Sex with Shakespeare audiobook

This is a modified version of the review that originally appeared on my blog, Shoulda Coulda Woulda Books.Time on to-read list: A few monthsReason for hesitating to pick up (in the form of an internal monologue): "Ooh, that interview was great, I really want to read that, on the list it goes! Oh wait.... won't that make me look weird for wanting to read that? I don't know.. maybe it's all really narcissistic and stupid anyway... I'll wait... I'll wait. Oh wait, there it is at the bookstore. No wait, too embarrassed to pick it up. Maybe next time. Next time."Reason for finally picking up (Part II of monologue): "....fuck it, I'm getting it this time. Gonna start reading it while I'm waiting to go to dinner.... *half an hour passes* Damn. Oh man, what time is it? I have to get this- must finish. Plans CANCELLED. Not even the checkout lady's loud, weirded out announcement of 'Sex with Shakespeare'?!?! is going to deter me, nope, nope, but thanks for that anyway, lady. Taking this home now and-*reads for rest of the night obsessively*"Verdict: This is why book-shaming sucks. This book was wonderful. At least it was for me. I hope, below, you can see if it might be for you, too.(Caveat: Before I even start, if you're here looking for just sexy Shakespeare roleplay or fanfic, look elsewhere. That's not what this book is, so I'm going to save you some time and send you off in more profitable directions right now. Everyone else, let's dive in!)***Sex with Shakespeare is Jillian Keenan’s memoir of growing up and trying to form an identity, and the deep external and, most agonizingly, the deep internal resistance she encounters in this attempt. Keenan’s struggle, however, focuses especially on her sexual identity as what is commonly referred to as a “spanko,”** a person for whom being spanked is the highest possible sexual gratification, if not the only sexual gratification possible. She differentiates early and often between people who have a “kink” of liking to be spanked occasionally as part of generalized BDSM play and people who have a “fetish” for spanking, which she defines as people for whom spanking comes first and sex comes a very very distant second. Keenan calls sex a “dessert”, an optional thing that is nice, but as she says, “if I had to give up sex-all kinds of sex-or spanking, I’d flush sex like a drug smuggler ditching his stash in an airport bathroom. My fetish isn’t something I do. It’s something I am.” As you might imagine, Keenan encounters more than a few problems growing up as she becomes more and more aware of her fetish, and just how central it is to her core identity. (And she’s got a rough enough childhood situation to contend with without this situation, to be honest.) But luckily, she’s got a pal with her on this journey, one she was lucky enough to meet early: Will Shakespeare. Each chapter focuses on how a different play of Shakespeare’s helps Keenan process a different moment in her life. This can range from an academic discussion of ways to interpret Shakespeare's verse to wonderfully hallucinogenic, personal conversations Keenan has with Shakespeare's characters, who dispense advice to her like older sisters, best friends, demanding mentors, bro-tastic frat boyfriends or offer her ambiguous, helplessly tempting words that could transform her or destroy her, according to her interpretation of them. This truly wonderful device should be recognizable to anyone who loves literature to this same obsessive degree. It’s the most direct demonstration I’ve ever seen of one of my favorite passages by one of my favorite writers, where he says, “Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head.” *** Keenan is able to get through each day because these characters swoop in and save her in a variety of pensive, soul-searching, comedic, tragic or tragi-comedic circumstances. Again and again, these were my favorite parts of the book. One example of her analysis comes with Macbeth, as she processes through the nature of trying to develop an identity and fit within the fabric of life, faced with someone in her life who is lying to himself in a way even more extreme than she is, a friend with a girlfriend who is against gay marriage that she finds, unexpectedly, in a gay bar in Singapore: "Macbeth is a play about doubles. But there is a twist.In Shakespeare's tragedies, the hero (or antihero) often has a double, or a voice-a secondary character who speaks for the main character, linking him to the real world and to the audience. Marjorie Garber describes these sidekicks as "someone on the stage who encounters things and verifies that what seems impossible or unbearable is, nonetheless, true." In Hamlet, Horatio fills that role: at the end of the play, Horatio is the one who promises to tell Hamlet's story. In King Lear, that voice is Edgar...Macbeth's obsession with equivocation speaks to this idea of double voices. The word equivocation itself comes from the Latin oequivocus, which means "of equal voice". In Macbeth, where even the fundamental premise of the play demands verification- are the witches real, or merely a product of Macbeth's imagination?- that double voice is more important than ever. At first, Banquo fills the the role of the double. He links Macbeth to the audience. We know Banquo saw the sisters too. Unlike the dagger that Macbeth sees, or imagines, before he kills Duncan, Banquo's voice verifies that these sisters do exist. But Macbeth has a tragedy that sets it apart from every other Shakespeare tragedy: Macbeth mrders his voice. Mad with fear that Banquo's heirs will seize the throne, Macbeth has Banquo killed. After that, our antihero is on his own. There is no one left to verify what is real and what is not. In fact, the night after Banquo dies is the very last time we see Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, who previously had the strongest marriage in Shakespeare canon, speak to each other. When Macbeth's voice dies, everything else disappears, too. Macbeth is alone.He can't survive that way. No one can.And the hallucinogenic voices, beyond even the analysis, come to her aid at even more desperate times, like when she doesn’t tries to process something beyond kink, something even more threatening to her that she can’t name: Cleopatra was standing at the foot of the bed. "Where's David?" I asked.