India, Nov. 8 -- If you're too young to have read David Reuben's 1969 best-seller Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask and you haven't got around to the Kama Sutra, then Shobhaa De's latest book might be of interest. It's called The Sensual Self: Explorations of Love, Sex & Romance. Last week she asked her publisher to send me a copy and I spent the next few days reading it.

I would describe it as a manual on how to make love and how not to, the different ways of attempting it and how to enhance your pleasure. Some chapters could be inappropriate for a family newspaper. But there's a lot that's just fun.

Not surprisingly, Shobhaa is rather concerned about how women are treated. "Women need to feel valued...