I collect books slightly obsessively and having more books always makes me happy. It adds twenty points to the “awesome” factor when the books are about sex.
“Sex Toy” by Em and Lo is actually a pretty good book. It’s set up in an encyclopedia-like format with different entries about the different types of sex toys. It’s a small-sized book – it literally is about the size of your spread out hand. It’s about six inches long and four inches wide. It includes 202 pages with a couple of extra pages for the appendixes. It took me about four hours to read. The book itself has a cover – the blue “Sex Toy” part is a cover of the regular, plain-white book that’s underneath it. From what I can tell, this cover isn’t coming off anytime soon, though – it sticks with quite a bit of static electricity to the book itself.
This sex book isn’t exactly discreet. Because its cover is done in bright blue and orange with the giant word “Sex Toy” on the front of it, it’d be pretty hard to discreetly read. Plus, there are illustrations of sex toys and anatomy in the book itself, so it’s probably not one of those books that you want to take to work to read during your breaks.
Like stated before, this book is set up in an encyclopedia fashion. Each entry has its own header and then explanation about the toy. With most toys, they also recommend which toy shop to buy it at. This book recommends a lot of different well-known companies to shop at. It includes everything from “Acrylic” to “Xandria” and all sorts of little topics in between. The entries include popular sex toys (Rabbit Habit, Felix Flexi), sex toy types (vibrators, butt plugs, cock rings), sex toy materials (acrylic, plastic, silicone), popular sex toy companies (Blowfish, Goodvibes, Babeland) and other random things that portain to sex toys (hemorrhoids, ice cubes, Kama Sutra products, headphones). Overall, (and yes, I counted) there are 315 different entries.
I really appreciated their writing style. Em and Lo make lots of jokes including putting “Gerbils” as an entry (to explain that they are *not* sex toys since apparently some guy put one up his butt. Awkward much?). Each little entry is filled with honest information about the toys themselves as well as some humor or some criticism. (Cal Exotics going for quantity over quality and the like.) It’s definitely an enjoyable read and certainly not a dry one. Another great feature is the fact that, if the word is “blue” in one of their entries, it means that if you look up that word, you’ll find an entry on it. That makes this a great book for a beginner who may not know some of the basics like “phlathates”.
Another great feature were the random illustrations included throughout the book. If it was a toy they highly recommended, they’d enjoy an illustration of what it looked like.
The book is also pretty gender-inclusive. It rarely assumes that you’re in a heterosexual relationship and actually some of their product recommendations are based upon being in a homosexual relationship. I was also quite fond of the advice that the book gives – a lot of times it will downright state that a product isn’t good for use. (Anal Desensitizer, Jelly, Phlathates, etc.) While recommending products, it gives good information about how to clean and care for them as well.
I was also happy in Em and Lo’s choice to include product materials in here as well. In listings such as “silicone”, “acrylic”, “plastic”, etc., you’ll find information about how/when the product is safe, how to care for it, and any safety concerns you should have if you’re using a product made of it. I was actually surprised to find out that there is no regulation on sex toy materials so companies can claim that a toy is made of a material when only about 2% of the toy is made of said material.
Overall, I was completely impressed by this book. It’s obvious it was made for beginners, but it’s still a great book to have around – even for advanced users. Because of its encyclopedia fashion, I can look up a material type within seconds if I have a question about cleaning it. It makes it a good reference book to keep around, and I especially recommend it to anyone who is still new to sex toys and would like to learn more.
