- This feels so weird.
I've not filmed a video standing up in years, years maybe.
The reason for this is I wanted to show you
a whole bunch of my sex books today
and I started pulling them off the shelves
and then just realised this is too many books
and instead we're just going to show you
in this way instead, so yes.
Hi, I'm Hannah, I am a sex educator,
sex education enthusiast,
just find the whole subject matter fascinating
and really interesting and have somehow made it my job
to talk about sex on the internet, what a great time.
And if you haven't subscribed already, please do,
I make new videos on different topics around sex
and sexuality every week, I also love books.
I used to do a podcast with two of my friends
called Banging Book Club where we read books about sex,
every month and that was the book club and it was great.
So I have a lot of books about sex.
I made a My Sex Books video a few years ago now,
but I have acquired a lot more since.
The theme of that video was that I hadn't read many of them
and because I've acquired more,
it's gonna be a very similar theme in this
but I have read more books, obviously,
but I just keep getting more.
It's more of an aspirational bookshelf.
Most of the fiction on my bookshelves is read,
read it, done, the nonfiction is a different story
and especially during lockdown,
I am in no mood to be reading nonfiction.
I'm just like give me easy, digestible fiction,
great stories, page turners.
So I'm really not reading any of these
at the moment, which is a shame.
One of my like house goals and dreams
is to have a bookshelf in the living room area
that has all of the general books on it,
general, nonfiction and fiction books
but then my special bookshelf in my office,
which is only like sex and feminism, that's my plot,
right now, it's all in one place.
So I'm gonna take you through
which sections are the sex books,
and then how I've kind of organised some of it.
Some of it is really all over the place
and I just can't figure out how I want to categorise them,
maybe you guys can help me out there.
And then we'll pick out some of my favourites
that I want to recommend to you.
So the sections of my bookshelf
that are sex books are this one here, and then all of these.
Oh yeah, so we have four, four bits to get through.
And then in case you're wondering,
general, nonfiction, general, nonfiction,
and then all this crap at the bottom is fiction,
most of it actually.
If you actually do want to know how I organise
all of my bookshelves, I did a Bookshelf Tour video
a few months ago on the More Hannah channel.
So that's there for you,
if you're curious about the entire thing.
So this section up here is for my two copies
of a curious history of sex because I got a proof copy
which is the copy with all of my notes
and turned pages and underlined stuff in
and that's the copy that I read
but then I have the final copy, which is hardback
and because I pledged to support it on Unbound,
my name is in the back of it,
so I can't get rid of either of this 'cause one is my notes
and then the other one has my name in it,
what's a girl to do?
"Male Nudes" is also here.
This I got in a secondhand shop in Scotland,
and I promised that I would give it to my friend Callum,
but we can't see each other right now
but Callum, this is yours.
And then this entire bit here is like for kids.
I feel like I'm preparing myself
for being a sex positive parent,
but mostly, I'm also just like interested
in how to talk to kids about sex and their bodies,
and all of that kind of stuff.
So we have, "Let's Talk About Where Babies Come From"
which is the book that I learned a lot from
when I was like 10 years old,
then this massive thing from Alice Hoyle and Ester McGeeney,
who are two sex educators
and this whole thing is basically like lesson plans.
It's sex education activities to do with young people,
200 plus activities in here.
This is the book for me when I finally decided
to dive into doing sex ed in schools,
if and when that ever happens, a bit of a massive book,
but it's more of a like handbook
for educators kind of thing.
I've got "A Celebration of Vulva Diversity"
which is Hilde Atalanta's book
from the Vulva Gallery project.
They came on my podcast recently and they sent me the book
and it's got lots of beautiful
illustrations of vulva's in it.
Then I've got a whole bunch of Ally Pike's books,
Ali writes and illustrates these brilliant books for kids
about LGBT issues, about consent,
and about bodies and it's just amazing.
And then this one, which is "Respect:
"Consent, Boundaries and Being In Charge of You."
So that's section number one.
Section number two is maybe the least organised,
the most just like, what is this section even?
I don't know.
This book comes from "The Institute of Sexology,"
which was an exhibition at the Welcome Collection
when I first moved to London like five years ago.
This is currently on my bookshelf,
but ideally, again, in my house schools situation,
this is my coffee table book.
Oh my God, that's my bookmark.
I just flipped open to this page
of some like Japanese erotic art
and I have this is a bookmark,
that I got from the Vagina Museum, how exciting.
Anyway, there's loads of images in here
of things that were displayed in the exhibit
and it's fascinating, I love it.
I've got Will Darbyshire's, "This Modern Love"
which is full of really great letters
of like the three different stages of like fancying people
and then like in a relationship and then breakups.
It is hard hitting, it's funny, it is sad, love it.
And then I've got my list of books.
And then these books all go together
because they're the same size
but two of these books are from the same series.
One of them is called "Behind Closed Doors"
which is about sex education.
It basically just like looks at the current world
and how we are doing sex ed
in these different subject areas.
So like virginity, contraceptives, consent,
and just kind of gives a bit of a picture
on like, what the hell's going on there?
So it's kind of like lots of little mini essays.
Then we have Meg, John and Justin's,
"Enjoy Sex (How, When And If You Want To)"
which I believe has been republished
with a different title, not sure what that is,
that is a very like good practical guide to sex
and is so inclusive of different sexualities,
genders, body types.
