In Search of Hot Lit

We’ve written before about our efforts to find erotica to recommend to our growing MiddlesexMD community (Hi there, community!). Our efforts are are purely pragmatic, you understand. By subjecting ourselves to hours of film, reams of erotica, searing our eyeballs with the online offerings — all off this sacrifice, all for YOU, we are looking to find the good stuff, the stuff that really does, in fact, heat up a grown woman. (Real life experience has a way of turning an awful lot of porn and romance into comedy, we have found.)

If you haven’t been following the posts here, let me explain briefly: In menopause, our circulating sex hormones dimish. That can sometimes, not always, lead to a drop in libido. Even when the libido is willing, becoming aroused enough for sex can take a little time and effort. We need to step in, do the work our hormones did for us when we were young.

An easy and inexpensive way to adjust to this new reality is to give ourselves more opportunities to have sexual thoughts -- i.e., watching sexy movies, reading sexy literature, masturbating, wearing/doing sexy things.

Sexy literature… That's my subject. I've been poking around just a bit, looking at collections of erotica, some of it good fun, much of it yawningly dopey. While I’ve been looking, I’ve been thinking about the guideline we established during our silly, foiled movie night: We much prefer a Great Story That is Sexy to a sex story.

Enter Jacqueline Carey. When I think of great stories that are sexy, she springs immediately to mind. Her New York Times bestselling Kushiel’s Legacy Series encompass great epic tales full of romance, politics, turmoil, grief, tragic loss, breathtaking triumphs, and plenty of sex. Most of the sex is great, some of it is frightening, but all of it is integral to the storyline. I love that. Her novels are fat and involving enough to keep me diving into them night after night. Sexy enough to keep me on the edge of my libido for hundreds of pages.

So, why not ask the author herself about “Great Stories that are Sexy”?

I put the question to her, and waited. At first, coming up with a list stumped Carey too, which made me feel a little better about coming up with so few recommendations of my own. She's trolling for answers among her friends, too, but did come up with a starter set. Ms. Carey says:

I feel as if we've finally got a foothold on Hot Lit. The birth of a canon. But it's not really very big, is it? We need to feed this list. And for that, we need to hear from you. What do you think? Have you found writers whose work does it for you? Please share. We will keep adding to the list and will republish it as it grows. Those of us who read constantly need a steady supply…!