Riot Headline Book Riot’s 2025 Read Harder Challenge
Lists

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: 69 Book Titles that Double as Terrible Sex Advice

Book titles make for terrible sex advice. 69 of the worst offenders. 

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Rachel Manwill

Staff Writer

Rachel Manwill is an editor, writer, and professional nomad. Twice a year, she runs the #24in48 readathon, during which she does almost no reading. She's always looking for an excuse to recommend a book, whether you ask her for one or not. When she's not ranting about comma usage for her day job as a corporate editor, she's usually got an audiobook in her ears and a puppy in her lap. Blog: A Home Between Pages Twitter: @rachelmanwill

View All posts by Rachel Manwill

Someone pumped laughing gas into the Riot headquarters. That’s the only explanation for this post.

via GIPHY

So what happened is, someone (ahem…Jeff) mentioned that Me Before You also makes for awful sex advice. And that just opened the floodgates. I only take responsibility for a few of these…and I’m not saying which ones.

  1. All My Puny Sorrows
  2. My Struggle
  3. Purity
  4. Crime and Punishment
  5. Avenue of Mysteries
  6. Small Wonder
  7. The Turn of the Screw
  8. Rules of Civility
  9. Hyperbole and a Half
  10. A Manual for Cleaning Women
  11. A Storm Of Swords
  • The Night Circus
  • The Stranger
  • All Quiet on the Western Front
  • Disgrace
  • The Chamber of Secrets
  • Stone Mattress
  • A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
  • Tiny Beautiful Things
  • Everything That Rises Must Converge
  • Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
  • The Queen of the Night
  • No Country for Old Men
  • Into the Wild
  • Catching Fire
  • Great Expectations
  • The Dark Tower
  • The Lovely Bones
  • A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
  • Anything That Moves
  • Lean In
  • Howard’s End
  • The Sound And The Fury
  • The Bone Season
  • Single Carefree Mellow
  • The Naked And The Dead
  • True Grit
  • Welcome to the Monkey House
  • So Good They Can’t Ignore You
  • Persuasion
  • Why Not Me?
  • And Then There Were None
  • The Book Of Strange New Things
  • The Little Friend
  • The Taming of the Shrew
  • The Secret History
  • Behind the Beautiful Forevers
  • Fight Club
  • Paddle Your Own Canoe
  • How To Win Friends And Influence People
  • Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands
  • Invisible Man
  • Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
  • The Big Short
  • The Color Purple
  • Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
  • The Bone Clocks
  • I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You
  • Things Fall Apart
  • Cry, the Beloved Country
  • Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
  • The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
  • She’s Come Undone
  • Naked Lunch
  • Stranger in a Strange Land
  • Consider The Lobster
  • The Art of The Deal
  • Bossypants
  • Getting Things Done

    I promise, the fact that there are 69 of these is purely coincidence. Promise.

    via GIPHY