A thought or two.

[hellozombies.livejournal.com]

While discussing the idea of sex in novels with a friend of mine, I (of course) brought up LKH and her...um...lack of skills in that particular area. My friend said that it's extremely difficult to write sex--descriptive or not--and that she feels "awkward" while reading sex scenes. I (again) chimed in about Anita Blake--about how not only did I feel awkward, I also felt pretty damn squicked out.

We've all lamented over the boring, repetitive, gross sex. My question is, have you ever--in any novel that's ever been written--seen a decent, titillating, enthralling sex scene?

The more and more I think about it, the more I realize that I haven't seen one that's left me breathless and panting. I know that I'm much more of a slash girl than anything, but isn't that what they're supposed to do?

(It's much more fun laughing about bad sex scenes than it is hunting for good ones, I'll tell you that.)

Thoughts, dear lashers?

Comments

[gray-ghost.livejournal.com]

Tanith Lee....Samuel Delany. Some of the orgy scenes in Dhalgren were pretty awesome. Tanith Lee sex scenes are so abstracted from what normal human sex is like though - it feels as though I'm looking at models from Vogue going at it on top of an ancient Egyptian tomb while Dead Can Dance plays in the background. Her sex scenes are very dreamlike. It makes them a lot easier to read.

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

Seconding the Delany rec.

[recrudescence.livejournal.com]

Tanith Lee squicked me with the whole giant-lizard-doing-underage-girls thing in The Birthgrave, but other than that I love her.

[assplund.livejournal.com]

Well, I like romance novels, so I can think of a lot. But I'm not very picky.

[ladymuttly1.livejournal.com]

I used to really like Linda Howard's sex scenes. I thought she did a really good job with them. Erotic but not icky.

[reticentric.livejournal.com]

I've read a few good sex scenes before in certain books. There was a nice 3some scene in this Eric Jerome Dickey book I read a few years ago, and I enjoyed The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy. If I remember correctly Jackie Collins has had some good ones.

Personally what makes a good sex scene for me is emotion and that is what LKH lacks. With her it's all bang bang, scream, tighten, spill, done... with everyone stroking Anita's ego and telling her she's the best thing since sliced bread. You really don't get that feeling that anyone is enjoying what is going on, and if they aren't enjoying it then why should you?

FWIW I've read some knock your socks off sex scenes written by normal little fanfic writers that put LKH to shame. ^_^

[ladymuttly1.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about the AB books lacking emotion.

First of all there is no sexual tension. Anita is stuck having sex with everything but the car's tailpipe. There is no build up left. No longing gazes across the room. No dating, hand holding or sneaking around behind closed doors.

Secondly there is no impediment to having sex. JC and Micah are pimps, Nate is just happy he's getting some and Richard's opinions don't matter anyway. Anita could walk down the street with any of her so called "sweeties" and say "see that Yellow Lab over there. I think I'll do him right here in the middle of the street" and her guys would say "Good show Anita."

Thirdly and most importantly. Anita DOESN'T WANT TO BE HAVING SEX. I don't know what she wants to do, but after 5 books of wangsting about sex, I'm pretty certain screwing London, Requim, Donovan, Tom, Dick, Harry and Belle isn't what she wants to do. Since the story is told from Anita's POV then if she's not having fun, neither are we.

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

I think that my problem is that, regardless of how open I might be about my own sex life, reading a sex scene between other people - however fictional - just unnerves me. Like I'm observing something really private. I'm the same way with huge emotional scenes in movies, too.

Laughing at bad sex scenes isn't just fun, it's a way of life!

[anniesong.livejournal.com]

I think you just described how reading LKHs novels has felt like for me lately. It's not just that I roll my eyes so much that I get a headache, but also the sense of invading a privacy as well.

[belledewinter.livejournal.com]

The first thing that sprang to mind was fanfiction, strengthened when you said you were a slasher. XD But there are plenty of books which have good or at least decent sex scenes. Tanith Lee is very good, I agree with another comment up there. Neil Gaiman has very few explicit ones, but he is great at everything he does. Ellen Kushner is awesome as well, though her bits of sexing 'fade to black' and you always keep wanting to see the rest (which is good, really, because you have enough 'heat' without TMI). :3

It's great to laugh at sex scenes, though. I tend to do the same when they go all over-the-top on me. But what makes it 'good' even if the description itself isn't 'all that much' is that it actually has a meaning for either the reader or the character or the story - something, because otherwise the scene can be aside from bad, pointless. *points at LKH*

[hellozombies.livejournal.com]

Slashers unite! LOL.

