Little Birds by anaïs nin

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 14,2025

Well, there were surely some nice aspects: indeed, the focus on female sexuality, the openness to different sexual preferences and so on. However, it is way too much crap. Presumably, as the author was forced to write in order to sell well at that time (according to the preface). Anyway, I was disgusted by the pedophilia, the rape fantasies, the racism and the incest. All the characters also felt exaggerated.

No, I do not recommend it.

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Dreade

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 14,2025

Reading this in public felt illegal.

It was a strange and almost illicit sensation that washed over me as I held the piece of text in my hands. The words seemed to carry a weight that made it inappropriate to peruse them in the open.

I couldn't help but wonder if there was some unspoken rule or social convention that I was violating by reading this particular thing in public. Maybe it was too personal, too controversial, or simply too out of place in the context of the bustling environment around me.

Despite the feeling of illegality, I found myself unable to put it down. The curiosity had taken hold, and I continued to read, my eyes darting across the lines, as if afraid that someone might catch me and demand an explanation.

It was a thrilling and slightly nerve-wracking experience, one that made me acutely aware of the power of words and the unwritten rules that govern our public behavior.

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MegDalinn

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 14,2025

Anaïs Nin’s posthumous pornography collection truly intrigued me. It brought to mind that well-worn cliché about how if women directed porn, the films would be more focused on the story.

In this collection, there is indeed some very explicit sex. However, Nin seems far more interested in the build-up to the sex. She delves into the serpentine circumstances that lead two (or more) people to feel the urge to engage in such intimate acts. These titillating tales of tongues and titties were commissioned to arouse, and Nin understood that knowing how these people came to have sex with each other makes the experience all the more satisfying. By partaking in the build-up, the reader can better step into the protagonist’s shoes. It's like a fantasy that slips on like a luxurious gown.

That being said, most of the stories read more like character studies. At times, I felt that the intellectual and psychological aspects overstayed their welcome and detracted from the sexy stuff. (Boy, do I feel a bit low writing that, but this is an erotica review after all.)

Nin took this dollar-a-page job极其 seriously. She explores the subject of sex with the precision of a surgeon and the vision of a stage director. When necessary, she isn't afraid to take the stories to dark places, dangling the reader over the edge of the abyss where passion spills into violence and life into death. But she only takes you far enough that you can contemplate the pain and the fear without succumbing to them. It's a bit like literary erotic asphyxiation.

I found the introduction particularly noteworthy. Nin muses on the strong hint of prostitution inherent in writing erotica. I also find it quite interesting that so many reviews written by women claim this book taught them about sex. I’d never considered it from an educational perspective, but there you have it. That has to be a plus.

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loopy-poop

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 14,2025

Quando il sesso passa attraverso gli occhi di Anais Nin, nulla può essere preso per scontato. Tutto ciò che credevamo di conoscere, tutto ciò che abbiamo mai sperimentato o abbiamo creduto di sperimentare, diventa improvvisamente un ricordo vago e offuscato, irreale.

Per gli scrittori sfortunati della sua cerchia, trattare l'erotismo era un modo per sopravvivere, per uscire dalla miseria. Il sesso divenne dunque un commercio letterario, una moneta di scambio, e Nin assumeva il ruolo di "Madama di una insolita casa di prostituzione letteraria".

"Prima di dedicarmi alla mia nuova professione, ero conosciuta come poetessa, come una donna indipendente che scriveva per piacere personale."

Ma molti scrittori la raggiungono in cerca di consiglio, aiuto, rifugio e protezione. E allora iniziare a scrivere di erotismo, di sesso e seduzione diventa un'esigenza, una necessità pericolosa attraverso la quale riportare alla luce ciò che normalmente rimane nascosto dietro molti strati.

Continua a leggere qui: https://parlaredilibri.wordpress.com/...

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Poeticas

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 14,2025

This is my first encounter with erotica. However, since I had a fairly good understanding of what to anticipate, I was neither shocked, surprised, nor repulsed. As I had surmised, the only way to appreciate erotic literature like this is to maintain an open mind.

I am pleased to report that I did precisely that in the initial stories. Nevertheless, towards the end, I couldn't help but become cynical and/or sarcastic. After all, how much sex can one read about and allow one's mind to absorb before one's head actually and truly aches and one declares that one has finally had enough?

"Little Birds" is a collection of short erotica stories. These tales involve various degrees and classes of sexual deviancy and exhaustive descriptions of all kinds of copulation. There's a story about an exhibitionist, a pig-like creature with a snout that finds its way between women's legs, orgies, homosexuality, even incest (the one I couldn't tolerate), and more sex. Sex on the sand, in a public place, in the forest, just about everywhere. Cunnilingus and fellatio are described in clear, vivid detail, leaving nothing to the reader's imagination.

