For those of you who think the net is ‘the thang’-and I’m not disputing, it just might be-might I hip you to a few places to still read some great sexy tidbits in actual pages? I say grab your info from wherever you want, just as long as you explore far and wide and don’t take any one source’s word for it (‘all the news that’s fit to print’ and all that). When it comes to getting our salacious bon mots, there are plenty of places to search; I myself get daily updates from Xbiz, peruse Playboys and have occasion to check-out HBO and the G4 network for good old sassy stuff. But there are lots of publishers, some I have already touched on, others I’ll probably never get to, who deliver in print form and in some cases exclusively.

As I often do with The Sex Files, I span-the-globe a bit with what I present below.

First there is the Fetish Map London. Sure you can see them online here but that site is also where you’d subscribe to the U.K.-based PictureRama publication. The map is as much an up-to-the-second listing of events happening in ‘the scene’ (leather balls, readings from sex authors, maybe a class in rope bondage) while also providing addresses of pubs and sex shops, hair dressers and offering adds for mistresses and even travel agents. Don’t let the ‘London’ part of their name fool you, this publication certainly boasts the well deserved global reach they have worked hard in their ten years to develop.

Our friends at Taschen continue to release beautiful books that span many a subject. There are interior design tomes, cityscape books and even film and comic tie-ins…and also those great “The Big Butt Book” or “The Big Penis Book” (the first a personal fave, the second something I find myself envious of) or beautiful art packages like their book and case Nobuyoshi Araki. Bondage. This publisher, with stores in NYC, L.A.,  Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Belgium, London and Paris has published another of their history spanning collections, a sexy little soft cover that I just adore called True Crime Detective Magazines 1924-1969.

With written contributions by Eric Godtland and Taschen editor Dian Hanson (and all the text pieces appearing in English, French and German in the book) we are given a succulent overview of ‘true’ crime writing in American magazine publications as it existed in most of the 20^th century (with a good history from Godtland about where the genre began in broadsides back in 1751 and flourished in the penny press a century later.)

As any Taschen book, True Crime Detective Magazines 1924-1969 presents some glorious pictures, reproductions of covers of magazines long forgotten with names like “True Detective Mysteries,” “Smash Detective Cases,” “Startling Detective,” “True Gang Life,” and “True Cases of Women in Crime.” Nearly 100% of these covers and what is really the pull for pulp enthusiasts, art collectors and just good old pervs like yours truly, is the fantastically lurid pics of scantily clad women that grace these covers. Surely reading the first works of Ann Rule, Frederick Dannay & Manfred B. Lee (writing as ‘Ellery Queen’) and Erle Stanley Gardner, and many more was terrific fun as would have been pouring over the map of “The Crime Trail of The Kansas City Massacre” must have been a thrill, as would be reading great articles with titles like “Crime, Vice and Hollywood” but what stands out in this book, and any Tashcen book really is the artwork, in this case from people like: pin-up artist Al Brule, Philip Lyford, the prolific Jules Erbit, later to become a comic book artist, and Michael McCann to name but a few.

There’s also a great confessional hands-on from Marc Gerald entitled “I Was A True Detective Editor” telling of his late 80’s foray into working at “True Detective” magazine near the end of this genre’s run that is pretty stellar, summing up what the entire book really is about. Get it here.

And coming in a week is a book I am very much looking forward to reading, The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski by Samantha Geimer. If you don’t know this sordid tale you couldn’t do better than grabbing yourself a copy of Geimer’s hardcover and learning not only about that infamous day in 1977 but what’s happened in this woman’s life in the 35 years she has maintained a silence about it.  Get it here.

So the above should give you enough to get your grubby little mitts on for the moment. Enjoy…