My mother was a margarine smuggler — oleo was taxed to an absurd degree in Wisconsin until 1967 (and came with a purple dye capsule), so my mom and her friends would make margarine runs to Illinois every couple months. Pretty sure Wisconsin is still fighting over whether you can serve margarine in restaurants to this… Read more
Kelly, this really needs to be a movie in the vein of The Road to Wellville. Read more
Sometimes baking powder takes us all by surprise.
Sweetheart, the beautiful coming years will bring us the fulfillment of our home of dreams, in which we will never use any baking powder except Rollings Reliable. Read more
Oh my gosh yes, to all of this, but since no one’s pointed it out: HOLY HELL Auel would go on for PAGES describing cunnilingus, Jondalar’s mighty peen, or the migratory habits of the herds on the plains, but she never once, in all of the books, never once described a single one of the Neanderthal communicative… Read more
I read Skye O’Malley when I was 12. It was very...educational. Read more
Oh man, nothing reminds me of being 13 than smutty fantasy novels. We used to spend hours at the public library scouring the section for books with good stuff. This series was definitely included. Read more
So here’s my Valley of the Horses anecdote. I was given this book on my 11th birthday by a family friend because “Jenny likes horses” and “is always reading those long books.” The giver never bothered to read the back cover?? I guess?? Nor did my mom. Needless to say, it was an awakening. Notably I remember thinking,… Read more
That is how I wound up getting my practical sex education from Jean M. Auel’s The Valley of Horses, a book about a couple of Cro-Magnons in love and screwing madly at the dawn of human history. Read more
Ayla may have discovered fire and animal husbandry but Jondalar discovers the clitoris! So who’s the real hero here? Read more
I...Don’t think I’ve ever related to anything I’ve read online as much as I do this piece! I LOVED that book when I was in middle school. Jondalar was the perfect man, always so focused on her desires and needs. The sex was frequent and unapologetic. I may have to go back and reread although I am afraid that the… Read more
I read the first two books in sixth grade and was obsessed with them for years. This article made me realize for literally the first time that it wasn’t just the sex that kept them in my mind, though—it was the powerful heroine and all the practical details about how she survived. There’s some of that real-world… Read more
By the time the Valley of Horses came out, I was 18 and already an avid reader of romance. But this book was something else. Full descriptive sex scenes. You just didn’t have that in the romances of that time. I read the hell out of that book, over and over again. Read more
I remember reading Robin McKinley as a young person and really enjoyed the first time I could identify with Bad Ass Lady Hero in the Blue Sword and Hero and the Crown. Then I quickly jumped off the ledge and read fucking Mists of Avalon when I was like a freshman in high school. I also remember a trilogy called… Read more
Back in my 7th grade english class a long time ago, one of the girls did a book report presentation in front of the class on this series.
Apparently she left out quite a bit. Read more
I fucking loved these books as a teenager. Part of me pretended it was bc of the “anthropology” (which is very forest Gump-ish), and the other part knew it was because of the smut. Ironically, the librarian recommended them to me. Read more
Oh man, this book. I remember getting to the first sex scene while sitting next to my dad and brother and dramatically trying to hide the book suddenly since I was sure they could tell what SCANDALOUSNESS I was reading. Blew my goddamn mind. Read more