Writing a good sex scene isn’t so easy. In fact, it’s so not easy that otherwise amazing fiction writers end up writing hilarious bizarro crap. Read the funny excerpts from the books shortlisted for the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction award for laughs like this one from Alastair Campbell’s All in the Mind (via Silliman’s Blog):

He wasn’t sure where his penis was in relation to where he wanted it to be, but when her hand curled around it once more, and she pulled him towards her, it felt right. Then as her hand joined the other on his neck and she started making more purring noises, now with little squeals punctuating them, he was pretty sure he was losing his virginity.

What makes the sex talk bad? According to Jonathan Beckman at the Literary Review: “There are some which take the sex far too seriously, like Coelho, and some which have a grating change of register, like Buchan, and others that are just slightly ridiculous.”

Totally unrelatedly, read The Falling Man, selected as one of Esquire’s top 8 stories of all time. What happened to the pictures of the people who jumped from the WTC on 9/11? “One photograph, taken at a distance, shows people jumping in perfect sequence, like parachutists, forming an arc composed of three plummeting people, evenly spaced.” (via kottke)

Image via literaryreview.co.uk

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