Webmaster's Blog

Books for December 2009
18th December 2009
By Webmaster

Eight Inches
by Sean Wolfe
Kensington, $15, pap. (save $2 by using the above link)

Sean Wolfe calls his new collection of stories Eight Inches. His publisher describes the anthology as "smart, sophisticated erotic escapades." A more apt description might be "Neither fish nor fowl."

The bare-chested cover model with the big bulge in his Levi's, combined with the book's title, certainly connotes erotica. Between the covers are eight stories, titled "Inch One," "Inch Two," and so forth, followed by a subtitle unique to the story.

As erotic short stories go, these are on the long-ish side. They all have several chapters and they are fairly heavy on story and character. Therein lies the rub (or lack of it). Is Wolfe telling stories or is he writing fiction to get you off? As stories go, none of the Inches affords very compelling reading. In fact, there's one major annoyance: they stop rather than end, leaving you with the feeling that the telling is unfinished. And some of the stories continue long after any of the characters last had sex.

If you pay close attention, you will notice that some of the characters get recycled. But there's no coming-together at the end to provide a good reason for this happening.

The ultimate result is that, despite a few passages that may cause a bulge in your own jeans to match the one on the cover, Eight Inches disappoints both as fiction and as erotica.



Red
Photography by Dylan Rosser
Bruno Gmünder, $69.99, pap. (save $7 by using the above link)

Red. It's the longest wavelength of visible light and the color most associated with strong emotions: love, anger, passion. And sin, which is not an emotion.

Now Red is a book of photographs, taken by Dylan Rosser, of handsome and muscular men. Besides their muscles and good looks, they have tattoos, foreskin and amazing abs in common. And they are all styled in some way with the color red: pillows, bed sheets, towels, long swaths of fabric, the floor and walls of the set or, simply, red light.

Originally from South Africa, Rosser now lives and works in London. His Web site is www.themaleform.net. He has published one previous books of photographs, X-Posed, also with Bruno Gmünder. Red is an oversized hardcover, approximately 8.5x11 inches with illustrated boards and no dust jacket. It contains 120 full color pages.

If you are a porn fan, you'll recognize some of the models from their film work. The men represent the colors, races and nationalities of the rainbow, and they bare their erections fiercely and with pride. Just add a ribbon — red, of course — and put Red under your favorite guy's tree.