Tanos's weblog

Posts tagged "books"

5 Jan 10   "The Curious Human Phenomenon" by Peter Masters

A couple of years ago I reviewed Peter Masters' previous title, "The Control Book", and "The Curious Human Phenomenon" is very much in the same vein. It doesn't try to teach you BDSM techniques, but instead tries to explain some of the reasons behind elements of BDSM. Masters summarises this by saying BDSM has an "abundance of 'how'" but a "scarcity of 'why'". [more...]
20 Nov 09   BDSM Book News launch

BBN is the latest version of my list of BDSM and Fetish books, which I've been maintaining from 1998. Since January 2007 I started ranking the books according to sales on Amazon.com to produce a Top 100 bestseller list, and almost three years later it's time for a relaunch. [more...]
24 Dec 08   Surviving

For the last six weeks the BBC has been showing "Survivors", a reworking of a 1970s series, in which a group of people survive an influenza pandemic that kills almost all of humanity - leaving only hundreds or thousands alive in the UK where the action is set. The climax last night was a bit of a surprise - mostly that they were so lame about using violence. [more...]
14 Nov 08   "The Human Pony" by Rebecca Wilcox

Rebecca Wilcox's new book has been getting a lot of coverage in Open Air BDSM and Pony Play circles, and I received my copy last week. I am very impressed by the quality of this book, and that's speaking as someone who isn't a real pony play enthusiast. [more...]
22 Feb 08   Longer than you'd think...

How long have the English, Scots, Welsh and Irish been in the British Isles? At school, we were told that the Celts had turned up with the Iron Age, maybe around 300 BC and not long before the Romans came and conquered them in turn. The peoples who built Stone Henge and left bronze axe heads had been wiped out by the Celts, but when Imperial Rome gave up, the Celts - now called Britons - were left to their own devices. Waves of Angles, Saxons and Jutes from North Germany and Denmark then invaded, driving the Britons into Cornwall, Wales, Brittany and Scotland - so only Anglo-Saxons were left in England [more...]
16 Jul 07   "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson

Neo-Victorianism is one attractive basis for Household D/s: the Victorian / Edwardian period was the last time middle-class families expected to have servants and live in hierarchical, extended households. Neal Stephenson's novel "The Diamond Age" doesn't deal with D/s or service, but it does present a Neo-Victorian world which I'd like to explore in this review. [more...]
17 Apr 07   "The Control Book" by Peter Masters

Peter Masters had an outline of this book on his website since the early 2000s and if you're really curious some of these versions are still there on the Internet Archive site. However, he's now produced a printed edition, published by Jack Rinella in March 2007, and this review is based on that expanded version. [more...]
6 Apr 07   Review of "Master Nage's Guide to Training Consens

I've been away this week and took the opportunity to read Nage's book. It's one of a sudden flurry of M/s books which have appeared in the last couple of years. I think it's clear that it's the weakest of the current crop but I'm going to try to highlight the good points as well as the rest. [more...]
24 Jan 07   "The Ties that Bind" by Vanessa Duries

"Le Lien" ("The Bond" or "The Link") is an autobiographical account of a BDSM relationship by Frenchwoman Vanessa Duries. Following it's publication in 1993, she shot to fame and notoriety, and even appeared on French television, before dying in a car crash in the December of the same year, at the age of 21. I had high hopes based on reviews of the French original, but I'm quite disappointed. [more...]
6 Jan 07   "The Story of O" revisited

I first read Story of O in 1993 and at the time I didn't really like it - certainly not its BDSM themes. I could see it was capital-L Literature, and I'd read enough modern fairy tales and fables to read between the lines, but to be honest, I was indifferent to it. I reread it twice over the years with no change in how I felt, although I did start to notice some astute observations and quotable passages. [more...]

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