Title: Kama Sutra: Step by Step Author: Chuck Wills, Daniel Wills Publisher: Dorling Kindersley Publish Date: 2009 Pages: 240 Genres:: Aphrodisiacs, How-To Guide Reviewer: R.W. Hulme

Rating:

I’d regularly sneak this erotic masterpiece out of their bookshelf to pore over what I now realize were deliriously vanilla photographs of copulating couples; and eagerly study what I now realize was rather dry sex advice from the former Penthouse Forum sexpert and Daily Mail columnist.

Which makes Kama Sutra: Step by Step a bit of a trip down memory lane for me: Kind of like a modern update of Anne Hooper’s original, this sleek coffee-table book features the same style of simulated sex photographs and the same rather tepid sex advice that I was reading a decade and a half ago; all updated for a slightly more permissive, but still generally pretty conservative audience.

Sleek, black and glossy, this beautifully produced book outlines a user-friendly introduction to the 2,000-year-old Kama Sutra; outlining techniques and positions from this ancient Indian manuscript and illustrating them ‘in action’ via soft-core shots of half-a-dozen clean-cut couples.

With a litany of sexual positions on offer, and enough information to master the majority of them, it’s a reference book some couples might actually make reference to. However, in this day and age, the sexually enlightened have probably already learned everything explained within these pages.

Kama Sutra: Step by Step remains resolutely vanilla throughout (check the index and you’ll find only a handful of references to anal sex, for example) and arguably doesn’t really add much to anything but the most limited of sexual repertoires.

It is a lovely looking book, though; with gorgeous photographs and a nice mixture of couples most of us can relate to. While the original Kama Sutra featured models strictly of the Caucasian persuasion, this update has a variety of skin shades on display, including one interracial couple.

But ultimately, this book is merely an update to Dorling Kindersley’s previous Kama Sutra book; one that gives the book a more modern sheen without really adding anything significant to its contents. It’s certainly a pleasant enough book and many couples will get a lot of out of it; but there’s not much here that hasn’t been seen before.
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