this is how I learned about sex. Thanks mom and dad for owning it! Also, I stole it from you.

I banished Nin's life story from my mind, banished what I've read of the diaries and everything else but the material in hand(s). There's a beauty to the writing in these stories. Some deal with subjects that are uncomfortable for some people and taboo for others; I went in sweeping all that aside. There was a man in Paris who had a private collection of erotic stories. He paid Anais Nin and great writers hanging around Paris with more talent than money a dollar a page for them. I found myself w...

PEOPLE ARE WASTING THEIR TIME NOWADAYS WITH AN OVERLOAD OF TOTALLY INSIGNIFICANT, SHALLOW EROTICA-BOOKS ! ANAIS NIN IS A GODDESS OF MASTERFULLY WRITTEN, DARK EROTICA - HER CHARMING VULNERABILITY AND PERSONAL HONESTY IS PART OF HER POETRY ! SOME OF THE THINGS SHE HAS WRITTEN ABOUT HAVE THE POWER TO BE SOMETIMES DISTURBING BUT THEY ARE ALSO A UNIQUE TESTIMONY ABOUT ANAIS NIN AS A PERSON, THE WOMAN SHE BECAME, THE WOMAN SHE WAS ! ALL THAT IS MEANINGFUL AND PROFOUNDLY MOVING ! (L.prytikin)

I give Little Birds four stars in comparison to Delta of Venus' two, though as a stand alone, it would probably only get 2 or 3. There are almost no disgusting and despicable sex scenes in Little Birds, and for this, I am grateful. (As it turns out, I'm a bit prudish after all...) Little Birds is set in various places around the world, but quite often set in New York and New Orleans. It feels more modern than Delta of Venus. It feels more aware, more present. And this, my second dip into a colle...

The stories here, which I found to be more finely crafted and deeper than Delta of Venus, were clever, entertaining, and of course, sexy. In my opinion, Nin set the bar higher than anyone else when it comes to erotic literature. This is literary erotica for intellectuals, and her beautiful style of writing which is easy to connect with covers a range of sexual and sensual indulgences, and reveals insights into the mysteries of women and their sexuality. Most are based on her adventurous experien...

So… I totally stole my first copy of this book from my mother. I learnt more about sex, sensuality and pleasure from Anais Nin than from anything else I had ever read on the subject until much later in life, and for that, I would like to thank her.Weird confessions aside, this is a beautifully written collection of short stories, that explore not just heterosexual intercourse, but all kinds of other interesting sexual escapades, some quite out of the norm – but bear in mind that this was a very

In Full FlightThe titular birds feature in polar opposite contexts in this collection of erotica.In the first story, Marcel rents an attic with a terrace. He feeds the birds, so as to attract the attention of schoolgirls across the road. Having won their trust, he exposes himself to the girls, after which they take fright and run away, like little birds.In the last story, a runaway 16 year old girl, Jeanette, finds physical shelter with Jean and Pierre. She wants to have a few men to herself. "O...

This is bad erotica. In 13 stories only one focuses on two people screwing because they like it. I read the whole thing and here are the stories (spoilers aplenty):1. Open with pedophilia2. Magic mystery sex with a stranger who romantically recounts being raped in a crowd while watching a hanging.3. Main character Lina just needs a bit of rape to get her to like sex.4. Adorable tales of boys molesting their little sisters, and how it leads to a vigorous incestuous sex life.5. This one is just bo...

This little book of short stories is by far some of the finest erotica ever written. Nin is a true master of love, lust, and the body’s betrayal of our innermost desires. Nin writes with a simple elegance. Never overdoing the imagery, we get just what we need to feel the work without a crass microscopic examination. Nin plunges deeply into the psyche of her characters, and we get more than an up-close and personal intimate glimpse of their inner turmoil as they struggle to break free of their se...

This book, along with it's companion book (they run together in my mind and am talking about both here), Delta of Venus, are wonderfully evocotive erotic stories. They are never the wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am stuff of porn magazines. Sometimes magical, sometimes freaky, with a European sensibility, these stories are softly spellbinding. I can't help but get caught up in them whenever I pick up these books. Elena, Pierre, Leila, the Basque and Bijou, what a cool group of characters! And there are s...

This book would be a great read for someone too conservatively raised to appreciate visual pornography for its valuable lessons in learning how to be comfortable with yourself or your partner. It would be a valuable read for someone who did not know how to caress his or her partner to get them aroused for sex. If someone's fifteen-year-old son asked their mom or dad what sex was all about, first it would be wise to tell them about reproduction, how to avoid it until ready, venereal diseases, and...

Again, minor work by a major talent, her work-for-hire erotic fiction--it's a nice intro to the work of Nin, get your feet wet (so to speak.) Then move on to the major fiction--the unique early short works, Under a Glass Bell and Winter of Artifice, and the novels that comprise Cities of the Interior: Spy in the House of Love, Ladders to Fire, Children of the Albatross... then onto the Diaries, starting in 1931, go forward, then back to the early diaries Linotte. Then subscribe to Cafe in Space,...

I found this less subversive than her more famous collection, Delta of Venus. That book I compared to "a kitty who rolls on her back for you and you reach out to rub her stomach and she shreds your hand with no warning." This one is a little more, like, you want sexy stuff, here's the sexy stuff. I mean, sortof. It's all still pretty weird. Nin leaves no kink unkinked. She deals with power imbalances a lot. She investigates the concept of consent. She is nonjudgmental. If you aren't equally nonj...

