16 Banned Books, Ranked By Sexiness

On a scale from 1 to 50 Shades of Grey.

16. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

John Bertram

Naughty bit: "I am not concerned with so-called 'sex' at all. Anybody can imagine those elements of animality. A greater endeavor lures me on: to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets."

Not sexy, guys. Bottom of the list. Basically off of it. Just dangling there.

Verdict: 1 out of 50 Shades of Grey

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15. Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez

Penguin / Via goldenboz.tumblr.com

Naughty bit: "As I kissed her the heat of her body increased, and it exhaled a wild, untamed fragrance." "Blood circulated through her veins with the fluidity of a song that branched off into the most hidden areas of her body and returned to her heart, purified by love."

Pretty sexy, if you're into sadness.

Verdict: 9 out of 50 Shades of Grey

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14. The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Penguin

Naughty Bit: "...it was his being, his existence, which dominated her thought, fading sometimes as if it would melt into the mist of the forgotten, reviving again with an intensity which filled her with an incomprehensible longing."

Edna: the original desperate housewife.

Verdict: 15 out of 50 Shades of Grey

Getty Images / Frederick M. Brown

13. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Wordsworth Classics

Quelque chose de coquin: "...from far away beyond the woods, on the other hills, she heard a vague, prolonged cry, a voice that lingered, and she listened to it in silence as it lost itself like a kind of music in the last vibrations of her tingling nerves."

Lots of sex, no happy endings.

Verdict: 11 out of 50 Shades of Grey

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12. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Penguin / Via gnomeship.blogspot.com

Naughty bit: “A perverse nature can be stimulated by anything. Any book can be used as a pornographic instrument, even a great work of literature if the mind that so uses it is off-balance. I once found a small boy masturbating in the presence of the Victorian steel-engraving in a family Bible.”

Twisted sexy.

Verdict: 18 out of 50 Shades of Grey

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11. The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien

Orion Books

Naughty bit: "Fruits had it: the very heart of, say, a cherry, where the true worth and flavor lay."

Too sexy for the Catholic Church = just sexy enough.

Verdict: 19 out of 50 Shades of Grey

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10. Maurice by E. M. Forster

Penguin

Naughty bit: "He would not – and this was the test – pretend to care about women when the only sex that attracted him was his own. He loved men and always had loved them. He longed to embrace them and mingle his being with theirs."

Rather than allowing this sexy book to be banned by his homophobic society, Forster suppressed publication until after his death. Suppress no longer!

Verdict: 22 out of 50 Shades of Grey

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9. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Penguin

Naughty bit: "He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it."

Why do sexually-liberated female characters on this list keep dying...

Verdict: 26 out of 50 Shades of Grey

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8. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Macmillan

Naughty bit:"'Sir,' she said, 'You are no gentleman!'
'An apt observation,' he answered airily. 'And, you, Miss, are no lady.'"

Oh, Rhett! *fans self vigorously with lace fan*

Verdict: 28 out of 50 Shades of Grey

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7. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Penguin

Naughty bit: "Well, honey, a shot never does a coke any harm!"

Marlon Brando-in-blue-jeans sexy.

Verdict: 32 out of 50 Shades of Grey

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6. Fanny Hill by John Cleland

Bookkake / Via bookkake.com

Naughty bit: "All my foundation in virtue was no other than a total ignorance of vice."

England's first pornographic novel!

Verdict: 35 out of 50 Shades of Grey

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5. Ulysses by James Joyce

Penguin

Naughty bit: "I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

Joyce was reeeeeeal freaky.

Verdict: 38 out of 50 Shades of Grey

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4. The Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

Grove Press / Via yearbookchallenge.blogspot.com

Counterpoint:“Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.”

Henry Miller: Lifetime Recipient of the Most Imaginative Use of the C-Word Award.

Verdict: 43 out of 50 Shades of Grey

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3. The Proof of the Honey by Salwa al Neimi

Europa / Via lindtninja.booklikes.com

Naughty bit: "It was enough for me to think of him and I would be ready for love."

Sexy and subversive.

Verdict 46 out of 50 Shades of Grey

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2. The Winter of Artifice by Anais Nin

Sky Blue Press

Naughty bit: "It is all that is human in me that he devours. He eats me as if my love for him were something he wanted to possess inside his body, at the very core of his body, like fuel. He eats me as if my faith in him were a food he needed for daily sustenance."

Literature. Yum. Isn't reading FUN, guys?!

Verdict: 49 out of 50 Shades of Grey

Getty Images / Vittorio Zunino Celotto

1. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

Penguin

Naughty bit: "We fucked a flame into being."

That's basically the tamest line in this book. At one point Lawrence refers to female genitalia as "softly clamouring, like a sea anemone." Beat that, E. L. James.

50 out of 50 Shades of Grey

Getty Images / Frederick M. Brown

Happy Sexy Books Week, readers.

Fox / Via coccinellevoyage.tumblr.com