Review of The Threesome Handbook
Well ... all right, because I know there are a lot of people out there who are curious but afraid to get their hands on a copy, I guess it's time to break down and review (time to cover your eyes if you're prude--or if there are things about Misha you really don't want to know!)-- Misha's wife Vicki Vantoch's book "The Threesome Handbook," which I received quite unexpectedly from a fellow SPN/Misha fan for Christmas.
First off, if you're reading the book for details about what Misha's like in the sack, you'll be disappointed ... whereas I suppose if you're reading it fearing you'll learn too much about that, you'll probably also be disappointed/traumatized. (I SOOO wanted to use my "pornographic pictures of Misha" tag for this review, but that would be misleading, alas.) Which is all to say, she does a remarkable job of keeping most specific mentions of her husband out of the book considering she says straight out that this is a thing they do as a couple ... but at the same time, it's impossible not to read between the lines when she talks frankly about various activities she or "men" or "her partners" particularly enjoy, she seems to have a great deal of first-hand knowledge of a particular thing ... you get the picture.
When I opened the present, I was initially kind of stunned/horrified. I don't consider myself squeamish talking about sex, and I can read extremely graphic fic with no trouble. I knew this book existed, but I had never imagined actually seeing a copy, much less owning one. The whole threesome concept had always seemed to me fun in a fic but unrealistic/out-there in reality. Frankly, to the degree I'd ever seriously contemplated the whole subject, I'd always figured jealousy or physics or incompatible sexual orientations (two straight same-sex participants, for example) would kill it in reality, and here is where the book is most successful: Vantoch is straightforward, thorough, and realistic about the whole thing enough to not only make you able to wrap your mind around the idea but also to normalize it.
After putting it far away from my bed and avoiding glancing at it for a couple of days, I finally decided to just get it over with and have a look, and after a few groans and cringey moments, it soon stopped seeming weird and just seemed fun and interesting. Be forewarned, though: she uses pretty raw language (I suppose there's no point in trying to be delicate when writing such a book) and talks VERY frankly about all manner of sex acts, which can be jarring when you first pick it up.
The aforementioned illustrations are one of the best things about the book. Simple but straightforward line drawings, the artist somehow manages to say so much with so little, particularly with what serves as "facial expressions," usually just a little squiggle of a mouth. Seriously, this artist is talented. The drawings somehow manage to be simultaneously porny, cute, and diagrammatic. (I'd also like to give a shoutout to the cover art, which is a photograph of a man, a woman, and an androgynous figure from the back. You stare at it mesmerized, going, "Is it male? Female? Both? Neither?")
The book can get kind of repetitive, and it seems weighted far more toward couples seeking a third than toward singles and their side of the coin, but all in all, it's a good book. When I saw the cover online and the small-potatoes publisher, I was afraid it would be some low-rent pulp crap with bad art and printing and little editing, but it's actually a quality product with nice paper and fonts and is pretty well-written. (One of the book's silly little pleasures is seeing how many different hilarious ways she can come up with to refer to parts of the anatomy or activities, presumably just to avoid using the same terms over and over again--some of what she comes up with are pretty ridiculous, though I've heard worse.)
Also, I found the whole trolling-bars-looking-to-pick-someone-up section off-putting, to be honest--exactly as off-putting as I and so many people find it when on the receiving end of some sleazy pickup. So, that part got weird, and I haven't been able to bring myself to read the whole section about all the details of how it's actually accomplished, from lube to toys to accoutrements, because it's VERY graphic (if it helps you to know this, she says in the acknowledgements that Misha was always supportive but not very happy she was writing it :-] ), but the parts about what she sees as the benefits, the realities of the emotional aspect, and the reasons she wrote the book and how she and Misha got into it in the first place are all quite interesting. I admire her for having the courage to publish it under her own name, which she says she debated a lot, and for 'coming out' about this; that can't have been easy. There's got to be a well-crafted manual on the subject out there, and good for her for being the one to write it!