The stories I couldn't forget are those with endings that I found either funny or strange. The first story, titled "Little Birds," was about a man who lures several young girls to his apartment near their school by buying and displaying birds in cages on his terrace. The man was an exhibitionist, and something funny (at least to me) occurs near the end. :) And the one I found strange was about the husband who couldn't make love to his own wife, preferring to do it with his colored servants instead. Yes, the husband would caress and touch and engage in foreplay with his wife, but he just couldn't seem to be able to do "it" with her. The wife is heartbroken, especially since every night she hears her husband and one of the colored maids getting it on nearby. Finally, when the wife buys a particular herb, the mystery is solved. Oh, if only the wife had known...! :)

In Anais Nin's foreword, she related that she began writing erotic literature out of necessity, creating the stories on an empty stomach. According to her, she became the "madame" of a certain group of writers who lived and survived through what she called "literary prostitution." When I read this, I realized that the value of these erotic works was that it put food on their table at the time. And if it aroused people's sexual desires, well, that would have been just a coincidence, wouldn't it? :)

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takudoti

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 14,2025

In Full Flight

The titular birds play crucial roles in polar opposite contexts within this collection of erotica. In the first story, Marcel rents an attic with a terrace and feeds the birds to draw the attention of schoolgirls across the road. After winning their trust, he exposes himself, causing the girls to flee like little birds. In the last story, 16-year-old runaway Jeanette finds shelter with Jean and Pierre. She desires multiple men, and both men treat her sensitively as they introduce her to the sensual world. Pierre withholds his penis, comparing it to a palpitating bird, and Jeanette is filled with a desire to be taken and satisfied, blooming under his caresses.

description

Italian cover featuring "La Belle Rafaela" by Tamara de Lempicka (1927)

The Most Delicious Vise

I initially thought this posthumous collection was inferior to "Delta of Venus". However, as I delved deeper, its thematic content became more coherent and apparent. It focuses on the transition from 13-year-old innocence to 16-year-old experience and worldliness. The notional girl awakens from flight to the embrace of birds, as well as the "little silver foxes" of other women and "the most delicious vise of silky, salty flesh". The fiction is filled with perfumes, jewelry, curtains, and caresses, offering a feminine perspective on the rites of passage explored in Haruki Murakami's fiction.

SOUNDTRACK:

Little Birdy - "Beautiful To Me"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMcFm...

Readings of "The Woman On The Dunes"

https://vimeo.com/9633397

https://soundcloud.com/viciousminutes...

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OhShitBye

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 14,2025

This is truly phenomenal.

Don't be deterred by the 'erotic' tagline. Yes, these stories do contain fairly explicit sexual encounters. However, there is so much more beneath the surface. Anais Nin writes about awakenings, both sexual and otherwise. She explores love, lust, relationships, oppression, gender, and longing.

In direct contrast to the sexuality of the writing, there is often an underlying tone of melancholy. Desire is frequently left unfulfilled despite the bodily pleasures, and the maturity in handling this is astounding. Moreover, I found the discussions of sexuality in relation to gender to be very astute. It is not only ahead of its time in content but also in execution.

In A Model, we see a group of women discussing nude modelling for the men whose art they pose for. Nin avoids the pitfall of a single story as each woman shares her feelings. One enjoys the nudity, another feels objectified, and another is humiliated. But most importantly, none of these opinions are presented as 'wrong'. I believe it is this lack of morality and judgment that truly makes these tales as great as they are. Nin forces us to look beyond morality to humanity, to view these people and their acts in the light of mortal emotions while avoiding the ecclesiastical impositions of 'good and bad'.

This woman is truly one of the forgotten gems of 20th Century literature, and I can only hope for a revival of her importance in the contemporary literary scene.

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Pancakesyum

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 14,2025

This book would be an excellent read for those who have been raised too conservatively to appreciate visual pornography, as it offers valuable lessons in learning to be comfortable with oneself or one's partner. It would also be a valuable read for someone who doesn't know how to caress their partner to arouse them for sex.

If a fifteen-year-old son were to ask his mom or dad what sex is all about, it would be wise to first tell them about reproduction, how to avoid it until ready, and about venereal diseases, among other things. Then, they could be told about Little Birds, how it's available at the library, and how reading it would educate them in a way that only experienced confidants can explain.

The stories in Little Birds are written by a sensualist and are bohemian erotica, filled with tales of being taken and taking. They are the articulation of women who want what they want, when they want it, without shame. In the dark ages we live in, stories like these are still considered taboo. The mention of puckered nipples, the clitoris, bulging cocks excreting, and so on; it's all so racy, isn't it?

Little Birds is saturated with such content, with models and muses being seduced by artists, mostly painters, sometimes American writers, and other times random men on the street. Whether it's sex in the sand with a stranger or being shared by two men in a well-furnished apartment in New York through a fur coat, the reader is guaranteed to become aroused and educated in a reality that we should embrace rather than ignore while fumbling in the dark.

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Little Birds

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