Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Jan 29, 2012

Amanda rated it:

I think you have to be a little on the sick and twisted to get off on this book. Well, parts of it. Here are some examples of the icky ickiness Anais Nin writes about in Delta of Venus.

-Dude lays in bed early in the morning, and some kids who live in the house come in and horse play around his room. He gets a hard on and encourages them to frolic about on top of the covers.
-Same dude, decades later, takes custody of his teenage son and daughter. Then he fucks 'em.
-A d More...

25 comments like (16 people liked it)

Dec 01, 2007

Melissa rated it:

I was first introduced to Anais Nin by my boyfriend, who bought me a first edition of Little Birds on Valentines Day a couple of years ago. I was surprised to discover that it wasn't raunchy or esoteric at all, but very accessible, very beautiful, and (naturally) very sensual. At an estate sale recently I came across Delta of Venus and picked it up partly out of interest in Nin's writing and partly because it was a vintage book and I love vintage books. Delta of Venus is far sexier than Little B More...

2 comments like (20 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Blanca rated it:

Over a period of years, I tried to find what I could appreciate about Nin's writing. Sure, it was groundbreaking at the time it was written and critically, I guess that's important.

It's pretty silly. I imagine college girls trying to copy Dita Von Teese's style read this in a dressing gown, drinking wine on some Urban Outfitters' silk bedspread before going out. That is enough to make me dislike it.

0 comments like (13 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Ricardo Perez rated it:

La vigilia había terminado y por fin le despojé de sus transparentes prendas que aún conservaban su etiqueta. Mis dedos sintieron la suavidad de cada una de sus partes y lentamente, ya en mis manos preparadas para abrirle, exploré su interior. El olfato me incitó a romper el virginal regalo que tenía para mi. Aunque ya había sido de otros, muchos otros, a partir de ese momento sólo era para mi, y aún seguía siendo virgen.
Poco a poco me fue revelando todas sus historias al tiempo que le pen More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 07, 2008

L.A.Weekly rated it:

Hammer Presents readings by Anais Nin - Feb. 12
By Rena Kosnett

Anais Nin would have been 105 this year, and if all the hype is anywhere near accurate, she probably would still be fucking. Every time I overhear or participate in discussions involving Nin, the conversation inevitably turns smutty. Granted, she did submit herself as a cultural galvanizer of female sexual liberation at a time in Europe when there was very little female-authored erotica available; but I've always believ More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 02, 2011

A.K. rated it:

Tee hee.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 21, 2007

Astrid rated it:

I had to make this book one of my must-have-list-of-book. So far it’s the best erotica literary writings I ever read. It literally makes you wet yourself. What really intriguing is what Anais explain in her preface (which adapted from her diaries). Doing it for a dollar a page, which apparently create one of her best collections of erotic stories. She needed the money to pay her and her friends living expenses, which she described that “Everyone around me irresponsible, unconscious of the shipwr More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 25, 2007

Taylor rated it:

The first erotica I read, and probably the last, because I can't imagine liking anything else as much I liked this. Well, except maybe more Anais Nin.

I read it one summer during high school after discovering it in our guestroom closet. I hid the book in my pillowcase so that my mother wouldn't see me reading it. I went through it in about 3 days, and continually revisit it when I'm feeling particularly saucy.

It's basically a series of short stories focusing around sexual More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Sep 08, 2007

Ryan rated it:

dear reader,

so, this week, i was thinking of changing things up, and doing something different instead of my regular "welcome!" thing. but hey, i think i got a good thing going with that. so...

welcome! whew! haha, gotcha! yes, friend, welcome, one and all, to another week in "this week in books!" up to "bat" at this week's "game" is a solid "pitch hitter" who can really "pack" "heat": anais nin, and her More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 05, 2010

mary added it

now i can sing along to "anais nin by numbers" without feeling like a psuedo intellectual.

(now instead of /feeling/ like one, i've /become/ one.)

0 comments like

Feb 14, 2008

Suzanne rated it:

this book is super hot. Didn't realize it was all erotica till i cracked it open on the plane ride home from France. Felt a little warm under the collar for the whole ride ;)

Deals with some scandalous themes. Incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, rape, bestiality, voyeurism, exhibitionism, some low key BDSM, homosexuality, etc etc. Not quite the abundance of themes you might find on the interwebs, but markedly better written than most of what you'd find there. Even if the thing she is wri More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 05, 2011

Vincent rated it:

This book was one of two small volumes of erotic short stories written by Anais Nin, the other being Little Birds. Nin was a member of the literary circle in pre-war Paris and later New York that included Henry Miller. On the basis of this and extensive diaries and fictionalised autobiography produced from them, she gained a reputation in the 1960s as a literary figure.