I think my biggest problem with sex scenes is that I need a real set-up for them. Since I personally would not sleep with a guy on the first date (or the tenth), I feel that the characters need to know one another better.

Also, maybe I don't understand this because I'm still a virgin, but...is every time supposed to be AWESOME! and WET! and SCREAMING! Or is Anita Blake just wrong on yet another level?

I think I'll stick to my slash, thanks.

[pandorasblog]

I think a big problem with writing about sex is that it's so personal. I've noticed that I find it hard to take a sex scene seriously if the terminology used is too different from words I myself would use. I love Anne Rice's The Witching Hour to death, but there were times when I just paused and went, "WTF? Cleft?", and snorted. In general, her (non-erotica) books have suffered from the sex being made more graphic.

Sometimes less is more. Use of setting and emotional context can make a huge difference by making the reader feel like they're there. In Ricardo Pinto's The Chosen, an erotic coupling in an Eden-like setting (I don't want to say who, as it's spoilery) is the more powerful for culminating in the very simple "They made love."

And the scene in Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now where Daisy and Edmond discover each other is very powerful because of the context of the war and their way of life crumbling around them. It's one of the best-written coming-of-age, sexual-awakening things I've read, and the fact that it's in a YA novel, a genre which many people would push aside as insufficiently literary, says a lot.

The Time Travler's Wife also has a very well-written sex scene (Clare's first time), which is beautifully grounded in the characters themselves and the nature of their relationship - it's not one of those books where the author just slapped on some naughty words and cliched metaphors.

I'm sure there must be more, but these

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

Nope. But then, I don't really like reading about sex unless there's something interesting going on (banter, for example). I just find reading about sex really boring, and even the well-written stuff doesn't intrigue me. It's like the author expects me to care about the touch here, the touch there, the moaning and the sensations but I don't. Then again, I tend to read books for characterization and witty narration, so unless the sex scene is cute and/or quirky, I'll just skim it. But that's not enthralling or titillating.

As another commenter said, there's something about the terminology, too. I tend to get caught up on the words authors use, and that usually has me cringing.

[jerel.livejournal.com]

I just want to say I love your icon. :)

[bluesauce.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Off-hand, two good ones that I can think of are one from American Gods, and the Susan/Harry scene from Jim Butcher's Death Masks. It's the emotion for the second one that does it, these are two very fucked-up people and it's the climax of the tension between the two of them.

[arclights.livejournal.com]

You and I are on the same page, I think. Manporn is easier for me; there's something about het erotica that makes me go D: D: D: and skip pages quickly until it's gone.

Most of the good porn I've seen is fanfic, though even the good stuff doesn't do it for me.

[hellozombies.livejournal.com]

I think we are. I mean, I'm mostly a straight female (maybe a 2 on the Kinsey scale?) but heterosexual coupling just...I don't know. I don't mind doing it myself, but reading about it isn't very erotic for me.

Now, two men, however...

I think that gets my motor running, so to speak.

And I second the good porn in fanfic. I've seen some delicious porn in fanfic. But nothing published, sadly. :(

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

The hottest thing I have ever read remains the scene in which Lestat turned David in The Tale of the Body Thief. I have no idea what that says about me.

That said, FitzChivalry's first time in the FarSeer series was lovely, although I don't know if that counts as a sex scene since it was more of a... an ode

Neil Gaiman had a couple of excellent ones in American Gods -- I remember one involving a Muslim cabbie that I liked better than the whole rest of the book. (Interestingly enough, Mercedes Lackey's het scenes don't suck. ^__^)

The Fall of the Kings was phenomenal on the sexxin' score. And I remember Kate Elliot handling a couple of scenes really well, although her "Crown of Stars" series has stretched out so durn long I've forgotten which book contained what.

As far as romance authors, for me Laura Kinsale wins hands down. Which is, of course, not fair, since she's pretty much the only romance author I can stomach at all at the moment.

I kind of adore Douglas Adams's take on the matter, though, which went something like:

"Oh, ah!" she began.
"Ooooooo," he countered.
"Eeeeeeeeee," she disagreed.
"Oh, ah, oh?" he queried.
"Ah, ah, ah!" she informed him.

Except, you know, it's Douglas Adams, so it's far funnier. No idea what happened to my copy of that book.

