The First Time - NYTimes.com For its Sex Issue, The New York Times Book Review spoke to several authors, including Sam Lipsyte and Alison Bechdel, about their first illicit reading experience. More than 200 readers then shared memories of their "first times" with us online. So I asked a few people at The Times if they would like to join the growing chorus, and here's what they said: Dwight Garner, Book Critic The first sex scenes I stumbled upon were definitely in John Jakes's books. He wrote these mulchy, meandering American Revolution and Civil War novels with titles like "The Bastard" and "North and South." I equated quantity with quality when I was 11 or 12, so I pretty much thought he was Tolstoy. In Jakes's books there were heaving bosoms and valiant studs at the ready every 15 pages or so. It was a fantastic narrative strategy. I'd stay up reading all night, just to get to the next set of tingles. I now occasionally wish late Henry James had a sex scene every 15 pages, too. Gregory Cowles, Preview Editor, Book Review About halfway up the bookshelves in my parents" family room, nestled between "The Game of Go" and "Please Pass the Salt" (which collected poems from Good Housekeeping, Family Circle and the like), was a squat book with the innocuous title "Some Limericks." Compiled by Norman Douglas and published by Grove Press - of course - it contained the cheeriest depravities I've ever seen. The man from Nantucket was there, and so were randy clergymen, desperate housewives, restless pet owners and innocent schoolgirls. Each was a small miracle of compression, perfectly filthy and perfectly mysterious. How old was I when I first chanced across them? Old enough, according to Douglas's introduction: "I am fully convinced," he wrote, "that nobody under the age of 10 should peruse these pages, since he would find them so obscure in places that he might be discouraged from taking up the subject later on, which would be a pity. Ten, and not before, is the right age to commence similar studies; a boy of 10 is as sagacious and profound as one of 18, and often more intellectual. Now I have a 10-year-old son of my own, and the book still rests in the same place on my parents" shelves. I don't think I'll point it out to him, but if he finds it for himself I won't take it away either. These are "some limericks" the way Wilbur, in "Charlotte's Web," is some pig. Frank Bruni, Op-Ed Columnist I was 11 or 12 and I plucked "The Other Side of Midnight" from the living-room bookshelf. I'd seen my mother, who loved her potboilers, devour the novel, and I precociously fancied myself an adult enough reader to tackle anything she had. Plus there was that title. No one gave title like Sidney Sheldon gave title: "The Other Side of Midnight," "Rage of Angels," "Windmills of the Gods." I read "Midnight" in my bed late at night, not sure if Mom would approve, because it had ample sex in it, and to this day I remember - and possibly misremember - two erotic scenes in particular. One described the mighty size and precariousness of an erection; the other involved a woman rubbing onto a man some sort of lotion or potion that miraculously intensified his pleasure. Do I have that correct? All these years later, I can't be sure. But I'm certain of this: reading "Midnight" was like beholding an alien land at once beckoning and absolutely terrifying. I dreaded the day I'd cross into it, and couldn't wait. Jennifer Schuessler, Culture Reporter Growing up, I never managed to find any illicit or otherwise embarrassing reading material in our house, unless you count Reader's Digest Condensed Books (which always seemed to cut out any vaguely dirty bits). Neighbors" houses, however, were another matter. For a well-behaved Midwestern junior high student like me, babysitting jobs allowed me not just to gorge on junk food my mother wouldn't buy, but also to sneak peeks at books like "The Happy Hooker" after my young charge had gone to bed. I also remember spotting "The Breast" by Philip Roth on one shelf, but I guess I sensed it was going to be a bit beyond me. Sadly, I don't remember any lessons I took away from Xaviera Hollander's chipper account of her days as a secretary turned working girl in Manhattan, except that her line of work seemed to pay a lot more than baby-sitting. Alexandra Jacobs, Features Editor, Styles There was Shirley Conran's "Lace," hidden in my mother's closet for some reason, though we had walls of books everywhere else in our apartment; Harold Robbins's "Carpetbaggers," which I discovered one humid summer at a beach house we rented in Barnegat Light, N.J. (along with a proto-Atkins diet book, even more illicit in its way, called "Martinis and Whipped Cream"); and the more highbrow "Flowers for Algernon," which my older brother was shocked to find out had been assigned to my progressive seventh-grade English class, resulting in an awkward silence at our normally animated dinner table.