The Literary Companion to Sex (1994)

This is the book we all should have had in 10th grade, when instead of doing our homework we wasted countless hours flipping through novels in search of the dirty deed. The author — who's got the improbable job of reporting on sex in the arts for the British newspaper The Guardian — has done all of us a favor by digging out the most salacious passages from thousands of years' worth of literature. The most respected of authors are represented here, from Sappho to Shakespeare to Philip Roth. And though there is nothing terribly redeeming or enlightening about this volume, The Literary Companion to Sex, only the most prudish reader would deny that it's an awful lot of fun. A