“I don’t know,” she replied coolly.I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Why had David left? I sighed.“Cleo, is Antony’s love for you just an Oedipal thing?” I asked.“That’s none of your business,” Cleopatra snapped. “If you want to know why David is attracted to you, ask him yourself. Stop displacing your fear onto us.”I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “I’m not ‘displacing’ my feelings onto you,” I replied. “I’m processing them through you. That’s how people experience literature.”Cleopatra scoffed. “Are you sure there isn’t something more?” she asked. “Something you’re unwilling to face?”I bristled. “Hey,” I said, pointing my finger at her. “I faced it. I was honest with David about that shit from the beginning.”Cleopatra’s lip curled in contempt. “Good grief, I’m not talking about your ‘kink’,” she said. “This incessant whining doesn’t impress me at all.”There were angry shouts upstairs. I slid off the bed. “Is there a point to any of this?” Cleopatra pressed, her voice rising to a yell. “Or are you just wasting our time?" And again and again at the most compelling moments of her life, Shakespeare’s characters appear to offer her understanding, judgment, laughter and temptation. (The best one comes later and is too much of a climatic moment for me to reveal it, but it’s a great and fitting crescendo.) The endless hours that Keenan has obviously spent studying Shakespeare until he became an extension of her thought and her body, until she can reach for him without effort and feel his lines flowing through her body with such natural ease makes that it makes her use of him both touching and moving to watch in a way it wouldn't with someone who didn't really earn their use by feeling them in their bones. She does not always reach for him, but the way the story is set up, maybe she should. Each time, something in him reflects her back to herself, whether that mirror is flattering or not. She finds, as so many have found before her, truth in Shakespeare. For her, that truth happens to include seeing kinky sex all over Shakespeare’s world. The instinct of the reader is, at first, to of course be skeptical, and even be thrown out of the narrative by what seem like, at best, highly selective interpretations of Shakespeare’s stories. But that would be to miss the point entirely. Nobody reading this, by the end, will care whether or not Keenan’s interpretations of Shakespeare are the most correct or convincing things you’ve heard. Some definitely aren't. (Although a few of them- like Helena’s situation in Midsummer, like Kate and Petruchio of Taming of the Shrew, like her particularly disturbing Lear reading are challenging enough that I think it would make for excellent debate material to throw them into the mix of any discussion on those plays). But it doesn't matter. Because if you can see anything at all, it is that the knowledge, fierce intelligence, passion and care she puts into each interpretation is what matters most. It is watching her take these pieces of the greatest playwright the world has ever seen and reshuffle them into their best of all possible uses: self-understanding, acceptance, love, the breaking down of walls and the defeat of her worst impulses. It is watching literature become the savior we all already knew it was, allowing this clearly fierce woman to emerge from this place of seclusion and doubt she’s been imprisoning herself in for far too long. It’s watching an uncertain child become a woman. Not a perfect woman by any means, but a woman who has figured out a path that feels true at long last and at great cost. Yes, there’s some sex (and a few scenes of really sexy sex, if you ask me). Yes, there’s some sad parts and some truly scary parts and some parts where you might cry or be enraged, but what I left this book with was, in the end, however unlikely it seemed at the start, a great feeling of joy. I felt like I’d just watched Keenan climb the Himalayas, and all I thought was: You did it, girl. You did it. Or, more precisely, we did it. If you’ve got any skin in this emotional game- and no, I don’t only mean the kinky one- you’ll feel like you’ve gone through it with Keenan. I found memories flying through my head as I read, blending with what I was reading. Sometimes I needed to stop and process, it felt like all too much. But like Keenan’s relationship with Shakespeare, her memories allowed me to access my own, opening up the hard to access path that only a few authors seem to really get to walk with each person: the path you don’t always want to walk, but the one that leads you, ever so slowly, to yourself.(Disclaimer: As I stated in the original review, this is a personal five stars. So lest you think I am totally blinded by my personal experience, I should mention that Keenan's writing style perhaps doesn't appeal to all due to its highly personalized nature. She can also of course be highly self-centered, as you might expect in a biography. She can be melodramatic as you might expect in her teenage scenes and her surreal sequences may not appeal to everyone's sense of the ridiculous and enjoyment. I didn't really care about any of this though, and my bet is you won't either.) **(A word she despises and compares to “cans of spray cheese”, but I’ll use it just this once for clarity’s sake and then not again, since I happen to agree with her that even the sound the word is both hilarious and gross.)***Orhan Pamuk, The New Life. He’s good, guys. Get on that. Istanbul is by far his best book, but My Name is Red is pretty brilliant too.