Nin's stories were among the first to be published when censorship laws were relaxed in the 1970s and this, plus th More...

0 comments like

Feb 09, 2011

David rated it:

Delta of Venus is a book of short stories by Anaïs Nin. Though the stories were largely written in the 1940s while Nin was writing erotica for a private collector, the book was first published posthumously in 1978. The effect of Nin's dreamy prose, the heightened tease of her language, and the titillation of the poetic images of lovers experiencing the joys of the flesh converge to become one of the best collections of erotica ever written. In Nin's hands, the clinical is transformed into beaut More...

0 comments like

Jan 27, 2010

Misty rated it:

Every so often, an adult film star breaks out of the seedy underbelly of the sex industry and becomes a household name. People who would never admit to having watched pornography become familiar with names such as Jenna Jameson, Ron Jeremy, and Traci Lords. The same is true of other facets of the adult industry. Betty Page turned pinup photography into art. And when it comes to erotica, the words of Anais Nin are as much a part of literary history as Emily Dickinson or William Shakespeare. Nin’s More...

0 comments like

Apr 13, 2009

Adrian rated it:

I bought this book when I was 16 at Half-Price book in Austin, Texas. It's one of the few books in my life that I have read multiple times, for obvious reasons. As a young man, I really enjoyed the way her women enjoyed sex. Before reading this, I'd only ever read male descriptions of sex, as in For Whom the Bell Tolls or letters in porn magazines. I was pretty sure that the porn letters were all made up, so even though they were fun to read, I didn't take them seriously and when reading male de More...

0 comments like

Sep 12, 2009

Christine rated it:

I truly didn't know what to expect but was impressed with her descriptions and her stories. And I have such a high regard for her as a sexual, female libertine in that time period.

I didn't feel that any of the stories in Delta were perverse at all. They were all sexually charged people enjoying themselves. She did not delve into the world of any fetishes or anything super kinky so this is mainstream. She words things so eloquently but isn't too verbose. Her language is just pe More...

0 comments like

Jan 29, 2012

Max rated it:

I find it really hard to do this book justice in reviewing it – the first few shorter stories seemed written purely for shock-value and would’ve solicited little more than one star from me, but some of the later stories were written with a delicateness and beauty that made me realise why people rate Nin so highly.
I began the book being disgusted ending after ending by the despair and sheer grossness of the acts portrayed, the first story alone included rape, incest, paedophilia and a terrif More...

0 comments like

Oct 08, 2011

Art rated it:

Probably the best book ever written about sex. Recently I brought up Delta of Venus on a drunken night out. All of my friends had read it, girl and boy, and all said it opened them up to sex from an early age. Erotica becomes cheese easily but Nin is so good at it that this never happens. She writes of sheer sensuality, of power play between genders, curves and wetness and moonlit nights, moments of real passion. Shots of semen on a woman's hands become waves lapping up on a beach. Nin also play More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 27, 2009

Cat rated it:

i enjoyed this book. it was typical of nin, and of the times, in the respect of the book being 'erotica.' more interesting to me, the the sexual vignettes themselves, where the diary entries preluding the story context explain how henry miller got her involved in writing these smutty stories for an unknown buyer. the writing at times often beautfil and highly poetic; this so-called book collecter who commisioned miller and nin was pleased with her writing but urged her, however, for less poetry More...

0 comments like

Oct 31, 2011

Suki rated it:

Eh. I don't usually read erotica because I can't stand bad writing, and every sample I've ever read that was not suitable for children was badly written. This is a collection of short stories, each with a sexual theme. Anais Nin's writing is superb, but I gave this a 3 because the stories were all basically the same . . . beautiful sensitive damaged woman meets virile handsome devil and they spend a minimum of three days consorting, contorting, and sweating. While the characterization is richl More...

2 comments like

Aug 02, 2011

Ian added it

Hmm - why is this book such a bore? Surely the appeal of erotica is in reading about things that cannot normally be discussed; ideas that would not normally be thinkable, behaviour that would not normally be permissable. So what does it say when none of the sad packs appearing in these short stories manage to bring forth any concepts which are novel, surprising or confronting? Incest, necrophilia, exhibitionism all get a look in, but in a way which is unappealing - the book seems to assume an More...

