does showcase the fact that this is about porn stars. Both the front and the back show almost-nude stars. Considering half of this book is pictures of naked porn stars, I'd recommend you leave this one at home.

Basically, this book is intended to be a look into the lives and bodies of thirty different famous porn stars of the time. The book alternates between pictures of the stars and essays written by (or about) the stars. The pictures are always a full-spread (both pages that are open) with one picture of the star on the left and another full-sized picture of the star on the right. The pictures always take up the full page.

The pictures of the product on EdenFantasys look neat, but they really don't represent the book as a whole. They do show the naked porn star pictures which are a large part of the book, but what they don't show is that, opposite every naked porn star picture, is a picture of the porn star fully-dressed in the exact same position that they were in the naked picture. This honestly gives me an appreciation for my own body because we get to see the star fully dressed and how you'd see them on the street, then you get to see how starkly different they are once they are fully nude. The women were generally presented with minimal make-up in their "street" picture and with movie make-up in the "porn" picture. The males were always presented flaccid instead of erect.

The Table of Contents is awesomely organized. Instead of just placing it all in a large list of items, they chose to sort the table of contents by "Pictures" and "Essays", so one column has all of the essays and the other has all of the pictures. This will make it easy to come back to any essay/picture you want to reference at a later date.

The book is relatively equal male/female. There's more females included than males, but it's not a large disproportionate amount.

The essays really vary in content. Some of the "essays" are actually interviews that were conducted with the porn star. Some of the other essays are actually written by the stars themselves (Such as Nina Hartley). Some of the other essays are recorded conversations between two different stars. And finally, some of the other included essays are actually just essays written by (I say random because I have no idea who they are) people who are interested in how sex affects society. There are sixteen different essays in this book, and they each vary from two pages to four pages.

At the end of the book for the last thirty pages are one-page "snapshot profiles" of each of the pornstars included in the book. It includes a self-written profile about themselves as well as a list of some of the movies that the star has performed in. The picture included with this snapshot profile seems to be a personal picture or a candid picture from the photoshoots. These profiles are neat to read if you have interest in the porn star shown.

The porn stars included in this collection are Sunrise Adams, Briana Banks, Belladonna, Seymore Butts, Christy Canyon, Chloe, Nina Hartley, Jason Hawke, Chad Hunt, Heather Hunter, Jenna Jameson, Jesse Jane, Janine, Ron Jeremy, Jeremy Jordan, Kira Kener, Reina Leone, Michael Lucas, Gina Lynn, Ginger Lynn, Sean Michaels, Peter North, Tera Patrick, Mari Possa, Lukas Ridgeston, Tawny Roberts, Savanna Samson, Aiden Shaw, Lexington Steele, and May Ling Su. Someone who's not barely-legal to watch pornography might recognize more of those names, but I only recognize four or five. Considering this was shot and published in Spain, I'd imagine they chose the stars that were more represented internationally than just in the United States. (Looking at Ron Jeremy's picture makes me realize I highly doubt he'd be as popular in today's porn expectations.)

Overall, it was a great book to flip through. I honestly can't say that the essays held my attention much (okay, maybe at all), but I really loved the pictures. Seeing the porn stars in such a candid manner was totally worth purchasing this book. Again, I wish the book was hardcover, so it would stay nice for longer, but I'm just glad they printed it at all. The book isn't meant to be masturbation material - instead, it's meant to provide a unique study of popular porn stars by essay and photo.

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The neat thing that I've gotten out of all of this is that I've got a new-found appreciation for the clothed body. Yes, the porn stars can be attractive naked, but there's something sexy about still being clothed.

I still like the idea of the book, and I've showed it off to a few friends, but it's not something that requires rereading or thinking about it again after the first time that you flip through it. It's still a good book though, but I just haven't looked at it ever again after the first time.

If you enjoy porn stars though, it's definitely worth the purchase - especially if you find a new star you like and want to see if they're featured in this book.