This book is brilliant. Really.Reading about how someone else thinks about sex and lives sex - especially someone so unassumingly honest - is touching.Reading about how someone got over insecurity of the deepest kind is uplifing.Reading about how someone leared to live better by conversing 300+ year old characters is the dream of every bookworm.re. sex - I felt like when a good friend, at the end of a long talk, looks me straight in the eye and tells me exactly what she's about. With only an outsider's perspective, armed with nothing more than half-truths and prejudices, BDSM feels weird and alien, but after reading Keenan's account, it just went into the 'apparently some people are into that sort of thing... good for them' - where it joined bungee-jumping, poppyseed-brioche and Wagner.still sex wasn't the most liberating of its themes. I've never seen the idea that you can treat literary works as one side of a conversation more beautifully laid out. Talk to Shakespeare and you'll learn something about yourself - and the same is true for many other pieces of great literature. this book is going to test people - test their openness to sex and to literature. For your own sake, read it.

I expected to enjoy this book. I expected to laugh and to learn a lot from it. I did not expect to completely fall in love with it. Yet here we are.Most of the other reviews have covered the qualities that make this book 5-star-worthy. It's funny. It's touching. It's unflinchingly honest. It covers a lot of uncomfortable subjects with self-awareness and grace. And it taught me a lot about kink that I never knew before. Bonus points for learning something new!But it's mostly about people. And words. This is a truly astounding work of literary analysis, wrapped in a memoir, wrapped in kink. The things you think it is about - it is not about. Read it & be amazed!

While not wholly for the conservative, there are only a few scenes which were really out there - well, in a world where adults should be able to talk honestly about sex without blushing.I loved this book. Keenan beautifully mixes Shakespearean analyses into her own life, sexually and not necessarily so. She taught me much about the Bard and BDSM, about life in general and love. The writing is open, honest, and riddled with humor; the serious moments strike as relatable instead of far-fetched, as I personally find many biographical books to be.Please, read this book.

I checked this book out because I had read an article by the author about sex and Shakespeare. I have a slight acquaintance with folks who are into S&M, enough to know that it is emphatically not my kink. Keenan's excellent writing in this book has broadened my understanding of it a bit. What I truly love, however, is her relationship with Shakespeare, how his writing informs and illuminates her life. I can identify with that. This is a passionate, well crafted, humorous and touching book, and I am glad I read it.

Love of spanking, love of Shakespeare, love of a dude who doesn't love spanking and multiple sclerosis weave together into this compelling memoir that left me questioning how far I'd go for what I want.Also, magical realism that I feel like shouldn't work but kinda does.

So what do you call literary criticism that is done through the lens of your sexual fetish? Not sure, but it is refreshing. Spank the author if you disagree -- she'll enjoy it.

