Joy’s Book22 Blog

We have already drawn our lucky winner from Nyack, New York for the month of June!  We have two more months to go and there were only 21 enteries last month so your odds look pretty good!  We allow 1 entry per month per household to win the Bedroom Desserts Book & The Sweet & Sexy Kit containing Chocolate Paint, Warming Oil, a Paint Brush and directions/suggestions.  We will not post your name as a winner, just the town and state our winner was from. Blessings, Joy

There have been some articles published and some books that mentions concerns about Phthalates and health risks.  Often times phthlatates are used to soften hard plastics making them more pliable (i.e.: vinyl, nail polish and many of the “jelly” intimacy products.)  There have been some studies that showed negatives effects of phthalates on rodents and that was the impetus of the articles and further studies done to see if humans are too at risk in having them in our products.

The levels of phthalates present in intmacy products is far below any exposure amount not recommended by the EPA, however there has been so much attention to the topic many agencies in the industry are looking to provide phthalate free products. Silicone based products are phthalate free since they are not starting with a hard plastic and making it soft and flexible.

There is some great research out there that gives some easy to read and comprehend information on phthalates, the types of products they are used in & study results performed by the US, EU & EPA.

http://www.phthalates.org/index.asp

 What the media say, vs. what the science says.

See what U.S. and EU scientific reviews say

There are a few products that we offer where we have asked the same question, “Is this really worth the money?”  We have a few friends who are testers for us- they can not possilby represent everyone out there, but they are honest and willing to experiment with products Between their helpful critiques, our personal experience with some of the products and customer feedback we do our best to keep products in stock that we all find helpful and worth the cost.

3 featured products that stand out as kind of pricey, but worth the cost are “O” Topical Stimulating Gel , Quiet Decadent Indulgence 3 ,STUD 100.

The O topical gel has been tested out by a couple of friends and the reviews were that it did the job! One lady described the product as keeping her focused & not letting her mind wander so she could more easily orgasm. She was able to concentrate more on that area since it was providing a nice warm tingle. We recently lowered the price by a $1.00 - our goal was to try to keep the product price down so it equaled about $1.00 per use. This product comes with exceptionally good directions for use, there is a diagram to show how and where to apply the gel, how much to use and how not to waste it.

The Quiet Decadent Indulgence is actually quite powerful, and comparatively speaking it really is a lot more quiet than some of the other vibrators out there. We have had customers recommend this product as well as write in to let us know that it is not only quiet but, their favorite purchase from us!

Lastly we feature the Stud 100, it is unique in that it is a control product in a spray form with Lidocaine instead of benzocaine. Customer have written us to let us know this product is much more effective for them than some of the others they have used.  They actually perfer the spray to a cream and find the lidocaine to be more effective than benzocaine for them. We recently came across a great article about a product in the UK not yet avaible that has the same ingredient, a study was done and the results were very favorable for the spray lidocaine in helping control premature ejactualtion. The article can be found here:

http://www.book22.com/merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=Book22&Product_Code=BW1513&Category_Code=A

We will feature more tried and true- worth the money products as reviews/comments come in. 
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We have an exciting summer ahead of us, with the Summer Desserts Giveaway & Joy going back to finish school.  If you missed it we are giving away a fun and tasty prize in the months of June, July & August.  Here is the link if you want to enter too: Book22 Summer Giveaway!!  The total retail value of the prize each month is $32.00 and consists of the Bedroom Desserts Book & The Sweet & Sexy Kit.

Joy starts back to school to finish her Masters In Counseling at OSU this summer.  Future plans involve also attending The Institute For Sexual Wholeness to become a Licenced Sex Therapist.  It will be a challenge to juggle being a mom, running Book22 & being a student again, but God has clearly called her to this and she will walk by faith and be obedient.

Any prayers for her to persevere and keep the stress level down would be coveted!

We have addressed this question in the past, but have a few more suggestions we can offer now. The intimacy product industry does not score well in regard to product use directions. We have yet to find a book or dvd that would be helpful to Christian couples that offers digarams & or great explanations on how to use these type of products.

There are a couple of helpful products that we offer on our site; the Erotic Massage Book offers detailed sketches that are not offensive to us. There is also the 52 Sexual Positions cards that offer sketches of sexual positions that we found helpful and not offensive as well.  As we have mentioned before to some degree couples just have to experiment to see what works best for them.  Please feel free to comment if you have found a useful guide or have a specific product use question. The odds are good others have wondered the same thing.

We are huge fans of Lori & Paul Byerly of the www.themarriagebed.com -they have provided much needed resources to married couples about the gift of intimacy in a marriage relationship for over a decade now.  They recently were featured on ABC’s Nightline, I found the written story and wanted to post it here for customers to read:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/Story?id=4651272&page=2 

As with all the press I have ever done they did not always get the “quotes” in the right place and it skews what the Byerlys really said, but overall the article turned out well & we found it informative.  I think the thing that is most exciting to us here at Book22 is the tide of change that we see happening in the Christian community, we are “taking back” the gift God gave us and the blessings are happier marriages!  I praise God for putting it on his children’s hearts to take the heat and talk about the subject of sex in a biblical context, in the end marriages will benefit from the acceptance and open lines of communication.

Many couples have children or other people in the house that they would prefer not hear the sound of vibration coming through the bedroom door.

We  have yet to find a Truly noiseless product, but we have ranked a few products here that passed as quiet in our opinion:

For Plug In Items the: Magic Massager rated much better than the Hitachi Magic Wand for being quiet, next up was the Infrared Rechargeable on low this product was very quiet. 

Our first pick for a quiet battery operated vibrator is the : Quiet Decadent Indulgence 3, it has a lot of power to be this quiet.

