Why am I passionate about this?

My first book was Quiver, a collection of erotic short stories. I wrote it to immortalize the hedonism of Sydney in the 1990s, wanting to show a nonjudgmental, joyful side. The fact that it touched a lot of people compelled me to write two more collections Tremble and Yearn – each exploring different themes: Tremble is an erotic re-imagining of various root myths, whilst Yearn has more historical and fantastical elements. I interweave all the characters in the stories throughout the whole collections. Humor is also important to me when it comes to the ironies and emotions around sex, the other aspect is gender power play and all the sublime reversals that can encapsulate. 


I wrote

Quiver

By Tobsha Learner,

Book cover of Quiver

What is my book about?

In the flashes that blur the line between fantasy and reality, each steamy story in Quiver captures the spontaneous erotic…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Delta of Venus

Tobsha Learner Why did I love this book?

As a teenager this collection of short stories blew my mind; it’s one of the first to really explore sexual pleasure from a female perspective and I loved the way it wove psychology, power, culture, and erotic play up seamlessly and provocatively. It was most likely an unconscious template for my own collections of erotic short stories, the perfect format for the pillow book (to be read out loud to one’s lover/husband/guilty pleasure). Nin, a friend of Henry Miller and a number of Paris-based groundbreaking artists and intellectuals in the 1920s, is the perfect conduit for the louche erotic experimentation of the era, and yet this book is still timeless and still delivers in terms of fantasy.  

By Anaïs Nin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Delta of Venus as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

As influential and revelatory in its day as Fifty Shades of Grey is now, Anais Nin's Delta of Venus is a groundbreaking anthology of erotic short stories, published in Penguin Modern Classics

In Delta of Venus Anais Nin conjures up a glittering cascade of sexual encounters. Creating her own 'language of the senses', she explores an area that was previously the domain of male writers and brings to it her own unique perceptions. Her vibrant and impassioned prose evokes the essence of female sexuality in a world where only love has meaning.

This edition includes a preface adapted from Anais…


Book cover of G.

Tobsha Learner Why did I love this book?

John Berger was a fantastic cultural observer and art critic, this book is erotic both in its observation of culture and context but also of human fallibility, and psychic and psychological transportation of love itself. It had a big influence on me as an art student and for the brief years when I was a sculptor. What I love about it is its empathy for both the female and male inner erotic life, although it is set in England and Europe at the end of the 19th century, Berger’s razor-sharp, succinct blending of the internal and external world is both moving and sensual. 

By John Berger,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked G. as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this luminous novel about a modern Don Juan, John Berger relates the story of G., a young man forging an energetic sexual career in Europe during the early years of the last century as Europe teeters on the brink of war.

With profound compassion, Berger explores the hearts and minds of both men and women, and what happens during sex, to reveal the conditions of the libertine's success: his essential loneliness, the quiet cumulation in each of his sexual experiences of all of those that precede it, the tenderness that infuses even the briefest of his encounters, and the…


Book cover of The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Tobsha Learner Why did I love this book?

Another book that influenced me as an erotic writer, Kundera sets the parodies of sexual desire, infidelity, and lust against the turbulent 1960s. It taught me how you can integrate sexual desire into a bigger narrative, encapsulating the tragedy of the fickle appetites of the male player. The other brilliant aspect of this book is the organic way it has the shifting political background of Europe mid 20th century. It inspired me to look at the psychology of where you place your stories and how this can re-enforce the underlying theme of the narrative. In Kundera’s case – the existential and transcendent experience of erotic love.

By Milan Kundera,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked The Unbearable Lightness of Being as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A cult figure.' Guardian
'A dark and brilliant achievement.' Ian McEwan
'Shamelessly clever ... Exhilaratingly subversive and funny.' Independent
'A modern classic ... As relevant now as when it was first published. ' John Banville

A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon; a man torn between his love for her and his womanising. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals; while her other lover stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by choices and events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems…


Book cover of The Story of O

Tobsha Learner Why did I love this book?

