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240th out of 324 books
—
139 voters
Delta of Venus
by
Anaïs Nin
In Delta of Venus, Anaïs Nin penned a lush, magical world where the characters of her imagination possess the most universal of desires and exceptional of talents. Among these provocative stories, a Hungarian adventurer seduces wealthy women then vanishes with their money; a veiled woman selects strangers from a chic restaurant for private trysts; and a Parisian hatmaker n...more
Mass Market Paperback, 302 pages
Published
January 15th 1990
by Pocket
(first published 1977)
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Feb 20, 2009
Amanda
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Amanda by:
I first heard of Anais Nin in a de Lint novel, Memory and Dream
Shelves:
dirty-dirty-dirty-dirty-dirty,
2009
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 different dude burns some lad...more
-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 different dude burns some lad...more
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
38 likes · like · see review
Apr 25, 2007
Taylor
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Anyone who wants to try Erotica
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 perversions and explorat...more
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 perversions and explorat...more
6 likes · like · see review
May 03, 2007
Blanca
rated it
1 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
vintage erotica appreciaters
Shelves:
booksihadtogiveupon,
shortfiction
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.
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.
19 likes · like · see review
Anais Nin and a few of her writer friends were asked by an anonymous wealthy collector to write a series of Erotic short stories for $1.00 per page for his pleasure. However the collector was specific in the kind of erotica he wanted. Anais was to omit any warmth, emotion or poetry to her writing and only concentrate on the sex.
Even though these restrictions were in place I don’t think I’ve ever read erotica so well written, it was polished, bold and wildly daring. She covers a range of sexual f...more
Even though these restrictions were in place I don’t think I’ve ever read erotica so well written, it was polished, bold and wildly daring. She covers a range of sexual f...more
6 likes · like · see review
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 penetraba...more
Poco a poco me fue revelando todas sus historias al tiempo que le penetraba...more
2 likes · like · see review
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 believed that those d...more
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 believed that those d...more
Yep, this is happening.
So Anais Nin wrote this stuff at a dollar a page for an unknown collector who kept telling her to write less literary crap, more of the in and out. Which infuriated her, because she thought he was destroying everything interesting about sex. Which is basically the same debate people are having today about internet porn.
And she keeps punishing him for it. In one story a woman has an erotic opium experience, and it's pretty hot I guess, and then suddenly it's like (view spoi...more
So Anais Nin wrote this stuff at a dollar a page for an unknown collector who kept telling her to write less literary crap, more of the in and out. Which infuriated her, because she thought he was destroying everything interesting about sex. Which is basically the same debate people are having today about internet porn.
And she keeps punishing him for it. In one story a woman has an erotic opium experience, and it's pretty hot I guess, and then suddenly it's like (view spoi...more
7 likes · like · see review
"C'è in ogni cosa una perfezione che non può essere posseduta," diceva. "La vedo in frammenti di marmo tagliato, in pezzi di legno consunti. C'è una perfezione nel corpo di una donna che non può mai essere posseduta, conosciuta a fondo, nemmeno in un amplesso."
Un classico della letteratura erotica in cui l'indiscussa protagonista è la sessualità femminile. Scrittura semplice ma ben descritta e nonostante tutto scevra di volgarità.
Ero indecisa se dargli 3 o 4 stelline, perché il suo lavoro lo fa:...more
Un classico della letteratura erotica in cui l'indiscussa protagonista è la sessualità femminile. Scrittura semplice ma ben descritta e nonostante tutto scevra di volgarità.
Ero indecisa se dargli 3 o 4 stelline, perché il suo lavoro lo fa:...more
I was rereading bits of this last night after seeing several one- or two-star reviews of it pop up in my feed recently. And scanning through some of the other GR reviews here, there's a lot of people objecting that it's ‘icky’ – one reviewer lists all the things that feature in Delta, things like incest, rape, paedophilia, and then just says, ‘Ew, right?’
WELL NO NOT EW ACTUALLY. I mean yes, ew, if you like, of course a lot of these things may not be very appealing depending on your tastes, but m...more
WELL NO NOT EW ACTUALLY. I mean yes, ew, if you like, of course a lot of these things may not be very appealing depending on your tastes, but m...more
5 likes · like · see review
Aside from some very painfully obvious political incorrectness that comes with the time (these stories were originally written in the 1940s), it was a fun read. Not all of it is something you'd actually want to read in an erotica, in fact a lot of it is strange (e.g. incest, necrophilia) but I found it still interesting to read during this, because as Nin states in the intro, often she was trolling her erotica commissioner to see how far she could push her limits. One major thing I didn't care f...more
2 likes · like · see review
Tee hee.
Jun 07, 2013
Paul
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
short-stories-are-your-friends
AUTHOR WEBCAM!!
- Hi there… my name’s Anais, what’s yours?
- Oh, er… hi Anais! My name’s Pau---- Manny. My name is Manny.
- Hi Manny. How are you tonight?
- Oh I'm fine thank you. Er.... you have a great laptop there.
- Why thank you! It’s a Lenovo Ideapad. Do you think it looks cute?
- Oh…yes.
- You should see the things I can do with it.
- Mm hmmm.
- What would you like to see me do Manny? Would you like to see me … type? Or…correct a manuscript? Do you want me to call my publisher? I can complain abou...more
12 likes · like · see review
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
4 likes · like · see review
Sep 08, 2007
Ryan
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
past, previous, future girlfriends
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 great collection of fantastic fantasies, entitled "the delta of venus." haha, i guess that's...more
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 great collection of fantastic fantasies, entitled "the delta of venus." haha, i guess that's...more
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.)
