Magnificent Sex

Lessons from Extraordinary Lovers

By: Peggy J. Kleinplatz PhD, A. Dana Ménard PhD

Narrated by: Holly Adams

What makes sex magnificent? What are the qualities of extraordinary erotic intimacy, and what are the elements that help to bring it about? Is great sex the stuff that people remember nostalgically from the "honeymoon" phase of their relationships, or can sex improve over time?

Magnificent Sex is based on the largest, in-depth interview study ever conducted with people who are having extraordinary sex. It gathers the nuggets for remarkable sex from the "experts", distilling them into an attainable blueprint for ordinary lovers who want to make erotic intimacy grow over the course of a lifetime. Looking at factors including individual and relational qualities, empathic communication, and the myths and realities of magnificent sex, this book offers accessible and evidence-based guidance for lovers and therapists alike. It is replete with frank and often humorous interviews with straight and LGBTQ individuals and couples, those who are "vanilla" and "kinky", monogamous and consensually non-monogamous and healthy and chronically ill. This illuminating book explores the implications of the findings to develop a model that effectively tackles the common problems of low desire and frequency. The "cure" for low desire is to create desirable sex!

Contains mature themes.

©2020 Peggy J. Kleinplatz and A. Dana Ménard (P)2021 Tantor

Solid and approachable science

Great to have such a readily accessible book on a very interesting series of scientific studies! Learned a lot. Occasionally, the reading style made it difficult to tell where a quote ended and book resumed, but it's a minor point.

Good but repetitive

There is good stuff here, but it all could have been said much more efficiently. As others have noted, the “direct quotation style” of the writing (and therefore narration), including fillers like “um” and “ah,” is highly annoying.

Annoying robotic narration

The constant direct quotes full of um and uh in a robot voice is annoying as it gets

Could not get through this book

For being based in research, this book is remarkably void of specific information. It repeats itself over and over, covering the same basic premise, which is the
that great sex is directly related to the quality of relationship and intentionality of the partners. The reading is positively infuriating to listen to, the editors opting to include every "ah" and "um" and pause when reading back quotes from survey participants. This does not read like a scientific work but rather a biased, curated summary with an advertisement tone.

Narrators Take Note!!!

I really appreciate when someone is precise in their reading but these authors and thus, the narrator, just take it too far. There are a lot of shared experiences that are quoted from other people in this book. When the authors/narrator are quoting, they quote it dead on precisely, including, unfortunately, all of the little stutters and somebody saying "um" and "uh" every other ...um...word...uh...and that is...um... extremely ...uh....annoying after the...uh... 400th ...um....time. Great book but the ...um...narration is hard to...uh... believe that somebody....um...listened to it....uh....afterwards and didn't....um....figure out how....uh....annoying this is to listen to (see what I mean.....now imagine that happening every few sentences every time they quote somebody, which they do frequently throughout the book).

Good research & informative

This is a useful book and different from other books in the genre. My only cripple is the narrator repeating verbatim every um and ah when they quoted their interviewees

insert review title here

I thought I was having a stroke listening to this. there's better books on the topic too.