The next BETTER be quiet- I guess you get what you pay for in this case: Iris Silicone Rechargeable.

 We had a hard time picking the most quiet bullet or egg, I think the Jelly Finger did pretty well- there is a lot of jelly material surrounding the egg it must buffer the noise.

Have an opinion, or come across a super quiet product?  Feel free to leave your comment here.

We recently installed Net Nanny on a computer that we set up for our children.  I went in to see if it worked well and found our site: Book22 still came up.  This surprised me so I went in and picked some of the top Child Internet Filters and contacted them to see if we could be added to the list of blocked sites. We say on our front page in two separate places that our site is for people 18 and over, and we keep the front page very mild with regard to what products we feature.  This is just another way that we thought we could help to protect our children’s innocence, the sites that we wrote to were:

Net Nanny, KidsWatch, SeeNoEvilOnline & ChildWebGuardian, if you know of other often used child filters that we should contact please feel free to leave a comment.

Thank you for your inquiry. My husband and I are both Christians, I since the age of 8 and my husband since the age of 19. We have been married for 13 years now and were both baptized on the day after our wedding at the Calvary Chapel in my home town.We have attended mostly Calvary Chapels since then, but have moved a few times through college and job relocations. There was not always a Calvary Chapel to attend so we found ourselves at a few nondenominational Christian churches along the way. We currently attend an evangelical church it is dynamic and fervent in its dedication to proclaiming the Good News of God’s love in Christ Jesus. So we do indeed consider ourselves evangelical Christians.Our journey to owning and operating Book22 started about 10 years ago. After the birth of our first child I had a hard time feeling intimate with my husband, I went to our Christians family practitioner who suggested I try some personal lubricant. Though this helped I still felt like my body was kind of dead, there was just no response sexually a year later and we were both frustrated.I went online to try to find something to kind of jump start things and was disgusted by what I was filtering through just to add some spice to my marriage bed. I talked to my husband about it and we both thought there had to be a better way.A year later I was lying in bed thinking and praying about the same topic when the Lord put it on my heart to do something about it. I woke up my husband and told him and we ended up staying awake for hours discussing ways to offer intimacy products for married couples like ourselves.

Book22 has now been in operation for 8 years and has been quite successful. We have also ministered on a daily bases to hurting couples who are at their wits end like we were years ago about their intimate lives. There are some things so private you do not wish to discuss them with your pastor/counselor or even a sex-therapist. My best example has been the many couples who have contacted us because they followed God’s plan to wait to have sexual intercourse until marriage just to find out they did not fit well. The women having a large vaginal opening and or the husband having a rather small penis size.

No man I have ever met wants to sit down face to face with another human being and say they have a smaller than average size penis, period.

So we have offered hope, creative ideas and products that help to build girth and length and increased duration for couples who really just want to have some feeling during sexual intercourse. They do not know us, they do not have to see us, it is completely anonymous and I think that is why it is working so well.

We have helped the elderly and the disabled in a way we never anticipated. Most of our special order page has come about as requests from couples that have some kind of disability that has kept them from being sexually fulfilled with their spouse. We originally had no intentions of carrying most of the products on the Special Order page, but soon found out we were naive to think that other couples had their sexual organs working as ours do.

We do receive criticism from other believers at times, I take those moments to the Lord. I do not care if Book22 is gone tomorrow, it is actually a lot of work somedays. I just lay it down before Jesus each day for Him to direct it as He may, and He continues to bring people to us for help. In response to anyone who thinks what we are doing is unholy/sinful and wrong- I say fine, pray about it. I am not being stubborn or self righteous about this business, if it does not glorify Him, I pray it would decease from being a business anymore.

In response to your more specific questions:

1) How do you understand God to fit into a Christian couple’s sex life?

Sex was created by God and is a gift from God; he should be as much a part of this aspect of our lives as any other.

2) Do you think sexuality in marriages is adequately covered by Churches or Church communities?

No, though I think the tide is changing. There are more marriage intimacy seminars and Christian resources now than ever before.

3) How do you negotiate biblical rules and guidelines with sexual satisfaction? Do you see any tension between the issue of sex in a Biblical paradigm?

There shouldn’t be much tension between sex and the Bible- again God created sex. There are a handful of things that God is very specific about for us to avoid sexually, I think everything else is potentially allowable- there is freedom in Christ. For a list of the things the Bible clearly asks us to stay away from please follow this link:

http://www.themarriagebed.com/pages/bible/app/whatisokay.shtml

4) What is the impact of your website specifically on women?

Many women have difficulty with achieving orgasms; we offer many products that have helped woman even in their late 70’s achieve orgasms for the first time in their lives. I think there is freedom that can be found for women who grew up in a prudish home where sex was never discussed as well on our website. They are learning for the first time that it is okay to be desirous of their husbands and to fan the flames and keep the home fire burning. 5) What do you think the general public most misunderstands about Christians and sexuality?We are often seen as uptight and nonsexual- sex being for procreation purposes only. The other side would be that God should have nothing to do with our sex lives- I obviously disagree with this. Many find it absurd that I would “pray” about my sex life. My response has been in a deep relationship with Christ, you share all aspects of your life- not just some of them.

We have a had a few emails and phone calls asking why our products say “Sold As Novelty” on them and why it it stated on the website as well.  There are a few states that do not allow intimacy products to be sold for their intended use- it is against the law.  In order to protect ourselves and those purchasing the products from us we have decided to sell all of our products as “Novelty Items.”  Some refer to them as Gag Gifts…

Keep in mind all of the products are made from body friendly ingredients are were designed for personal use, we just sell them under the umbrella of Novetly to protect all concerned.

Joy