Years ago I was hired to do a tv biopic movie on the inception and writing of this book. Although the movie never got made I did get to meet Pauline the authoress, an extraordinary figure in her eighties who originally wrote the book as an anonymous love letter to her married publisher lover. She deliberately remained anonymous as the writer until the 1970s - up until then a number of men claimed to have written it as it was then considered impossible that a woman could have written such raunchy sadomasochism. I love it for its visual detail – as well as its shameless explicitness. Reage, somewhat of a historian, was uncompromising in costume and setting and that has been a direct influence in my own writing. Frankly, it knocks 50 Shades out of the field. 

By Pauline Reage,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Story of O as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The classic French erotic bestseller that preceded Fifty Shades of Grey

A beautiful young French woman, known only as 'O', is taken by her lover Rene to a splendid mansion near Paris. Here, she is initiated into an elite secret society, where she must learn to serve the sexual fantasies of Rene and his fellow members. But she must also explore the nature of her own darkest desires - and confront just how far she is willing to go for love...


Book cover of Bad Behavior: Stories

Tobsha Learner Why did I love this book?

This collection of short stories is really about how sexual desire and social ambition can lead to all sorts of compromising and bizarre situations. I originally was drawn to it because I’d loved the film Secretary based on one of the short stories in the collection. I related to it because it is nearly all from a young female P.O.V – a kind of potpourri of trying to make it in NY in the 1980s. It's the perfect illustration of how powerful short story as a form can be in terms encapsulate an event, mood, and era – It also showed me how fictionalized memoir can be a good source of material and that if the book is really well-observed it never dates. 

By Mary Gaitskill,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bad Behavior as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Mary Gaitskill's tales of desire and dislocation in 1980s New York caused a sensation with their frank, caustic portrayals of men and women's inner lives. As her characters have sex, try and fail to connect, play power games and inflict myriad cruelties on each other, she skewers urban life with precision and candour.

'Stubbornly original, with a sort of rhythm and fine moments that flatten you out when you don't expect it, these stories are a pleasure to read' Alice Munro

'An air of Pinteresque menace hangs over these people's social exchanges like black funereal bunting ... Gaitskill writes with…


Explore my book 😀

Quiver

By Tobsha Learner,

Book cover of Quiver

What is my book about?

In the flashes that blur the line between fantasy and reality, each steamy story in Quiver captures the spontaneous erotic experiences of a group of middle-class acquaintances—a dentist and his wife; an accountant and a beautician—as they audaciously unleash their deepest desires. Each story is interconnected to each other and whilst alternating between male and female perspectives, there are no holds barred in these interactions: heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, exhibitionistic, and sadomasochistic relationships – all unabashedly on display in this provocative collection. 

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Tasha and the Biologist

By Amy Q. Barker,

Book cover of Tasha and the Biologist

Amy Q. Barker Author Of Bailey and the CEO: A Corporate Love Story

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Avid reader Nature lover Park ranger wanna be Best Nana ever

Amy's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

Tasha and the Biologist is the second book in the "A Better Man" series. It's a contemporary romance about second chances, two lonely birders, and the healing power of love.

Tasha Moore is a visiting nurse with a family secret. She just went through a bad breakup. Caleb Drexel is a bird biologist trying to start a new life in a small town. He just got out of an unhappy marriage.

What happens when hope and romance bloom between these two nature lovers?

Tasha and the Biologist

By Amy Q. Barker,

What is this book about?

Tasha
He was handsome, confident, nice, smart—a good guy.
How did he end up here in the middle of Indiana?
And how did he know so much about whooping cranes?
I’d never met someone as passionate about birds as I was.
Was it too soon for me to be thinking about love again?
Caleb
She was sweet, kind, caring—a nurse and a birder.
I really liked her. Maybe more than liked.
And I’d only spent two hours—three, tops—with her.
Yet, I’d promised myself I wouldn’t get involved with anyone for at least a year after my divorce.


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Interested in romantic love, New York State, and Venus?

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New York State 549 books
Venus 11 books