Review Excerpt:

LEXICON OF THE LIBIDO

From Lucky Pierre to Dirty Sanchez, here's a reference work that might just still manage to get itself banned in Boston

Much kinky knowledge is to be garnered from the lewd and learned Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex (Bloomsbury), edited by Ellen Sussman. Following her quick and dirty--actually, sweet and funny--introduction, this randy guide offers entries by a hip roster of some 100 writers, whose contributions are as multifarious as the universes of love, sex, and language themselves.

Donovan Bright's casually forceful take on adultery posits that it "isn't about the sex at all" but rather about being "the boss of all bosses." Antonya Nelson takes a page from her student years, when she was smitten with an older professor, to revisit an unexpected act of fellatio. Victoria Redel tells us in her gorgeous tone poem about kissing that it's "like there is another room inside and then there is another room inside." Sarah Bird's take on obsession as "love at first sight" is so obvious yet well executed that it catches us up in its smarty-pants logic. As for pornography, historian Tita Chico reminds us that it has "been around longer than the word; it was just called other things." Among its more recent appellations is the vernacular "Tijuana Bible." Who knew?

Which is just one reason why this catalog of the carnal is such wicked fun to read: Like its subject material, it's sexy, silly, and full of savory surprises.