And so now, we're in the like periods contraception section,
and we have "Period" by Natalie Byrne, "Hormonal"
"The Wonder Down Under"
and "How The Pill Changes Everything:
"Your Brain On Birth Control."
And then we have body positive section,
"Body Positive Power" by Megan Jayne Crabbe.
and "Am I Ugly?" by Michelle Elman.
And again, like I said, this is a very disorganised section
'cause then we have Nimko Ali's book,
and then we have "Sex Plus,"
and I just don't really know where they go.
On to the next section that is much more organised
'cause it's kind of just in two sections.
So we have history, which obviously curious history of sex
should really go down here, but it's just too big
and there's two of them and the history section
is like books about the history of sex,
but then also historical books.
I made a video at the end of last year
about these secondhand sex books that I bought.
Some of them are just from the 1970s,
some of them are from the 1870s
and they're just fascinating to me
about like how people were talking about sex
in different time periods
and what they thought about it
and what they thought they knew.
And so that includes this "Encyclopaedia of Sex Practise"
and the "Kama Sutra," amongst other things,
but then you get on to like other history stuff.
So we've got "Sex At Dawn"
which is a fascinating book about monogamy,
like all human beings are monogamous creatures
in our like, evolution and biology.
"The Sexual History Of The Global South"
which was given to me as a Christmas present one year,
I haven't read it, it's very academic,
and it's lots of essays and I am not at uni anymore,
why do I have to read essays?
But I feel like it'd be really interesting
'cause it's like about a whole area of the world
that I really don't know much about in terms of sexuality.
"Buzz," which is the history of sex toys
and then Fern Riddell's book,
"The Victorian Guide To Sex."
And then the next part of this section
is my like sex and science section.
So my sex and science section
is lots of books obviously about sex,
but that also bring into discussion
different scientific experiments and what we know,
different scientific research, you get it,
so that includes Emily Nagoski's as "Come As You Are,"
which I recommend to everybody.
These are actually all of the ones that I have read,
the sex and science ones, other than "Mind The Gap"
which is my newest addition, these ones I've read,
so we've got "Come As You Are"
"Testosterone Rex," "Vagina," "Bonk" and Inferior."
This section, this is my LGBTQ plus and feminism section.
So in my LGBT section, I've got Juno Dawson's,
"Gender Games," Rhyannon Styles book,
Ashley's book, "The ABC's Of LGBT"
which is just a fantastic like glossary
and introduction to lots of different terms.
My friend Callum's book
that's coming out in July, "Eat Gay Love"
which is a memoir about all of his travel around the world
and being a gay boy.
And then I have a little gay history,
does this go in the LGBT section or in the history section?
It doesn't fit on the history shelf,
so it's going in the LGBT section.
This one also has lots of little markers on it.
This came from the British Museum,
and so it's got lots of pictures in it
and a really great introduction
to why studying the history of homosexuality
is so difficult when it comes to sources
and being able to say,
this person who lived 1,000 years ago, they were gay,
even though they didn't like
have any understanding themselves of what gay was.
Maybe they liked to have sex with men but gay didn't exist.
Anyway, that's a whole thing.
And then in my feminist section,
which is a bit of a mishmash of things,
I've got Melissa Gira Grant's, "Playing The Whore"
which my friend Ali gave to me and it's great
because it's got all of his highlights and notes in it,
which I really appreciate, thanks Ali.
That sounded sarcastic, it wasn't,
I actually genuinely appreciated reading his notes
alongside reading the book, it was really cool.
Got "Feminists Don't Wear Pink."
We've got Catlin Moran's, "How To Be A Woman"
which as every white woman is her foray into feminism.
We've got Roxane Gay's, "Bad Feminist"
and then "How To Win At Feminism" by Reductress,
which is a satirical feminist site.
You can't win at feminism, that's the point
but it's a very funny book.
Flo Perry's illustrated, "How To Have Feminist Sex"
and then "Invisible women," which I am so excited to read.
Like I said, my brain just cannot handle
diving into nonfiction right now,
but that is like one that is up there for me
in terms of priorities to read of this year.
And then a few honourable mentions,
as they don't like fit on the shelves
and they're not explicitly about sex,
but I would include them in feminism,
in my feminism and in your feminism and these books up here,
these are in my general nonfiction section,
but we've got "The Good Immigrant"
"Beyond The Pale: White Women, Racism and History."
"Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race"
and then Gal-dem's,
"Our Stories About Growing Up As People Of Colour."
So as you can see, there's a bit of a theme to all of those.
And then this one, which I love so much,
"Eat Sweat Play: How Sport Can Change Our Lives,"
which is about women in sport,
this book kind of changed my life
and that book just had so many like, moments for me.
What, Oh my God!
We could even say that this book is adjacent
to all Kerry Hudson's, "Low Born",
which is about growing up poor in the UK.
So that's a lot about class in that as well.
I mean, there are so many issues
which are not even feminist to Jason
it's just like part of feminism, so there we go.
All my sex books, some feminism books as well.
I would love to know, do you have any of these books?
Have you read them?
What do you think of any books that I don't have
that I should add to my sex library?
Oh my god, I cannot wait just to have a bookshelf
that is purely sex books.
Thanks so much for watching.
If you'd like to support what I do,
please consider signing up to my newsletter
which is completely free and also,
I have a patron called The Common Room
and there's loads of extra stuff
that's available over there, different videos
and early access to podcast episodes and things like that,
which I'll leave a link to in the description.
Hope you have a great day and happy reading, bye.