No plans for Valentine’s Day?
Penguin Random House is playing cupid and setting you up for a love affair of a different kind, some would say the best kind.
Books!
Forget tacky red roses, there is no better love story than.. well, a love story.
The publishing house has teamed up with Sydney’s Street Library and Melbourne’s Books on the Rail, giving away hundreds of books this Valentines Day, all hidden on public transport and in street libraries.
To help you put aside any pre-conceived bias about looks and cover judging, all the books have been beautifully covered in bright orange ‘Blind Date with a Book‘ wrappings, making these little love bundles hard to miss.
Keep your eyes peeled and grab yourself the perfect date, and one you don’t have to dress up for.
Why women read erotic fiction
Erotic fiction is one of the most popular genres for fiction this Valentine’s Day.
With technological advances came an ability for women to download and read this type of novel without ever having to physically confront a salesperson.
You can read it on the bus and no one has any idea what’s going on in your imagination.
That access has also given women permission to explore some of their own feelings about sex and fantasy. And according to a scientific study by researcher Harold Leitenberg of The Journal of Sex Research, women who read romance or erotic novels have an astounding 74 per cent more sex with their partners than those who don’t.
This, Dr Leitenberg says, is because women fantasise more frequently and have more intense and realistic fantasies when they read suggestive content. He concludes that not only were women readers having more sex, they were having better sex because they and their partners were more adventurous and playful.
“Every generation has had their erotic book,” says Nikki Gemmell, author of the worldwide erotic hit, The Bride Stripped Bare. “In the past, it might have been Fear Of Flying by Erica Jong or Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Women have always enjoyed reading these types of books. They are transporting. They help us to feel. They are powerful and they take us to another world.”
More importantly, she says, they help women to feel that what they are thinking and feeling is not necessarily wrong and that there are others who have similar feelings.