A brave, deeply touching memoir for anyone who has wrestled with their own sexuality.Readers who’ve ever dealt with a part of their sexuality that they couldn’t accept—that they felt somehow was “ugly” or “wrong,” who sought out books as a release from real or perceived isolation—will enjoy Jillian Keenan’s work.Sex with Shakespeare leads the reader through intriguing and frequently heart-wrenching scenes from Keenan’s own life while interweaving them with an entertaining analysis of 14 of Shakespeare’s plays. Simply put, Keenan is obsessed with being spanked. All other sexual activities pale in comparison to this ultimate erotic experience. “I had often wondered what caused this bizarre obsession,” Keenan says about spanking, “but eventually I gave up. It was exhausting to psychoanalyze my erotic life. Recognition and experience didn’t translate into comfort.” Instead, Keenan seeks comfort in dialogues with Shakespearean characters.My favorite part of this book centers around Keenan’s first experience with a boyfriend who shared her kink, an American she meets while living in Spain. (What is it about living overseas that makes it a weird never-neverland of hiding from oneself?) As she describes her first erotic spanking with the intensity of a PG-rated romance novel—there is the obligatory fadeout—she grips the reader with one of the better analyses of Romeo & Juliet I have ever read. “Romeo and Juliet isn’t about young people in love. It’s a story about two young people who desperately hope for love, with tragic results.” Like Romeo and Juliet, Keenan and her boyfriend get caught up in an intensity that’s should never be confused with love or even real passion. Extreme it was, but like Romeo and Juliet’s four-day rollercoaster ride, it was a powerful, all-consuming trip that would ultimately end in tragedy. (Note: no one died, but the pain was not limited to the blows landing on Keenan’s butt.)The book also includes a much-needed discussion of the poisonous nature of “privacy,” and how “privacy” is a silencing technique leading to perilous situations. “’Privacy’ is one of the most potent and insidious weapons a sexual majority can use against people with nonnormative sexualities…it sounds responsible and mature. But ‘privacy’ is tied up with isolation and shame. It drives people underground. It puts people in danger.” When pop culture condemns fetishes, people who have them suffer in silence or turn to unsafe outlets to express them. Sometimes all it takes is a book or a TV show to validate a sexual identity. “Privacy,” which has been losing value in other areas of our lives, including “normal” sexuality, keeps it in the dark. (“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” anyone?)Serious Shakespeare scholars may disagree with her take on things. Shakespeare dilettantes (like me) may appreciate the new perspectives that never came up in college literature courses. Those who don’t care for Shakespeare at all may appreciate how real her struggles feel through no-holds-barred writing. And people who have hidden from their sexuality because it didn’t fit in with what they thought was normal may find it a breath of fresh air.

I usually fall asleep on planes, sometimes before it even takes off. Something about the movement makes me super drowsy. But Sex with Shakespeare is so good it kept me glued to the book on two separate late night 4 hour flights. I’ve never stayed awake on a plane ride that long, so this is really saying something. I couldn’t put it down. Sex with Shakespeare is so brave and funny and smart. Without exaggeration, it’s the most engaging memoir I’ve ever read. It somehow manages to be hilarious, deeply moving, and surprisingly educational (about both Shakespeare and the world of fetishes) all at once. Keenan writes so bravely about her difficult upbringing, her awakening as a spanking fetishist, and the relationships in her life, and she does it in such a funny, personal way that you feel like she’s in the room spilling her guts to you personally. The world of fetishes is one most people don’t usually see, unless they’re already a part of it, and it was really thrilling to get a glimpse of that, and explore the challenges and joys of that world. Also, it’s honestly incredible that one person knows so much about Shakespeare. I’m a former English major, so I’m not completely unfamiliar with his work, but damn---I’m not even sure my lit professors knew as much as Keenan does. But you really don’t have to be a Shakespeare buff or literature nerd to love the Shakespeare parts, because she makes the work so funny and relevant you really won’t even know you’re learning things. And hey, bonus points for being able to bluff your way through a conversation about Shakespeare at your next fancy party. Anyway, in summary, READ THIS BOOK. And then MAKE YOUR FRIENDS READ THIS BOOK, because you'll be a more empathetic and knowledgeable human afterward.

As both a kinky person and an English major, I was very excited about a book combining kink with literary criticism. Finding links between the two was done well, and it was interesting to hear about the writer's history with her kink. The parts about her relationships that weren't related to her sexuality bored me, and the imaginary conversations with Shakespearean characters device started to feel forced by the end, but for the most part I enjoyed this book and think it would do a good job giving non-kinky people some insight into how it can work.

