I recently had the pleasure of attending the
Exxxotica Expo (billed as “the largest event in the USA dedicated to love and sex”) in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Most of the exhibitors were adult performers and companies who produce sex toys, movies, lingerie and all kinds of other accoutrements. I was there giving a seminar on “lust and letters,” talking about erotica and writing in a sea of people who make their living from their bodies and faces. Of course, they're more than their bodies just as I am more than a disembodied head, so me being the word nerd that I am, I decided to get nosy and ask people in porn: “What have you been reading?” The brain is the biggest sex organ, after all. Here's what they said.
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| Kayden Kross |
Kayden Kross, who blogs book reviews and sarcasm, shared that she’s reading “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”—something she admits “is not edgy or wild, but a good classic.” She said she also just finished “Times Square Red, Times Square Blue,” Samuel R. Delany’s tome on the criminalization and gentrification of the most visited part of New York.
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Stormy Daniels
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Director/actor/screenwriter
Stormy Daniels said she was a little embarrassed to reveal she’d been laughing her way through “Shitty Mom: The Parenting Guide for the Rest of Us” on the heels of “Go the F**k to Sleep.” “They’re both funny and relatable,” she said.
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| Alexis Texas |
Actress
Alexis Texas shared she’d just finished “Come Away With Me” (Book One in the “With Me” series by Kristen Proby) and said it was so good she just ordered part two.
Sometimes porn stars write their own books—and they even read one another’s (porn stars! They’re just like us!). In that vein,
April Flores, winner of a Feminist Porn Award as well as this year’s AVN “BBW Performer of the Year,” co-authored “Fat Girl” last year with her husband, photographer Carlos Batts. She says the last book she finished was the memoir “Some Girls” by Jillian Lauren. “I am a huge fan of hers and I hope I never meet her because I might act weird,” adds Flores.
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| Tera Patrick in bed with my book, "Book Lovers" |
Tera Patrick, who retired from making adult movies in 2009 but still models and appears for signings, highly recommends “Girlvert: A Porno Memoir” by Ashley Blue, calling it “engrossing” and sharing that her boyfriend Tony read it and loved it, too.
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| Evan Stone holding Tera Patrick's memoir |
Evan Stone, winner of numerous awards, most recently a Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s Fanny’s (Exxxotica’s fan choice awards), said the J. R. R. Tolkien books are what really turned him on to reading when he was younger, but the latest book he’s read is Tera Patrick’s memoir, “Sinner Takes All.”
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| A non-recent pic of posing with Ron Jeremy at a strip club in Wilmington, NC |
Porn icon and former special education teacher
Ron Jeremy says he reads a lot of magazines but loves reading books about World War II. “My mom and dad both served in the war. My mom was in the O.S.S.—she was a spy, and my dad fought in the Philippines and I have cousins who died who have purple hearts, so World War Two is very important to my family.” Jeremy says he even read Adolf Hitler's “Mein Kampf” recently “just to see what made that guy tick.” He says he often theorizes on ‘what would have happened’ scenarios. “Had he [Hitler] not had this ‘Jewish problem’ that ruined it for him—this phobia and scapegoat problem—he lost the greatest scientists because he hated Jews,” says Jeremy. “The Oppenheimers, the Einsteins, the Tellers—they all came to America and we utilized their brains and got the bomb first. Imagine if they had all stayed in Germany? Imagine these great scientists being on the wrong side? It would have affected the way the war ends—Germany would rule the world right now with these guys behind them.”
Jeremy also enjoys signed books by friends, including Anthony Bourdain, Christy Canyon, Slash, Motley Crue and Carrie Fisher. “One of my favorites is from Tony Curtis, ‘The Making of Some Like it Hot.’ Ya gotta remember it’s written by the guy who was sleeping with Marilyn behind her husband’s back and lived to tell about it. I love reading autobiographies of my friends.” He says he also recently read “The Catcher in the Rye,” looking for ways it supposedly inspired Mark Chapman to kill John Lennon. “It was about a guy who wanted to save kids, so I don’t get it. Supposedly Chapman thought Lennon ‘sold out’ or whatever.”
Belle Knox, aka The Duke Porn Star, was too swamped by fans and other press for me to get a comment, but I can only assume she’s been hitting the textbooks between scenes and media appearances.
I downloaded two audiobooks for the trip—Keith Richards’ “Life” and James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Guess which one cured my insomnia? And what do you make of the porn stars' picks?
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