The "Guide to Getting it On!" is everything a sex book should be. It's frank, it's funny, it's opinionated in all the right places and objective in all the others, and, as it says, it "doesn't have pictures of male or female private parts that look like they were taken from a cadaver."
It does have pictures though: ones so graphic that they would make your grandmother keel over, although they will probably just make you laugh. Yet the "Guide" is not just a bit of fluff to giggle at and pass around.
In its nearly 700 pages, it covers tons of topics, from sexual fantasies to sex during pregnancy to "The Importance of Getting Naked," as well as many others too explicit to mention here. The "Guide" answers questions that have almost certainly never crossed the mind of the average University student, such as how disabled people feel about sex. And with section titles like "Big Mama Nature & the Human Backside" and "Sex Tips with a Cranky Marxist Edge," you can't help but be propelled through page after page of this stuff.
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Most books about sex fall into one of a few well-defined categories. Some try to explain sex as gently as possible to kids, never mentioning technique or sensation except to say that sex feels really nice when both partners love each other very much. Others deal with sexual technique exclusively, often editorializing about "what men want," "how to please a woman," and so on. Still, others completely focus on a single topic in the sexual sphere.
The "Guide" does not fit into any of these categories. It's a comprehensive reference manual, but it's also a narrative, written by a real person who consulted hundreds of other real people about their sexual experiences.
Author Paul Joannides reports that the "Guide" is being used in sex education programs at several schools. A lot of the techniques covered here might seem a bit intimidating to people without much sexual experience - "you mean there's that much to it?!" - but aside from that, anyone who's even thinking about having sex could benefit a whole lot from reading this book.
Some entire chapters are serious and rather opinionated. For example, Joannides vehemently denounces the act of circumcision, calling it "the penile calamity." He also has some ideas about how educating your kids about sex might seem rather unrealistic. While Joannides has definitely given much consideration to the content of these chapters, they cannot help but make for a less compelling reading than that of the more sensational chapters in the "Guide."
Altogether, though, the "Guide" strikes a great balance between playfulness and solemnity, exploring a multitude of sexual issues in great detail. While the book is indeed graphic, even at its most explicit it maintains an honest, matter-of-fact tone that keeps all the detail from entering the realm of obscenity.
As a how-to book, the "Guide to Getting It On!" earns its exclamation point, not only for the sheer volume of information it contains, but for the way it's presented: lightheartedly and with an emphasis on comfort and communication between partners.
And with all those pictures to giggle about, its entertainment value is indisputable. Maybe it really is as the "Guide" says: "Humor is the sexual lubricant for the soul."
(See related article in Life page.)
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