Joy of sex

Has anyone come across the 1972 book "The Joy of Sex?"

Its a very common book and sold in a lot of college book stores as it is used as a reference tool for some classes.

Mashie

We used to have a copy. It is beautiful and very artsy. For a young couple, it has a lot of good.

I bought it a long time ago. Good resource back then. At the time anything about sex was exciting! ?. Today it seems a little vanilla - I’ve advanced!

We tried to work some of it out. Success made us feel clever. We were both a little under weight then.

Still have that, plus "More Joy"!

I was a freshman in college in the fall of 1962 when I somewhat self-consciously bought copy of a then-new book titled "The Marriage Art" at the campus bookstore. Quite a revelation for a naive young man who'd just spent the last four years at an all-boys Catholic high school. It seemed a bit clinical but covered a vast amount of territory in terms of the things men and women could do to have pleasure together. Or, for that matter, to inform and inspire things one could do alone if a partner wasn't available, which was most of the time. The "Joy Of Sex" was everything "The Marriage Art" was, but wearing a happy face. And just as inspiring. At the time, I was going with a girl who danced ballet, was an accomplished gymnast, never had panty lines because she didn't wear panties, and was in heat continually. We wore out the book going from cover to cover and back again so many times. I wish I still had a copy. Even more, I wish I had a copy for my wife to read.

I must have had copies in several languages, including the follow-ups in the series like 'More Joy of Sex' and probably others like the Joy of Gay/Lesbian Sex (not sure of exact titles).

All of these are common enough titles in secondhand book stores or at flea markets, and in all honesty, don't usually sell that well. No idea how many were ever published, but the print run must ultimately have run into the millions. Hence, there is a glut on the secondhand market for them.

I think their main attraction was the illustrations which were indeed upbeat and yet realistic without being what most vanilla people would call 'explicitly graphic' ... which actually they were, without it seeming so. A hard trick to pull off.

I have fond memories as a teenager going into the bookstore at the mall and getting a copy of the book from the shelves and taking it to a less obvious area of the store to look through.

Very good for a US teen to read in the 60's and 70's. Highly educational but fun to read. A bit risqué still at the time.

Eric

I read the Masters + Johnson book "Sex and Human Loving" as a teen at the library. Remember hiding it under another book and taking it to a secluded area to read it. LOL

The first time I saw that book, I was babysitting for my cousins in the mid 80s. I was sleeping over, so I slept in my aunt and uncle’s waterbed. The book was lying on the nightstand. I suppose my aunt was mortified when she saw it there the next day. I read it cover to cover that night Before they got home.

I bought my own copy in the 90s, and it’s on a bookcase in my living room, hidden under the paperback copies of the smut I wrote, so the kids never found it. (I suspect the 14 y/o would be the only one to push past the ick factor of reading mom’s dirty stories, but that day hasn’t arrived yet!!

Has anyone come across the 1972 book "The Joy of Sex?"

I think that was around when I was a new teenager in the early 50s. I had a copy which I kept hidden in a 1936 vintage console radio in my room.