ON BOOKSHELVES

TANTRA For Erotic Empowerment

Mark A. Michaels and Patricia Johnson
(Llewellyn Productions, $21.95, trade paperback
***

This handbook covers a lot: Eastern spirituality, advice on self-realization, and sexual fulfillment, but is admittedly only an introduction. The authors’ discussions about the 2,000-year-old Tantra (which, unlike many other Asian religious thoughts, emphasizes sexual ritual) are brief and clear, and they avoid sounding like a New Age-ish hugfest or a mechanical sex manual. In 14 chapters (called “Dalas,” or petals), they tell us of current theories, offer personalized sexual exercises, and include questions and discussions for the participant. While the emphasis is on heterosexual couples like themselves, anyone who is open to sexuality—gay men, lesbians, groups, individuals (many of the exercises call for “self-pleasuring”)—is invited into the circle. They firmly reject the whole current imbalance between the pervasive commercialization of sex in our culture on the one hand and those fundamentalist Christian religions that wage war on all sex outside their own grim restrictions on the other. This book is about enlightening, not frightening, and as such gives sex the good name it deserves. —HARRY EUGENE BALDWIN

A WOLF AT THE TABLE
A Memoir of My Father

Augusten Burroughs
(St. Martin’s Press, $24.95, hardcover)
***

This odd book is a prequel to the author’s well-known work, Running with Scissors (2002). It starts as a classic story of a screwed-up child in a mess of a family—an abusive, withdrawn father, a pathetic mother, and a slob older brother—but soon mutates into a new genre: family history as a horror movie (think Stephen King), where dreams and death wishes alternate with mundane events, all painted in lurid colors. After a few chapters of the child’s constantly stalking, pestering, and needling his physically and mentally ill dad—even crawling like a malevolent changeling into bed with him—the kid began to give me the creeps. If I were the father, I think I would have hobbled, screaming from that haunted house. Undeniably as riveting as a twisted fairy tale, the memoir, if that’s what it is, is very much in sync with our culture’s zeitgeist. Its masterly manipulation of confessional resentment, titillating violence, and blame as the new badge of courage should insure that its first printing of a half-million copies will sell out. Oprah awaits. —H.E.B.

LIMITED RUN

Ariel Schrag

The L Word writer and “dyke comic book artist” presents and signs her illustrated adolescent autobiographies that detail growing up queer in San Francisco's East Bay. Book Soup. Wed., May 7. 7 p.m. www.booksoup.com.

Shades of Love

Antioch University and A Different Light Bookstore present the first reading series celebrating well-known-and-loved lesbian literary works. A Different Light. Wed., May 14. 7:30 p.m. www.adlbooks.com.

Alex Ironrod

Ironrod takes his readers deep into the BDSM subculture in his passionate book Submission: Leather Masters and Slaves. A Different Light. Thurs., May 15. 7:30 p.m. www.adlbooks.com.

Homo Must

Joel Derfner

If you think you're três gay, think again. Joel Derfner has intentionally out-gayed you thanks to years of teaching step aerobics, attending numerous knitting classes, and go-go dancing with some of Manhattan's finest—but don't worry, he spreads the wealth in his new work Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever. A Different Light. Mon., May 19. 7:30 p.m. www.adlbooks.com.