(now instead of /feeling/ like one, i've /become/ one.)
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 writing about w...more
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 writing about w...more
The people I follow on tumblr seem to absolutely adore Anais Nin and they have reblogged or posted some very choice quotes and excerpts from her writing that made me give into curiosity and borrow some of her works from the library.
A few other times when I’ve come across erotic fiction I end up laughing because the writing is just so cheesy and phrases are so overused; but I don’t think I once laughed in ridiculousness when I read this book. I felt my cheeks flush quite regularly going through...more
A few other times when I’ve come across erotic fiction I end up laughing because the writing is just so cheesy and phrases are so overused; but I don’t think I once laughed in ridiculousness when I read this book. I felt my cheeks flush quite regularly going through...more
1 like · like · see review
(Note: I originally published this review on www.lastwordblog.blogspot.com.)
A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
by G. Wiliker Hungdaddy, UW Dean of Historo-Sexilogical Studies
With the advent of internet pornography since 1991, old-fashioned erotica has ceded to newfangled, hyper-visceral sex simulacra. Today about a third of the Web is porno, so, since "Every hour, enough information is consumed by internet traffic to fill 7 million DVDs," human beings watch about 2.5 million full-length porn DVDs per hour...more
A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
by G. Wiliker Hungdaddy, UW Dean of Historo-Sexilogical Studies
With the advent of internet pornography since 1991, old-fashioned erotica has ceded to newfangled, hyper-visceral sex simulacra. Today about a third of the Web is porno, so, since "Every hour, enough information is consumed by internet traffic to fill 7 million DVDs," human beings watch about 2.5 million full-length porn DVDs per hour...more
Erotica is one thing that I appreciate and enjoy, but necrophilia, pedophilia, sadism (you don't burn someone's genitals...it is NOT OK), and so forth, is a different thing. I don't think the book is beautifully written either, and it is not creative at all. Clearly, Anais Nin tried to be original and perhaps that is why she felt the need to go that far; well, perhaps that should have been expected if we remember that she had an incestuous relationship with her dad, and was married to two guys a...more
Anais Nin is famous for writing erotica that was decades ahead of its time; this is a collection of several of her erotic short stories. They are quite good, quite well-written, but I can't say that they're flawless. There are two main problems, of of which is certainly the result of her having written the stories for a patron whose stated interests clearly colored her writing, and the other of which may be a result of the same influence or may be the result of Nin being, in spite of her best ef...more
Una improvisada e imprevista trilogía erótica (Historia del Ojo, Las Edades de Lulú y Delta de Venus), de tres autores absolutamente diferentes entre sí.
El primero, Historia del ojo de Georges Bataille, es una gran decepción. Un libro crudo, inconexo y paradójicamente, sin mayor erotismo. Un desviacionismo gratuito y provocador, sin ánimo de credibilidad y lleno de metáforas que pueden interesar al filósofo (Bataille lo era) pero que no interesa al honesto lector de erotismo. La historia no llev...more
El primero, Historia del ojo de Georges Bataille, es una gran decepción. Un libro crudo, inconexo y paradójicamente, sin mayor erotismo. Un desviacionismo gratuito y provocador, sin ánimo de credibilidad y lleno de metáforas que pueden interesar al filósofo (Bataille lo era) pero que no interesa al honesto lector de erotismo. La historia no llev...more
This collection of short stories is hard to review. There's some stuff that in today's standards is considered obscene, unethical and illegal, like erotic scenes between adults and children, acts of violence toward a woman during sex, gang-rape of a pretty boy, and so forth.
This was a challenging read, and I don't think Anaïs Nin would get her work published today-or she'd cause a scandal of epic proportions. What this book shows us is how erotica was seen before, and that's how these stories sh...more
This was a challenging read, and I don't think Anaïs Nin would get her work published today-or she'd cause a scandal of epic proportions. What this book shows us is how erotica was seen before, and that's how these stories sh...more
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 the fact that...more
Nin's stories were among the first to be published when censorship laws were relaxed in the 1970s and this, plus the fact that...more
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 beauty...more
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
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
For a number of years, when a friend of the family gave me a copy of the Delta of Venus and A Women Speaks, the figure of Anaïs Nin has lingered somewhere on the periphery of my consciousness. I think, perhaps, it has something to do first and foremost with her name - Anaïs - and the covers of her books adorned with monochromatic pictures of naked women in repose, or as in the case of the Delta of Venus, a woman playing with her garter revealing the underside of her leg.
Her appeal is definitely...more
Her appeal is definitely...more
I had no expectations going into this book. I have always heard that Anaïs Nin is a fascinating writing, but I really had no idea what a collection of 1940s erotica would entail. I probably wouldn't have guessed that Nin would include taboo topics such as homosexuality, prostitution, and infidelity, or even more taboo topic such as incest, pedophilia, and rape. In a way, the fact that Nin's writing is more literary than pornographic makes the latter topics more disturbing to me, and almost gives...more
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 perfect for eroticis...more
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 perfect for eroticis...more
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French-born novelist, passionate eroticist and short story writer, who gained international fame with her journals. Spanning the years from 1931 to 1974, they give an account of one woman's voyage of self-discovery. "It's all right for a woman to be, above all, human. I am a woman first of all." (from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, vol. I, 1966)
Anaïs Nin was largely ignored until the 1960s. Today she is...more
More about Anaïs Nin...
Anaïs Nin was largely ignored until the 1960s. Today she is...more
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“Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.”
—
242 people liked it
“He was now in that state of fire that she loved. She wanted to be burnt.”
—
186 people liked it
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