Our Recommended Books, Music & Movies for Passion

zena moon sells books, CDs and DVDs in association with Amazon.com. To order, click on the item's title or image, then add it to your Amazon shopping cart. Orders are then filled and shipped by Amazon. Send us your recommendations for this page--we may post them here.

Last updated 4/5/2005

  Books

1.  Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses

    by Isabel Allende (Paperback - 1999)

    Avg. Customer Rating:

    From Amazon.com: There is something about reading suggestive material that awakens the senses--too often ignored in the fray of modern life--and fires the imagination. Perhaps it brings us back to those breathless, palpitating moments from childhood when puberty was a rosy smudge on the horizon and sex was an abstract term. Aphrodite is a long, savory, enthralling ode to sensuality.

In this bawdy memoir-cum-cookbook, Allende has put together an apothecary of aphrodisiacs, from snake's blood and rhinoceros horn to the more commonplace and more palatable oysters, "those seductive tears of the sea, which lend themselves to slipping from mouth to mouth like a prolonged kiss ... can be purchased in bottles, but there they look like malignant tumors; in contrast, moist and turgid in their shells they suggest delicate vulvae--a prime example of food that appeals to the eye." Chapters such as "Alligators and Piranhas"; "Supreme Stimulus for Lechery"; "Bread, God's Grace"; "Forbidden Fruits"; and "The Saucy Way to Foreplay" offer categorical listings on the aphrodisiac qualities of meats, spices, fruits and vegetables, and alcohol. A few chapters into the book, one begins to wonder what foods aren't considered erotic: "the shape of the wheat head is considered phallic, which proves human imagination knows no limits." Wine (no surprise there) is recommended because "it lessens inhibitions, relaxes, and fosters joy, three fundamental requirements for good performance, not only in bed but at the piano as well." However, as in many situations, moderation is key: too much and you may find your guest asleep in the soup.

"If cookbooks make up part of your library," Allende notes, "books on eroticism should, too." And what more delightful combination of the two than Aphrodite, which provocatively underscores the relationship between sustenance and sexuality, and the aphrodisiac qualities of watching a man cook: "[Women] suppose that if he can remember how many minutes frog legs can tolerate in the skillet, how much greater reason he will have to remember how many tickles our G spot demands." Spiced with litanies of lust and longing from Anaïs Nin, Yeats, Pablo Neruda and Lady Onogoro, and enriched with Allende's warm humor and lusty joie de vivre, Aphrodite will tantalize your senses and engender lascivious grins. Recommended in delicious but moderate doses, this book is not for the faint of ... er, heart.

2.   Booty Food: A Date by Date, Nibble by Nibble, Course by Course Guide to Cultivating Love and Passion Through Food

    by Jacqui Malouf, Liz Gumbinner (Hardcover - 2004)

    Avg. Customer Rating:

    From Amazon.com: If Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw cooked, and wrote a cookbook, this might be it. It's a sassy collection of recipes and menus for the occasions and stages of relationships (from flings to marriage), with dating advice, sex sidebars and a dash of etiquette-a primer on "caviar for newbies"; a key to the pronunciation of wines and international foods; suggestions for successful key exchange0thrown in for good measure. Malouf, co-host of Hot off the Grill with Bobby Flay and host of the WE network's Full Frontal Fashion, offers stories from her own dating life along with simple-chic recipes such as Funky Mimosas for the morning-after breakfast; Pan-Roasted Chicken with Rosemary-Lemon Butter, Blue Cheese Arugula Salad with Honeyed Walnuts, and Grilled Asparagus with Balsamic Vinaigrette for the first home-cooked meal; and Chicken Ramani, Cucumber Raita, and Minty Cuban Mojitos for keeping things "hot." Readers in any phase of a relationship--and especially readers in no relationship at all--will be entertained and informed by this volume and will enjoy its modern design and fun photographs by Ben Fink.

3.   Oysters Among Us

    by Susannah Indigo (Mass Market Paperback - 2001)

    Avg. Customer Rating:

    From Amazon.com: Oysters Among Us follows the erotic and soulful adventures of a group of friends and family who live in Boulder and San Francisco, as they begin to answer the important questions of this millennium: Can you be too rich or have too much sex? Does it even count if it's only online sex? If you appear naked at the mall, is it always necessary to sing "Amazing Grace"? Are sex quests better than everyday vision quests? Is it better to dance with snakes, or to follow the instructions on a Mary Kay sign when making love? What happens when grandpa starts counting back through his lovers and recreating the Book of Love? Why isn't the Baseball Position described in the Kama Sutra? What do people actually bring to a Better Than Sex party? And in the end, when everyone has partied in the Blue Room until dancing naked in the rain seems an everyday activity, and has had enough sex to last at least through the weekend and has reached toward their dreams, does the "boom" on the final flight represent danger, or the erotic future in Rome?

