UPDATE APRIL 2021: The Sex Positions 101 book is no longer in production. This sex book review remains for anyone who wants to reference this information. There’s always the fantastic Curvy Girl Sex Positions book I’m featured in, too!
As anyone who reads this blog knows, I’m a complete sucker for books. I absolutely love any book I can get my hands on. I’ve been dying to get my hands on the Lover’s Choice book series, and Twisted-Miss was happy to help me out by sending me their Sex Positions 101 Book to review.
The Sex Positions 101 book is just a plain book with spinal binding that comes with a small, inflatable wedge pillow for use in sexual positions. It’s 18 pages long (Yeah, not very long) and most of the book includes pictures. It’s not just black and white text – it’s full-color pretties. It takes about a half-an-hour to read through thoroughly. Instead of calling this a book, I’d say it’s a “learn sex in ten minutes” guide for the most part. The guide is very basic which works well for it but don’t expect to find any advanced information in here. It’s more of a “I’ve never had sex before – what do I do?” type of guide than anything advanced. (Something that also annoyed me a bit is that the back cover is made out of a thick piece of cardboard that is almost as thick as the entire book itself is. Slightly annoying, but nothing to complain about.)
The first page of the book is the introduction that thanks you for reading. The second page is a fun little “Did You Know?” page. For example, “The First Condom was Made from What Material:” with your multiple-choice choices. Of course, I won’t ruin it, but a lot of the facts on this page are like that. Page three is then the table of contents.
The first section is the “Frequently Asked Questions” section. I’m slightly questioning their logic in putting the FAQ before the book, but it’s still a nicely-written FAQ. All of the questions are definitely beginner-level such as “How do I know if I’m having great sex?”, “Why would anyone want to have anal sex?” The answers are given very succinctly to fit the space, but it does answer the question.
The next section is “The Facts” and just includes little random sex tidbits that would be interesting to know. Such as “The most common place for people to have sex outside of the bed is the car” and “Approximately 40% of Americans have engaged in anal sex”. Overall, not many facts (about 15) but still a good little read for interesting tidbits. Who doesn’t like random facts?
Next section is the “Erogenous zones” which features a picture of a woman on the left side and a man on the right. The amusement is that both gender’s “zones” are almost marked as the same, but the only thing that changes is the little description that goes with it. For example, when it comes the brain, apparently the women need to be stimulated in the brain, but the men only need a sexy look. For some odd reason, men have an erogenous zone in their fingers, but none in their nipples, but women have sensitive breasts but apparently cold-fish fingers? Also, women have sensitive ears, but apparently men don’t. This book is just so chocked full of stereotypes it’s scary. Overall, if you can get past the stereotypes, they aren’t bad suggestions. They’re suggestions that I think most people know (nibble on your partner’s ears.), but if you don’t, they’re good ideas.
“Games” is the next section. There are eight “games” (which are sentence-long ideas) on the two pages. For example, you can “do it fully clothed”, “play naked Twister”, and one that actually does sound kinda fun “Both of you wear blindfolds during the entire act”. Nothing of much interest here. Just some sexy pictures and some cheesy ideas.
Now we get to the “heart” of the book. (It’s only six pages long. Considering this is called “sex positions 101”, I was slightly confused that the actual topic of the book was only 1/3 of it.) Each position includes one “main” way to do it with three variations (little pink/blue illustration people). It also includes the history of the position, why it’s good for him and why it’s good for her, what it’s best for, and a “hot tip” to do it better. They gave little cute names to each of the positions (such as Derriere Delights), but it’s really just Missionary, Rear Entry, Woman on Top, Man on Top, Standing, and Side-by-Side. As my friend pointed out, isn’t missionary called as such because the man is always on top? The pictures for some of the missionary and man on top ones are the same as well.
Some of the positions (four of them) actually use the wedge pillow in their diagram of how to do the position. From a personal standpoint, I rarely do anything other than missionary, so I actually did want to see some of these positions in this book. While I have been pointing out the negatives mostly, I do like this section with the positions. None of it is Kama Sutra crazy, but instead, is all stuff that average couples could do on a regular basis without stretching or anything. These all are positions my boyfriend and I could try out without any special preparations, and that’s something that I do enjoy about what they’ve listed. They presented the positions in a straightforward manner that allows the average person to do and enjoy each position. I was, for the most part, pretty pleased about this section. They could have done more, but what they did do was nice.
The last page is a list of top 5 ways to get in the mood as well as the conclusion. The list is “Kissing”, “Sexy Dancing”, “Food”, “Massage”, and “Dress Up”. Their conclusion just thanks you for reading and suggests you try out all of the new, fun positions.
The wedge pillow that came with it is a little disappointing. I guess I expected more out of it since I own the Liberator Wedge pillow, but this one isn’t anything like it. It’s a blow-up wedge that’s made out of velvet material, so it is soft. It’s 11 inches long and 8 inches tall. It’s about the size of the average person’s head, so obviously, it won’t support hips very well. When I had my average-sized friends try it out (I didn’t since my above-average weight might mess with something), they said it was comfortable for their back, but didn’t really seem to support their hips. When they pulled it out, we all noticed that air had actually leaked from the pillow, so during a session, I guess your pillow would be slowly deflating. Plus, that was only with one 140 male on top of it. I can’t even imagine how fast it would drain during missionary sex.
Overall, I’d say the pillow isn’t worth being your “deciding factor” on this purchase. It’s a good accessory, but I don’t see it lasting very long with actual use. Plus, I can’t imagine cleaning this would work very well. A warm washcloth and antibacterial soap should clean it, but the velvet material will probably never go back to being as soft. I really think any sort of weight would possibly end up popping it – especially with the motions that sex tends to go through. For fun for awhile, I think it would work pretty well though.
The downside to the book? It’s all heterosexual. Not a single mention is made towards homosexual or any other type of sex besides man/woman. It’s like the book doesn’t even know it exists. Even when questions are made that are ambigious – “My partner has trouble bringing me to orgasm. Would it be hurtful if I pleasure myself?” – the answers are back towards the stereotype. The answer included things about “how hot he would find it to watch” and such, assuming that the woman is having the problem. (Which is most likely, but still not impossible the other way around.) I also had a little bit of a problem with the photos in the book. Yes, they’re pretty, and yes, they’re sexy, but they’re all models and nothing realistic of a body type I would expect from the “average couple”. There is quite a bit of diversity in people’s color when it comes to the pictures, though.
Overall, I wasn’t impressed by the book, but it does do its job. There are so many places it could have improved to promote diversity and understanding, but it does do what it promises – let’s me know about the different sex positions. A great book for people who are looking for comfortable sex positions but still want variety or a couple that doesn’t have much sexual experience.
