The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana Book

Like most children, my brother and I knew where everything was in our house, paying particular attention to the things we weren't supposed to know about. This book was contained in a shoebox in the closet of my parent's bedroom.

The Kama Sutra is commonly mismarketed as a sex guide or as pornography. Although courtesans are mentioned, it is not about the sex trade but includes discussion of marriage, adultery, transvestism, homosexuality etc. Most memorable from the childhood perusal of it is the long listing of positions for coitus, many, if not all, of them named for various animals. This was weirdly fascinating, not for any erotic charge--there isn't any--but for the suggestions it implanted about how strange Indian culture must have been.

I suppose Mom and Dad must have been disappointed also, neither of them having evinced any particular interest in the mores of medieval India.