An imaginative romp through real life and dreams, with some of the hottest writing around that can make you laugh at the same time it grabs for your libido, Susannah Indigo's Oysters Among Us is pure erotic entertainment, gracefully layered with profound truth and exploration.
 

  Music

1.   The Ultimate Collection [Universal 2000]

   ~ Barry White (Audio CD)

    Original Release Date: 2000

    Avg. Customer Rating:

From Amazon.com: If the one-disc All-Time Greatest Hits leaves you panting for more, but the three-disc box set Just for You proves that one can, in fact, get enough of Barry White's love, well, then the two-disc Ultimate Collection is the anthology for you. An entire slow-jams industry has been erected in White's wake, but no one has done it better. Call it "funkzac"--an inimitable fusion of lush strings and suave brass dancing on a bed of funk and disco rhythms, with the manly maestro mixed prominently atop his seduction soundscapes. Ultimate Collection serves up enough cherry Barry to produce another baby boom.

2.   Love Scenes

    ~ Diana Krall (Audio CD)

    Original Release Date: 1997

    Avg. Customer Rating:

From Amazon.com: Like a mink draped over mahogany, Diana Krall's luxuriously supple alto adorns the vintage songs of romance and longing found on Love Scenes with a palpable aura of glamour and late-night cool. Her ostensibly effortless command of phrasing and intonation, whether the mood is seduction or a sweet sassiness, further fortifies the opinion that the Canadian vocalist-pianist possesses one of the great female jazz voices to surface in the late 1990s. Augmented by spare but skillful instrumentation from bassist Christian McBride and guitarist Russell Malone, Krall sustains a largely quiet (though hardly sleepy) ambience throughout the CD's 12 selections, from Irving Berlin's "How Deep Is the Ocean (How High Is the Sky)," which she also uses as a showcase for her touch at the keyboard, to Gershwin's "They Can't Take That Away from Me." Her swing is artfully subdued ("All or Nothing at All"), and her wry, expressive approach to "Peel Me a Grape" is pure charm. Yet Krall shines most luminously on languid gems such as "I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You" and "Garden in the Rain." Anyone in search of an album ideal for watching city lights at 2 a.m. should keep Love Scenes in mind.

3.   The Hits 2

    ~ Prince (Audio CD)

    Original Release Date: 1993

    Avg. Customer Rating:

From Amazon.com: The second volume of Prince's collection of singles (and a couple of outtakes) has sex on the brain, and a few other places. Apparently aimed at, shall we say, the harder-core fan of the Artist, this disc still ends its parade of R-rated sallies ("Dirty Mind," "Sexy M.F.," "Head") with a cleansing "Purple Rain." And just to blur things even more, among its Top 10 hits are candidly horny moments like "Kiss" and "Little Red Corvette"--songs that add new twists to the African-American store of body-talkin' funkin'-blues poetry.
 

  Movies

1.   Tipping the Velvet

    Starring: Rachael Stirling, Keeley Hawes

    (2002) ~ DVD

    Avg. Customer Rating:

From Amazon.com: "It's Pride and Prejudice with dirty bits." That's how screenwriter Andrew Davies (Bridget Jones's Diary), in an interview contained on this disc, describes his adaptation of Sarah Waters's acclaimed novel of lesbian love, betrayal, and redemption in Victorian England. This three-part BBC production chronicles with relish the story of Nan Astley (Rachael Stirling, the ravishing image of her mother, Diana Rigg), barely 18, and certain that life holds more for her than her oyster girl's existence. "You'll meet someone who'll have your head spinning and your legs turning to jelly," her sister promises. That someone surprisingly turns out to be gay and bold Kitty Butler (Keeley Hawes), a music-hall entertainer, with whom Nan falls instantly, and swooningly, in love. Nan follows her to London, where, as a double act, they become the toast of London, until Kitty's "marriage of convenience" breaks up the act and Nan's heart. The outcast Nan, decked out in Victor/Victoria duds, becomes a streetwalker, and then tart to the aptly named Diana Leatherby (Anna Chancellor). This affair, too, comes to a bad end as a destitute Nan is deposited back on the streets, where she insinuates herself into the lives of Florence (Jodhi May), a social worker, and her socialist brother. Is Nan too spoiled and stained for love? Will she risk her blossoming relationship with Florence when Kitty inevitably returns to rekindle their affair? There is enough backbiting and bitching to fuel several seasons of The O.C. Nan's couplings, while tastefully done, do carry what Waters, in the co-interview with Davies, calls "a queer erotic charge." They are graphic by Cinemax standards, let alone the BBC. But the sterling writing and performances will captivate even the most sensitive viewers, making this groundbreaking miniseries, to quote one character, "a delightful evening... a rare treat."