Little Birds by Anais Nin

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of short stories. Sexuality is too complex to be addressed through only one or two characters (unless those characters are perfectly dynamic and their author is something of a genius). Also, sometimes a long-drawn out explanation of sexuality (as you might encounter in a Kundera novel) is too much. The facts often speak for themselves.

The opening story, from which the collection takes its name, is beautiful and, in a way, tragic. Many of the stories are like that. Nin's style is very erotic without entering into pornography. Even barely sketched characters are attracted to one another through personality.

This is an important book to read, but I think most books about sexuality are important to read. Anything to put a complex human face on the sexual act. She provides perversion with eroticism, and without judgment. Each story is more "show" than it is "tell" and more "tell" than it is "explain."

This is a pretty fast read and might make you reconsider the sexual value of garter belts (real ones, not those stripper ones with little hot pink bows and whatnot). The thirteen stories are each quite short, which makes this good for either commuter reading or naughty bedtime reading to your (I should hope) equally literature-inclined partner.

Every story concerns fantasy in some way or another, but the collection itself is a fantasy. Reading it is losing yourself to a reverie, one in which sexuality is properly addressed and explored, instead of condemned before it is understood or examined. If more books like this are written and read, that reverie has a better chance at becoming widely-accepted as the reality it is.