Memoir is the genre of our age for a reason. As a culture we are just learning to confront reality, and each new story opens another window onto it. This memoir of a young Shakespeare scholar working through her sexual identity is so rich and honest and smart and humane. And her readings of Shakespeare's plays are really insightful. Thrilling, even.

4.5/5 Stoya's Bookclub.I really liked this one. Keenan is a Shakespeare specialist and uses her love of the work to explore, understand and accept her very specific sexuality: Spanking. Keenan did a wonderful job on this, exploring both sexuality, Shakespeare, language at large and her life (it is ultimately a memoir first), and it is just insanely readable. It gets scholarly, but always approachable and understandable (at least to this barely literate public educated reader), and it does get more than a little sexy in the explorations. I just adored this one, it wasn't what I expected (spanking porn) but it was incredibly thought provoking and a really interesting breakdown into what sexuality can mean to a person.

I have NO idea how this book got on my list....and I was reluctant to read it because....Shakespeare, but I have to say, this one was a winner. This is part memoir, part Shakespeare analysis , part intro to fetishes/kink. It was fascinating. I really enjoyed learning so much....shockingly, about Shakespeare. The book made me want to go back and read more of his plays...and analyze/discuss....study them. Yes, I need a life. The author, Jillian Keenan writes very openly about her love/sex life, childhood and relationships with all sorts of people while weaving different plays and characters through her anecdotes to help illustrate how she understands Shakespeare's writing....and her own view of the world. She talks about both comedies and tragedies--- both Shakespeare's plays her and her own world. She has MS. She has a spanking fetish. She has a deep love for a man who does not understand her style. She is a journalist....and an expert. She manages to juggle all of this so that you don't read this book JUST to her about her sex anecdotes, but also to find out why Antony never returned to Rome....and how Juliet really felt about Romeo. I really felt this book was worth my time. Read if you enjoy Shakespeare and read with an open mind.Popsugar 2020: A book by or about a journalist

Overall, Sex with Shakespeare is as subversive and entertaining as the title. The unique blend of analysis and memoir make this book unlike anything I've previously read. Keenan has a complex story, as many within the Kink community do, that she tells within the realms of Shakespeare. I couldn't put this book down every time I picked it up. I would highly recommend this book to any sex-positive reader, regardless of Shakespeare background. Keenan's book is a work of genius that stands on its own from other Shakespeare analysis or sexual memoir.

