Cum On Their Tattoos (But Not On Their Books)

Get "Spanked"!

Chuck Palahniuk's not the only one who can do a sexy book trailer. Check out the video promo for "Spanked: Red Cheeked Erotica," an erotica anthology about (what else?) spanking. Editrix Rachel Kramer Bussel reads samples from the book, asses get slapped, and well ... we'll let you watch the video, but you can probably figure out the rest.

Some of you may have a dirty old uncle who likes to sit you down on a rainy afternoon and tell you dirty limericks about women with three breasts, or maybe boobs that sprout somewhere below the belly button. The poetry might be hilarious—but of course you didn't think creatures like that actually existed, right? Turns out that you were wrong: back in the 1960s, two enterprising wordsmiths compiled a book called (what else) "Treasure Chests" which contained photos of these unique specimens along with poems explaining their stories. After looking through the entire thing online, we're convinced these fantastical females really do exist somewhere. After all, good old Uncle Bruce wouldn't lie to us, would he?

· "Treasure Chests" (landoftuh.com, via ponyXpress)

Hey, America. Do you like to swing? Of course you do—because everyone knows that even though we like to pretend we're all prim and proper, our nation is really just one big wife-swapping freak fest! Well, one photographer got tired of hearing about it and decided to prove it: Naomi Harris, who took a behind the scenes look at the porn industry a couple of years ago, headed out into the vast unknown wilderness of that places called "Middle America" (you know, that big empty spot between the two oceans) and came back with a new book of photographs documenting average folks who lead somewhat non-average sex lives. She even went so far as to hang out in the nude with her subjects in order to get pictures of these wildcats in their natural habitat! The book will be released by Taschen in the fall, which means we may have to wait a few months before finding out the answer to this question: if this country is filled with an army of hidden swingers, then how come nobody is watching "Swingtown"? (Oh, right ... they're probably too busy with that other stuff.)

· "America Swings - The secret life of America's Bible Belt" (sugarcut.com)
· Naomi Harris Photo (naomiharris.com)

It would have been too easy for photographer Phillip Toledano simply to have taken pictures of phone sex operators, assembled them into book form, and called it a day: after all, even the most enthusiastic of phone sex fans must be aware on some level of the disconnect between the fantasy they're creating with whoever's on the other end of the line and the reality of what that person is really like, and a bunch of images that just illustrated that concept visually over and over again would've gotten boring pretty quickly. What makes Toledano's "Phone Sex" so interesting, though, is that that he gives each of his subjects an opportunity to discuss their careers in their own words—and while we could've done without the free verse formatting the tales they have to tell are pretty fascinating, from observations that phone sex is just another form of customer service to one woman's story about a particular fantasy one of her callers had involving some undigested asparagus. But we'll let you read that one for yourself.

· Phillip Toledano's "Phone Sex" (phonesexthebook.com)
· "Offbeat Artist: The Faces of Phone Sex Operators" (digitaljournal.com)
· Phillip Toledano Photography (mrtoledano.com)

We're big fans of the DIY ethic, mostly because whenever our bosses ask us to stay a little late and put in some extra work our response is usually, "Do it yourself!" But there's a different kind of DIY that we're also fans of, and it's in the same style as the homemade self-sufficient photography that made MySpace famous. Photographer Uwe Ommer devoted a whole book to the self-shot naked portrait, helping his models to create nude photographs that they snapped on their own. Ommer obviously lent a helping hand with the setup and lighting, so the results are miles above the pouty-look-in-the-mirror snapshots that are a staple of social networking profile pics. But the concept remains the same—leave a beautiful girl alone with a camera and see what she can create. We don't want to ruin the surprise for you, but it's pretty hot.

· "Do It Yourself" - Photos de Uwe Ommer (uweommer.eu)
· Uwe Ommer — "Do It Yourself" (book @ taschen.com)

We laughed when we first heard that Burning Angel was coming out with a 360-page coffeetable book. "Why read about sex when you could be out doing it?" (Then we laughed again.) Shot by Burning Angel go-to photographer The Lovely Brenda Staudenmeier, "Burning Angel" features a foreword by (Fleshbot Supreme Commandress) Joanna Angel as well as more than 700 compromising—by which we mean shot in Brooklyn—photos of Burning Angel favorites like Pixie Pearl, Gia Paloma, Riley Mason, Charlotte Stokely, and Angel herself. A party celebrating the U.S. release of the Goliath title will be held at Brooklyn's Savalas this Saturday.

· Burning Angel (burningangel.com)
· Brenda Staudenmeier (thelovelybrenda.com)
· Goliath Books (burningangel.com)
· Order "Burning Angel" (amazon.com)

This Week In Book Promos: The Art Of The Blowjob