To sum up, if you are interested in threesomes, polyamory, alternative sexual/relationship configurations, or even just in writing realistically about these things, I'd say this is your go-to resource.
First off, if you're reading the book for details about what Misha's like in the sack, you'll be disappointed ... whereas I suppose if you're reading it fearing you'll learn too much about that, you'll probably also be disappointed/traumatized. (I SOOO wanted to use my "pornographic pictures of Misha" tag for this review, but that would be misleading, alas.) Which is all to say, she does a remarkable job of keeping most specific mentions of her husband out of the book considering she says straight out that this is a thing they do as a couple ... but at the same time, it's impossible not to read between the lines when she talks frankly about various activities she or "men" or "her partners" particularly enjoy, she seems to have a great deal of first-hand knowledge of a particular thing ... you get the picture.
When I opened the present, I was initially kind of stunned/horrified. I don't consider myself squeamish talking about sex, and I can read extremely graphic fic with no trouble. I knew this book existed, but I had never imagined actually seeing a copy, much less owning one. The whole threesome concept had always seemed to me fun in a fic but unrealistic/out-there in reality. Frankly, to the degree I'd ever seriously contemplated the whole subject, I'd always figured jealousy or physics or incompatible sexual orientations (two straight same-sex participants, for example) would kill it in reality, and here is where the book is most successful: Vantoch is straightforward, thorough, and realistic about the whole thing enough to not only make you able to wrap your mind around the idea but also to normalize it.
After putting it far away from my bed and avoiding glancing at it for a couple of days, I finally decided to just get it over with and have a look, and after a few groans and cringey moments, it soon stopped seeming weird and just seemed fun and interesting. Be forewarned, though: she uses pretty raw language (I suppose there's no point in trying to be delicate when writing such a book) and talks VERY frankly about all manner of sex acts, which can be jarring when you first pick it up.
The aforementioned illustrations are one of the best things about the book. Simple but straightforward line drawings, the artist somehow manages to say so much with so little, particularly with what serves as "facial expressions," usually just a little squiggle of a mouth. Seriously, this artist is talented. The drawings somehow manage to be simultaneously porny, cute, and diagrammatic. (I'd also like to give a shoutout to the cover art, which is a photograph of a man, a woman, and an androgynous figure from the back. You stare at it mesmerized, going, "Is it male? Female? Both? Neither?")
The book can get kind of repetitive, and it seems weighted far more toward couples seeking a third than toward singles and their side of the coin, but all in all, it's a good book. When I saw the cover online and the small-potatoes publisher, I was afraid it would be some low-rent pulp crap with bad art and printing and little editing, but it's actually a quality product with nice paper and fonts and is pretty well-written. (One of the book's silly little pleasures is seeing how many different hilarious ways she can come up with to refer to parts of the anatomy or activities, presumably just to avoid using the same terms over and over again--some of what she comes up with are pretty ridiculous, though I've heard worse.)
Also, I found the whole trolling-bars-looking-to-pick-someone-up section off-putting, to be honest--exactly as off-putting as I and so many people find it when on the receiving end of some sleazy pickup. So, that part got weird, and I haven't been able to bring myself to read the whole section about all the details of how it's actually accomplished, from lube to toys to accoutrements, because it's VERY graphic (if it helps you to know this, she says in the acknowledgements that Misha was always supportive but not very happy she was writing it :-] ), but the parts about what she sees as the benefits, the realities of the emotional aspect, and the reasons she wrote the book and how she and Misha got into it in the first place are all quite interesting. I admire her for having the courage to publish it under her own name, which she says she debated a lot, and for 'coming out' about this; that can't have been easy. There's got to be a well-crafted manual on the subject out there, and good for her for being the one to write it!
To sum up, if you are interested in threesomes, polyamory, alternative sexual/relationship configurations, or even just in writing realistically about these things, I'd say this is your go-to resource.