"What you blush to tell….is the most important part of the whole matter." Ars Amatoria"If love be rough with you, be rough with love." Romeo & JulietFull disclosure: I checked this book out of the library because of its title. I figured, it could be awful but, with that title, I had to give it a chance.It got off to a bad start: I was annoyed by the author's trigger warning -- until I read her snarky send-up of the concept.The book starts, implausibly, in Oman, where the author is taking a gap year from Stanford to find herself, although, at first, she thinks she is there to escape herself. Until she finds herself face-to-face with a goat, as one does, and thinks: "If I were going to walk by myself, at night, into the middle of the desert, wearing cartoon duck pajamas and an abaya, just to scream the name of one of Shakespeare's least lovable male characters, it might as well be on the same day that I tried to find spanking porn in an Islamic public Internet café. Go big or go home, right?" (pp. 6-7)Keenan is an insightful and observant scholar of Shakespeare, with a unique take on his work. She captures the evergreen appeal of the Bard: the sensuality in the rhythm of his words. "Wordplay is sex play" (p. 77) is my mantra, which could explain why I like Shakespeare. But this book isn't really about Shakespeare; it's about coming to terms with having a fetish.The term "fetish" is often used loosely to mean anything you like, even in a non-sexual way. For example, I like magazines and subscribe to an obscene number of them, so I joke that I have a "magazine fetish". But a true fetish is something its victim cannot get off without. It is not a part of their sexuality; it displaces their sexuality, and Keenan worried it might disrupt intimacy in other ways, too: "My fetish makes gender irrelevant. It makes conventional physical attractiveness irrelevant. It makes even sex irrelevant. Does it make love irrelevant, too?" (p. 276) She does a stark and sobering job of explaining how a fetish is not a choice, it is an obsession. There is nothing casual about a fetish and it is extremely limiting. Fetishes are generally a turn-off for those who do not share them. The Internet has enabled the author to find fellow fetishists, and willing partners to indulge her kink, but absent the Internet she could have been suicidally-depressed or celibate. It sounds funny that she needs to be spanked, but it isn't humorous to her. I am guilty of using the term "fetish" as loosely as anyone but I am grateful not to have any true fetishes, nor would I wish one on anyone. (Well, I might wish a particularly embarrassing and humiliating one on my ex.)Keenan's fetish troubled her because of its anti-feminist connotations and connections to domestic violence. The book chronicles her coming to terms, and finding partners, including, eventually, a husband, who indulge her kink. Fetishes are not usually reciprocal; she had no use for a partner who also liked being spanked. She needed to find people who liked to spank and who were otherwise suitable partners. It's hard enough to find someone compatible without the added complication of a fetish. She could not be happy with a great guy who was perfect in every way but took no pleasure in applying her hairbrush to her behind, nor with a jerk who was great with a paddle.Keenan never fully psychoanalyses where her fetish originates. She avoids pointing the finger at her volatile, physically and emotionally abusive mother. ("I had understood ever since I was nine….that I wasn't entitled to anything." p. 200) She poignantly opines that we learn how to love from observing our parents – something she was unable to do. She seeks love in the normal way that is simply part of human nature ("Love is dangerous, but I think that's how love has to be sometimes. Love is a miracle." p. 152), but she needs her kink catered to because it is "the only thing that could free me from the confines of my neurotic, self-conscious, insecure mind and release me into my body" (p. 77). If I could apply a little amateur psychoanalysis to her, I'd note that people who are into BDSM often have something in their past that has caused them to disconnect to survive. They have difficulty with feelings because they have become so good at blocking them out for self-protection. Pain is the one thing that breaks through. This is why people cut themselves. (If you've seen the movie Secretary you know that the main character is scarred from cutting herself.) "Pain is not the opposite of pleasure. The opposite of pleasure is numbness." (p. 102) BDSM is self-medication; it's a coping strategy.I used to write an advice column in the persona of a dominatrix. It was just a lark but I received genuine pleas for advice from people like Keenan, who wanted to hurt themselves or who wanted other people to hurt them. I made myself despised in the BDSM world because, whilst these people wanted to know how to find someone who would tie them up & carve knife art into their backs, I advised them to seek therapy to deal with the underlying issues. The mentality in the BDSM world is that you can't control what turns you on; it's formed in early childhood and it's fixed and immutable by adulthood, and therapy doesn't always work so it's as healthy a coping mechanism as any. I don't agree that it's always healthy. I'm open to being proven wrong, and I don't see anything unhealthy about indulging in the lighter end of the BDSM spectrum with your partner if it appeals to both of you (I've applied my hand to someone's ass on a few occasions – it makes a satisfying sound when you do it right), but I don't think self-medicating with hardcore BDSM is any healthier than using drugs or alcohol for the same purpose.This book is about the author's journey to acceptance of her fetish, and how Shakespeare helped. She starts off with the obvious point that we can't view Shakespeare's plays through the lens of modern sensibilities. Demetrius telling Helena she is foolish to risk her honour by meeting him alone is a rape threat; Oberon giving Titania the potion to make her fall for Bottom ("of course that's his name" p. 23) is tantamount to using a date rape drug. (Just imagine applying this same exercise to opera – Tristan and Isolde would fill a book on its own.)Keenan sees a solution to the problem of consent in Shakespeare: What if the characters are kinky? What if Helena isn't pathetic and self-debasing, but a sexual masochist? What if, given their lack of power, Shakespeare's women are topping from the bottom – e.g., What if Kate's shrewishness is a deliberate protection from her father marrying her off against her will? "Characters," she notes, "are like clouds: we all see different animals hidden in them." (p. 21)Using Shakespeare as a medium to work through her issues was a brilliant move. She stumbled on it after a few false starts: "When beginning to explore a divergent sexual identity, do not turn to French cinema." (p. 38) Good advice. But why no Much Ado amongst the featured plays? You could hardly pick a more appropriate one for expounding on honour, shaming, and issues of dominance/submission between the sexes. Beatrice, to no-one's surprise, is my favourite Shakespearean character and the delicious wordplay of her sparring with Benedick is perfect for this.As I said, I am grateful not to suffer the limitations of any fetish (no, ice cream doesn't count). The closest I came to observing one was back when City Boy and I attended play parties. We were monogamous, so we went for the voyeurism and exhibitionism, not to interact with anyone. But I dressed as a dom and one night a young Australian man asked if he could lick my boots. I consented, and quickly regretted it. He knelt at my feet and licked with a cringe-inducing self-debasement, paying special attention to the soles. Considering this was NYC, and I'd taken the subway there, I found this nauseating. He did this for a long time, clearly getting off on it, whilst I remained transfixed in fascinated horror. City Boy, missing my obvious disgust, accused me of enjoying it but I would have had no qualms about admitting it if I had. Owning up to enjoying a dominant role is generally easier than admitting to submissive tendencies; except in extreme form, it doesn't carry the same baggage, as Keenan discovered. I don't have a submissive bone in my body but, had I any submissive tendencies, I'd face the same feminist barriers to admitting them as the author and I doubt I'd have her courage to go public.There are few things less appealing than other people's fetishes but, if "Sex with Shakespeare" is any guide, that does not necessarily apply to books about fetishes. I recommend this one to Shakespearean scholars and to anyone exploring their sexuality. Even if you don't have a specific fetish like Keenan, it takes a great deal of vulnerability, of courage to risk rejection and ridicule, to share what turns you on. You can't achieve true intimacy without vulnerability so some people simply live without it. The author stood up to her fears -- or, should I say, bent over – it stung a bit and raised a few welts of self-doubt, but she wound up rosy-cheeked and happy in the end.

