To read without blushing
Oh, summer! During this most blessed season, we get reacquainted with our skin and spend lazy afternoons in the sun. For those scorching moments when lustful desires come over you, but you’re put off by the thought of having to lift a finger, here are a few erotic tales that have stood the test of time.

 

Published in 1928, Belle de Jour is a French novel written by Joseph Kessel. It was the inspiration behind the famous movie of the same name by director Luis Buñuel released in 1967, and starring Catherine Deneuve.

Erotic strength: average.

Excerpt: “Everything about him, even the rheum in his eyes, seemed thicker than in an ordinary man. And Séverine, suddenly recognizing coarse fury and bestial sensuality, groaned from the depths of her being.”
The plot: Séverine, a young upper-class married woman, leads a double life.  Thoughtful wife in the morning, she prostitutes herself during the day while her husband is at work. Through intimate encounters with strangers, she discovers sexual pleasure. The strong point: the plot of the novel is well executed, and the suspense makes it a definite page-turner!
 
$18.50 at Chapters and Indigo.

 

Bearing the stamp of Haitian-born Montreal writer Dany Laferrière, this novel appeared in the mid-1980s and is considered an important work of Quebec literature.

Erotic strength: average.

Excerpt: “Sleep is a complete surrender. It’s more than nude; it’s naked. Anything can happen during the night, when reason sleeps. Do we dream our lover? Do we penetrate his dreams?”
The plot: Set against the backdrop of a heat wave and jazz music,this novel recounts the sexual escapades of two young black men. Their female conquests have but one thing in common: they are all white, including Miz Bookstore, an upper-classMcGill University student. Be advised, Laferrière makes no use of political correctness.
 
$12.95 at Chapters and Indigo.

Penned by Pauline Réage, this French novel was as popular as it was scandalous when it first appeared in 1954.

Erotic strength: high.

Excerpt: “Her lips were on fire, her mouth was dry, the saliva wasn’t there anymore, an anguish composed of fear and desire constricted her throat, and her hands, which she had recovered control of, were cold and clammy.”

The plot: A sexually-liberated young woman follows her lover to a castle, where she becomes his sexual slave, and is submitted of her own free will to many scenarios which involve physical torture. Her only pleasure? Giving all of herself to another. This one is not for the faint of heart!

$11.95 at Chapters and Indigo.
 

 

This collection of short stories, written in the 1940s by Franco-Cuban author Anaïs Nin, was published during the late 1970s.

Erotic strength: high.

Excerpt: “When she closed her eyes she felt he had many hands, which touched her everywhere, and many mouths, which passed so swiftly over her, and with a wolflike sharpness, his teeth sank into her fleshiest parts.”

The plot: With an explicit and unreserved pen, Anaïs Nin discusses the most subversive topics. Sex, in all its technicality and sensuality, is the central character in all the stories therein. This one is for those who prefer eroticism without poetic excess.

$17.50 at Chapters and Indigo.