This is my first time to read erotica, but because I pretty much have a good idea what to expect, I wasn't at all shocked, surprised, nor repulsed. As I figured, the only way to appreciate erotic literature such as this is to keep an open mind. I would like to report that I did exactly that, in the first stories. Towards the end, however, I could not also help but become cynical and/or sarcastic. After all, how much sex can you read about and let your mind absorb before your head actually, truly...

Anaïs Nin’s posthumous pornography collection put me in mind of that trite old cliché according to which if women directed porn the films would be more story oriented.There’s some very explicit sex going on in here, but Nin seems a lot more interested in the build-up towards the sex, the serpentine circumstances that lead two (or more) people to feel the urge to put different parts of their bodies in each other’s holes. These titillating tales of tongues and titties were commissioned to arouse,

I found this book long after discovering "Delta of Venus" as a boy on someone's book shelf. I read "Little Birds" as an adult and I believe it should be taken in tandem with the former rather than separately. What I can say is that thanks to encountering Anias Nin as a boy, I grew up viewing sexuality and sexual attraction as something that takes place mostly in the mind and it is that tension that she describes, between desire and fear/exhileration, and the surrender that her characters often g...

This book ruined my innocence.

I found this incredibly boring when compared to the eroticism and sensuality of Delta Of Venus. I was expecting far more from Anais Nin, especially when regarding a field that she had so much expertise in.The thing is, erotica is one of those things that is so hard to suffer through when it's dull... there's just no pretending otherwise; and these stories were very similar, caresses followed by a very scientific depiction of oral sex. Sorry to say it did nothing for me.

I think Anais Nin was very courageous in her writing.

"Little Birds" and it's sister volume, "Delta of Venus" were ubiquitous in suburban homes towards the late 70's and early 80's. The simple reason for this was the prevalence of book clubs during this period of time. It seemed like every house had a set of these books sitting slyly on the shelf somewhere. I know that my mother certainly had a set, which I was carefully forewarned against reading until I was 18 years old. So of course I skimmed through them at every opportunity looking for the nau...

Ok first up I bought this knowing that it contained stories that are also in The Delta of Venus and Eros Unbound, so I guess out of 13 stories I've already read 6 most of which I love and adore and would read agian over and over. The remaining 7 left me feeling a little disappointed, the verve seems to have gone, the exquisite delicacy and graceful writing and words, vanished, the languidity replaced by a sense of urgency. Perhapes by the time she wrote these she was bored to tears of writing er...

Favourite stories: The Woman in the Dunes, The Model and Mandra.

Anais Nin is easily one of the highest tier of intelligent, smoothly clever and casually prolific erotica writers in modern literary history. the prologue to this collection of erotic short stories explains clearly how they came to be and why writers did so at the time. to even ponder a reality that she wrote most of this for pay and not for driven inner desire is impressive. think on it like pulling off a term paper, that you have no real personal interest in, over a weekend. your 'teachers' ra...

Read: October 2016Overall rating: 4/5 starsFor me Anais Nin has been a very unpredictable author to read; some of her books (Under a Glass Bell & Collages) I have absolutely loved, others I have loathed (Delta of Venus), while her book of essays (In Favour of the Sensitive Man) left me a bit 'meh.'After the first story in this collection I was afraid that Little Birds would fall into the 'loathe' category but thankfuly Nin veered away from the pedophilic undertones in the remaining stories, actu...

With her eyes alone she could give this response, this absolutely erotic response, as if febrile waves were trembling there, pools of madness... something devouring that could lick a man all over like a flame, annihilate him, with a pleasure never known before.Nin writes about desire and pleasure with imagination and a kind of full-body sensuality. These short stories sometimes feel too abbreviated, stopping abruptly rather than reaching a more natural conclusion. They must have been both shock

So....this was weird and sexy, but very weird...this short stories somewhat hard to swallow....no pun intended.

It was just last year that I read more about Anais Nin, and it was by then that I learned about her relationship with Henry Miller (one of my most favorite writers), which had an obvious impact to both their writings. Erotic, passionate, deeply intellectual, soul-stirring, so human—this was how the way the write. So during the last quarter of last year, I had bought her books, and reading them makes me understand further Henry Miller’s works. Also, I must say that for me, she is, by far, the bes...

This book beats 50 shades of Grey into oblivion - beautifully written - a classic novel - and no stupid girl called Ana saying holy crap all the time...Anaïs Nin

This is a collection of erotic short stories. The best way I can describe the effect of this book on the reader comes from Nin’s own words in the preface. She comments that most writers of erotica do not set out to write such material; they are driven to it by the need for money. “Most of the erotica was written on empty stomachs.” She goes on to note that hunger will stimulate the imagination. But she also cautions that if “you get too hungry, too continuously, you become a bum…” I found some a...

It is unfair to distil the writing of Anaïs Nin into the umbrella term ‘erotica’. Her prose is infused with a surprising sensibility, and she speaks a psychological truth; sexual experiences are not exclusively physical.Little Birds is non-judgemental and never deeply disturbing, exploring a range of cultures and sexualities. My criticism centres on the sameness of the stories, particularly those that focus on the artist’s model trope. Crucially, the line of consent blurs a little too much for c...