Guide to Getting It On! by Paul Joannides

I mean with chapters titles like Nipples, Nipples, Nipples and The Zen of Finger Fucking, you know this book isn’t your standard, stale guide to human sexuality. Unlike a lot of other books about sex this book has a frank, but humorous tone to it. It has served as a great resource, reference and just a straight up entertaining read. I’ve actually had a copy of The Guide to Getting It On for close to seven years now. Orientally posted on The Perv Pack's Smut Shack. Recommend for EVERYONE! Young, old, middle-aged, LGBTQ, experienced, inexperienced, and poorly experienced - There’s something for everybody, especially those who may be thinking about having some form of sex for the first time. Objective, very open-minded, accepting, and humorous. My favorite thing is how the author includes relevant resources at the end of nearly every chapter, which means there are resources for nearly every person who picks up this book. But overall, the tone is light - emphasizing how sex should be fun and consensual. The Guide does get serious in some parts: what to do after rape/abuse, sexual dysfunction, prostitution history, etc. There are excellent illustrations, both of the informative and humorous variety, sprinkled throughout.

The “fun” chapters are front and center, while the more serious chapters are further back. There are a couple of the more dense chapters, but most chapters can be read in 30 minutes. This feature also makes it easy and go back to review individual chapters if you want to brush up on your knowledge or techniques. So you don’t have to read several chapters to get an understanding of something, and that makes it very easy to put down for a while, and then return to wherever you want/need. The beauty of The Guide, and the reason it took me so long to read, is that the chapters are short and digestible.

It is QUITE dense at nearly 1,200 pages, but I loved ALL of it! It’s packed so full of accessible information it’s no wonder it’s used as a textbook in college courses.

It took me waaaaaaaay to long to get through it all, and I regret not finishing it sooner. Well, after that I put the book down for a while and only picked it up occasionally. He finished it well before me, but we both felt confident going into our first time as a couple (and his first time ever) knowing we were both well-informed, and prepared. Thankfully, I remembered a friend of mine raved about the older edition of this book, so I got this one for us to read as a couple. My last sexual partner was a virgin, and when we were thinking about having sex for the first time, he started asking me questions I didn’t have the answers to.

Guide to Getting It On! by Paul Joannides