[cheeky-duckie.livejournal.com]

I remember one involving a Muslim cabbie that I liked better than the whole rest of the book. It was surprising! I was reading along, curled up in the bathtub, and all of a sudden there was sneak-attack-genie-sex! It was a really well done scene, though. So, uh, seconded.

[bleedingsand.livejournal.com]

Seconded. Mm. I swear, the Melisandre/Phedre scene is the hottest thing I've ever read.

[evewithanapple.livejournal.com]

This is a play/movie, not a book,but I'm going to have to recommend Bent by Martin Sherman. The weird thing is, there's no actual sex, it's all talk and imagination, but the way it's handled- well, you can watch it here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HccQhITRXQk). (NSWF, despite the lack of actual sex)

As far as written sex scenes are concerned, I generally prefer scenes that talk about what the characters are feeling as opposed to "He put his X in her Y."; I find it less crude. With that in mind, the dream!sex scenes in A Great And Terrible Beauty are pretty good, as are Juliet Marillier's (The Sevenwaters Trilogy, Wolfskin, and Foxmask) and Elizabeth Hand's (Waking the Moon, Mortal Love

[mulder200.livejournal.com]

OMG! Thanks for the link!

[mariakatarina.livejournal.com]

Well, as a romance novel reader, I tend to not really care about the sex scenes.. or at least don't mind them. (though the use of anachronistic terms and flowery purple prose in place of basic genitalia terms is at times jarring and hilarious in historical romance novels)

As for anything good specifically.. um.. Marsha Canham's pretty good. I remember in her Across the Moonlit Sea the main characters were arguing -while- having sex.

Sex is dull and mechanical(or laugh-out-loud ridiculous) without context. LKH has ditched the context. If there's no plot and no point to the sex, it's just not interesting. She's forgotten how to persuade people to CARE about the characters.

[estllechauvelin.livejournal.com]

I second Juliet Marillier.

Gail Dayton has some good ones in her One Rose Trilogy, on top of excellent and original world-building.

I rather like Kelley Armstrong's in the Women of the Otherworld series, specifically the ones for Paige and Lucas. The ones in Elena's books bother me, but since the character bothers me, it's not surprising that the sex she has does, too. Other people think it's hot, so that's probably personal taste.

There's a bisexual regency romance I'd recommend called Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander.

[dominanefret.livejournal.com]

You have Dexter in your Icon! LOVE!

[chubling.livejournal.com]

I really loved the sex scenes in Imajica, but Clive Barker. He tends to write, in my opinion, rather good sex scenes. And they can run from decently vanilla to really not at all.

[miladygrey.livejournal.com]

Laura Kinsale's Shadowheart, also known as The One Where I Found Out That I'm Rather Kinky. Female domme, male sub, bondage and roleplay and two people learning about each other, not just sexually but in the this-is-part-of-me sense.

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

You know, Holly Black did some fantastic descriptions of desire in "Tithe." No graphic sex descriptions -- I think all the boy did was step into the confines of a sidhe's (thorn-lined) cape, but damn if it wasn't hot.

(Hmmm. I seem to have a thing for men doing stuff against their will and better judgement.)

[relmneiko.livejournal.com]

I remember that! It was hot. And damn if that book didn't have the best coming out line ever. Spock's secret love for Kirk, LOL - I bet Holly Black has been in fandom at one point or another. XD

Sometimes, well, a lot - desire and the wanting and teasing is more fun than the actual sex. Once they do it, then it's over - but waiting and hoping for it to happen, even if it never does? Frikkin' awesome (if frustrating XD).

[mulder200.livejournal.com]

We've all lamented over the boring, repetitive, gross sex. My question is, have you ever--in any novel that's ever been written--seen a decent, titillating, enthralling sex scene?

LKH cannot write a decent sex scene to save her life! A good author should arouse and stimulate your mind(which in turn should stimulate your body). I have read some VERY erotic writing because I know it makes me orgasm!

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

I just realized today that I wish to GOD there were at least fifty men writing love like Jonathan Tropper. There is so much passion and emotion in there that the sex is icing -- and yet, he is in no way writing "like a girl," or a psuedo-girl "Bridges of Madison County" style.

[wyvernfriend.livejournal.com]

Yeah, LKH turns me off the sex, I'm afraid I get really turned on by Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark Hunter series. Corny they might be, fun they are.