Friday, February 3, 2012

Book Review -:- Two Knotty Boys, Showing You the Ropes

Much like the two books I reviewed before this one, TKB spends about 20 pages on basic safety, communication, and basic knots. It's all black and white, and a larger format book than Douglas Kent's books.

A couple pictures are blurry, but keep in mind there's got to be over 200 photos in this book. Step by step illustrations of knots, harnesses, decorations, gags, arm binds, corsets, strap on harnesses, etc. Basic, Decorative, Dominance, and Sex are the categories that the book is broken down into, though these areas can easily and repeatedly overlap one another.

What was most interesting to me was how decorative everything was overall. Kent's books really dove into the technical side of things, simplicity as art and such, while TKBs seem to focus on the visual beauty of the knots, as opposed to the overall beauty of the idea of Shibari itself.

Putting the two together ought to be interesting, and could make a good book all on it's own.  Since there's not such an emphasis on Shibari with TKBs there's far more room for flexibility of the kind of people who could use the rope work they teach in their book. Stretching and being flexible are never a bad thing, however the level of bend-y-ness you need to use their harnesses and ideas is a lot more relaxed than with Kent's books. Also in the two volumes of theirs that I have (and I'll cover the other one here soon), they never once go into suspension bondage.

Which is perfectly fine, they give you SO MUCH other stuff to work with. I felt like a kid in a candy shop and I'm not even the one in this relationship that's going to be doing the tying. (Though I might have to practice enough to tie myself up into a rope teddy someday >.> )

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