E. L. James, the British author of the erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey and its litter of sequels, has sold some 54 million books worldwide. Her smashing success has only strengthened the sociologically murky idea that getting turned on by words rather than images is somehow unmanly. Visual pornography certainly has its place, and that place is my computer screen at 10 p.m. on a Friday night whenever my girlfriend is out of town. However, we as men surrender some valuable terrain if we accept that the production and consumption of sexy books is simply not for us. The best way to seduce an intelligent woman? It's shockingly simple, really. Read to her.

There are plenty of genuinely hot books written by women—Lisa Zeidner's Layover, Josephine Hart's _Damage, _Marguerite Duras's The Lover—but _Fifty Shades of Grey _is not one of them. As a work of art, the only way it could be worse is if it ended with "Heil Hitler." The novel's narrator is Anastasia Steele, a charmless dolt who doesn't like to dance, wear nice clothes, have sex, or say interesting things. During one of her early meetings with Christian Grey, the Pacific Northwest's richest and most eligible bachelor, she pukes. Yet Grey is taken with her. "You're a mystery, Miss Steele," he tells her early in the book. Sixty pages later: "I am in awe of you." She's not, and he shouldn't be.

Reading James's book on a recent flight from Los Angeles to Detroit, I turned to Sue, the extremely nice mom-of-four with whom I shared row 23. She had, of course, read all the Grey books. "Come on," I said. "What on earth would Christian Grey ever see in Anastasia Steele? It's ridiculous!"

Sue, I could tell, was hurt by this question. She fumbled around in her mind's attic for a moment before saying, "She's the only one who doesn't want his money."

"She loves his money! She's constantly impressed with all the helicopter rides!"

Sue stared at me, undaunted. "She unders__tands him."

Changing tack, I pointed out to Sue two passages that particularly bothered me. Passage one: "Still kneeling, he grasps my foot and undoes my Converse, pulling off my shoe and sock."

"That," I said, "is the least erotic sentence in the history of language."

"I think it's sweet," Sue said.

Passage two: " ‘Aargh!' I cry as I feel a weird pinching sensation deep inside me as he rips through my virginity."

"Sue, listen to me. ‘Aargh' does not belong in any novel, much less an erotic one."

"But the whole novel is about pain and pleasure."

I decided to confront Sue with anthropological directness. "So. Sue. You found this novel sexy. You were turned on by it."

Sue looked away. "Oh, yes."

Sue's husband, who I should point out was listening to all this, began to nod. "She really did," he said. Had Sue's husband read it? "After my master's degree," he said, "I decided to stop reading books."

Fair enough. It was then that I realized why women across the Western world were firing up their vibrators at the thought of Christian Grey flogging the imbecilic Anastasia Steele. The story was the wand by which E. L. James had transformed the realm's every mom-jeaned frump into a preciously violated princess. You could argue that we see the male equivalent of this dynamic all the time in sitcoms wherein the pudgy dork cohabits with the curiously hot young wife. The crucial difference is we don't masturbate to sitcoms. Not ideally, anyway.

There is, of course, absolutely nothing wrong with reading an occasional trashy book before having a wank and turning in. But if you're looking to master the fine art of Erotic Cooperative Reading, trashy books aren't going to do it—unless bursting into embarrassed laughter counts as foreplay. Prose doesn't need to suffer in the conjuration of body heat. Here are five novels that prove it.