Strumpetings

This is going to be my thoughts on books 4-7, not individual really, but overall.

Back in 2009, we decided to do a book purge. This was devastating and necessary. Of the books that made the cut, 70% were non-fiction, 25% were fiction books ranging from richly illustrated Grimm and Anderson, to Pullman, Chabon, and a set of Rowling UK hardbacks.

The 5% for the adults we kept in our room. Rice, Gaiman, Carroll, Bulgakov, St fucking Aubyn. My husband has a beat up copy of Death Instinct with Phillip Emmons on the cover instead of Bentley Little, and I have a half dozen translations of The Little Prince. And some of it, we kept up in the closet. Those include Roquelaure's Beauty series, The Pearl, Kama Sutra, and Tipping the Velvet.

We kept what we loved. We still had a ton of books, but we decided to build up a more practical ebook library.

Except for books we wanted to touch. And as soon as I can figure out if I want the bundle of the first three books, or the individual ones (it's the covers, I can't decide which I like best), these will be going up there as well.

I didn't read these as the author intended. I read the first three, loved them, thought the series was already ahead of the game with filthy and eloquent prose, and if you lopped off the epilogue, it would have been good. But, I'm a delicate flower and knew that if there were going to be seven parts, then it was going to stab me in the chest and twist. So, I cheated and decided to read the rest back to back. I'm glad I did. It does give you a bit of a hangover, though.

CD Reiss took every overused cliché in erotic fiction (and romance, I'd wager), and played a game of Mad Libs with it. Then I read Control and realized that this thing she was creating was going to be an erotic classic. No doubt. I'm picturing an 8x10 fully illustrated hardback. The potential is staggering. And the thing with Control, Burn, and Resist? They aren't filler novels. Control was probably my favorite out of the entire series.

Sing. Well. We knew it was going to hurt. But, it's already established that we're all masochists. Their relationship had been challenged for the whole series, but this was an entirely different sort of tragedy. Just when they're getting a grip on outside drama, they are faced with something that they had no control over. I cried. A lot.

And another thing. I'm probably about a one on the Kinsey Scale. Maybe a two if I'm looking at pictures of Christina Hendricks. I'll be blunt. I don't think I've ever cared to actually see, touch, taste, and smell another woman like I wanted to with Monica. She is my book girlfriend.

But Jonathan! Yes, I know. He's super. He's great. He's sexy. Awesome penis. Great in bed. A king. Yes. All that.

But Monica has the sexiest snatch* in all of erotic fiction.

This is the first story I've ever read that the heroine was just as arousing as the Hero. The BDSM scenes were fantastic, sexy, and completely realistic. Monica's issues, not with pain, nor sexual submission really, but of debasement and true humiliation were brought to the forefront with no apologies and no compromise. Monica was honest, and I think that's one of the reasons that this is so good. She would let herself cry, but she would call you a motherfucker while she did it.

And when I finally shut my Kindle app down after I finished Sing, my second thought was the Infinite Monkey Theorem. That I should just start pressing the keys. The bar is so high now. Stratospherically improbable. I'm humbled, but I'm inspired.

*so many choices, but I do enjoy a bit of titillating alliteration