Content warning: Sex, sexuality, fetishes, molestation, assault, drug use, health issues Jillian Keenan’s “Sex with Shakespeare” is either going to be your exact cup of tea or it’s going to absolutely annoy the shit out of you. Fortunately, dear reader, you will know this either by just looking at the cover or by thumbing through the first few pages. Keenan’s memoir opens during her time in Oman where she’s trying to conquer and fully get rid of her spanking fetish and her love of playwright William Shakespeare in one fell swoop. (Spoiler alert: It doesn’t work.) Neither are conducive to her life and won’t help her be productive, you see, so it’s just better to cut that part of herself away.But neither these parts of herself can be denied, which she discovers while umm…befriending a goat. Yeah, you read that correctly. Again, this is why I say you’ll either be fully into this book or you’ll put it down and never pick it up again.Then the rest of the book follows Keenan from her unusual and difficult childhood to the beginning of her career as a writer and journalist. We also follow her through several romantic relationships and trips across the globe. All the while she envisions many of Shakespeare’s classic heroes and heroines and dissects the plays. At times, it’s a little much, especially toward the end, but it works.It’s a complex little memoir, but Keenan has an accessible and breezy style. It’s been years since I read any of the Bard’s stuff, but she’s able to break down the plots and sonnets without dumbing them down. She also has some interesting interpretations of the plays, which I’m into. There are a lot of things really stick out about this book, namely that Keenan is coming to terms with her sexuality. This book takes you on a journey, not only through travel, but emotions as well. You’ll feel joy, sadness and embarrassment. You’ll also laugh a lot and cringe more than a few times. (Keenan makes some questionable choices.)Some of the content will be shocking to readers, but at the same time, it’s an important book. It’s 2018 and the U.S. is literally still debating if women and folks with uteruses can have bodily autonomy. So something like “Sex with Shakespeare” where our author is going after the sex and romance she wants would, undoubtedly, cause some pearl clutching among folks who don’t think women are people. (They exist. They’re awful. I hope they step on a Lego.) And among those people, Keenan’s upbringing and the contents of the book will probably reinforce some not-so-good assumptions they have about kinky people, though Keenan does address all these points. That said, there were some things that did irritate me as a reader, just a little bit. The first was the aforementioned literally envisioning Shakespeare’s characters speaking to Keenan. It’s just a little much. Second, Keenan does some things that are unbelievably frustrating. I’m not just talking about her actions in the book, but the fact that she leaves out some critical information during her childhood and adolescence that are referenced in later chapters. It’s hard not to feel cheated when that happens. Thirdly, Keenan has this annoying habit of saying something along the lines of “this thing is hard to describe!” even though she’s been describing it for pages and pages and living it. This grated on me more than a few times. Fourth, she has a joke-y “content warning” at the beginning of the book, which wasn’t cool. But on the whole, I enjoyed this. It was an insightful and funny memoir.