0 comments like

Jan 07, 2009

Bill rated it:

My wife would describe Anais Nin as having, "peanut butter legs - soft and easy to spread". Nin may be best remembered as a daring and boundary-smashing libertine, if not the best writer from her day. I was first exposed to her writing as a young man. Having been raised in a puritanical household, the situations were, um, rather eye-opening. I liked this little book and not necessarily for it's prurient appeal; it was partly responsible for my own introduction into the vaunted "Se More...

0 comments like

Jul 27, 2010

Andrea rated it:

I was a teenager when I first encountered Anais Nin's writing. I think my sister had borrowed a copy of Little Birds and I felt, shall we say, a wee bit 'uncomfortable' and definitely titillated by the contents.

This is an old edition that I was very recently given (thank you, Lulu). The introduction / preface consisting of Nin's diary entries was enlightening — she wrote these stories for money. It struck me, reading this collection, that the men who paid for these stories had... er. More...

0 comments like

May 21, 2010

Bella rated it:

Okay, dont slap me for this one! Its not as twisted as it sounds, I assure you.
I told Dani that I was interested in this one, you know, the birth of female oriented and written erotica, the whole feminist thing dealing with the fact that (most of the time) the chicks in this actually enjoy the sex (yes, even the sick and twisted bits).
Dani, in all her wisdom, tells me that this is worse than De Sade. I, on the other hand, beg to differ, because De Sade completely blew my brains out, More...

2 comments like

Nov 23, 2009

Bobbi rated it:

This book was very sexy and fairly well written. Some of the ideals expressed in the book were very shocking for my young, modern mind. I like how it's a collection of short stories, this makes it easy to read and hard to put down. I wouldn't recommend this book to someone looking for hardcore erotica, because it's fairly subtle in a modern erotic sense (it was probably hardcore back when it was released!).

Anais is very descriptive when describing the characters, so you are able to f More...

0 comments like

Dec 10, 2011

Cosmic rated it:

I am interested in erotica, and have heard that Anais Nin is essential. However, I am a little disturbed by some of these stories. While I can read Lolita and accept it as simply a fiction novel, and only dislike the story and not the book itself... I can't really get into the stories of pedophilia, bestiality and semi-violent sex that are in this book. Having not read much erotica, I am looking for it as a 'pleasurable' read (forgive my pun :P) and something I can definitely identify with and More...

0 comments like

Apr 23, 2011

Klaudia rated it:

I like old erotica because I think it makes for better stories than, "and then she touched his big stiff....", well you get the picture. This is pretty well written erotica and some of the stories are pretty sensual. I think I view this more as contemporary literature than just a bunch of pish posh nonsensical pornography. Delta of Venus isn't about "getting off" and it does explore a lot of themes that are a little gross for some. Incest, pedophilia, prostitution...just to n More...

0 comments like

Mar 03, 2009

Elizabethesaurus rated it:

I don't remember why I own this book, and if I had read it first, I probably wouldn't have bought it. I imagine someone told me I ought to own a book like this back when I was in the Vagina Monologues, or maybe it was that someone told me I should read this author... other than that, I don't know how I even stumbled upon it. The writing is pretty eloquent, but some of the stories in here are a little bit on the twisted side. Ok, probably more than a little bit. I think I'd like to read somet More...

0 comments like

Dec 30, 2010

Hannah rated it:

So hot, so good. I wish I could give it 4.5 stars. I actually didn't really like it when I first started out. The first few stories are really short and not very engaging but as you go on the stories get longer and then the sensual waves start washing over you. It's also helpful to keep in mind that when Nin wrote this she was paid by the page by a wealthy patron who only wanted to read about sex, no emotions, no attachments. Considering what she was assigned to do Nin inbues the work with a rem More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 27, 2009

jill rated it:

More psychoanalytical than sexy, especially in the first half of the stories, but there were a few hot parts. Nin and I often part ways on what is sexy; these stories often feel like they're trying too hard to be scandalous and seductive, when prosaic and direct would work better for me. In fact, my favorite story wasn't sexy (to me) at all -- I loved the one where the two flashers meet on the train and fall in love. It's very short, and efficient, and almost makes me feel like flashers deser More...

0 comments like

reviews