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| Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!) | 
 enlarge | Author: Douglas Brown
Publisher: Crown
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
Buy New: $10.96
You Save: $10.99 (50%)
New (30) Used (10) from $7.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  30 reviews
Sales Rank: 3586
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1
ISBN: 0307406970
Dewey Decimal Number: 646.780973
EAN: 9780307406972
ASIN: 0307406970
Publication Date: June 24, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Hardcover, with dust jacket. Slight shelf wear. Cover, binding, and pages are excellent. Ships the next business day, with tracking and delivery confirmation sent to your email.
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Product Description
Outside of her family and close friends, Annie had not mentioned the sexathon to anybody, which probably was the best way to go. I, however, had blathered on about the endeavor to anybody with ears. It was the whole Heisman Trophy thing. On this, my first day back in the office after kicking off the sexpedition, my boss blushed when she saw me. Another boss reddened as well. Yet another beheld me, took a few steps back, and asked, “Uh, how’s it going?” He actually circumnavigated me after I answered, like I’d morphed into some hellion driven by fierce, feral loin power . . . I felt stronger. I felt suave. I felt—gasp—Mediterranean. I’d instantly become an objectified sexual being: That man had sex last night! He is going to do it again tonight! Wow!
—From Just Do It
Creeping into middle-age and saddled with work deadlines, child-rearing, homemaking, and fourteen years of togetherness, an ordinary, happy but harried couple set an outlandish goal: to have sex for 101 consecutive days—no excuses (not even the flu, late-night child wanderings, or flat-out exhaustion).
What ensued is by turns hilarious, tender, and seductive, including sexual romps in hotels (both cheap and classy), at an ashram, in a basement, atop boulders and unstable easy chairs, but most often in their own bedroom, which they dubbed the “sex den.” As Doug and Annie Brown literally screwed their way through months of a cold Colorado winter, they turned up the heat by attending the Adult Entertainment Expo in Vegas (the Oscars of the porn world); taking Bikram “hot” yoga to get limber; and stocking up on candles, Viagra (just in case), lube, lingerie, and sex toys galore.
But besides the awe in their ability to get it on day after day—and actually enjoy it—they were more surprised and touched by how much closer they became, relishing conversations, holding hands, hanging out in hip coffee shops together instead of in the aisles of Target, and firming up (no pun intended) a relationship that already seemed as good as it could get.
Seeking out babysitters, getting fit, and dressing up, these two forty-year-olds began courting each other the way they did when they first met in their twenties, only seven moves and two pregnancies later. As Doug Brown lays everything bare—from his triumphs to his tanks (yes to making love on an exercise ball; no to Tantric sex tricks), we get an inside look at the male mind and discover that a good husband and a good dad can also be one hell of a lover.
The jolt that every marriage needs and longs for, Just Do It proves that even when it feels like there’s never enough time or energy, trust Annie and Doug...THERE IS.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 25 more reviews...
 Surprisingly moving June 26, 2008
28 out of 29 found this review helpful
How brave Doug and Annie Brown are! They made a pact to make love every day for 100 days, and then Doug wrote this book about it. The result is this funny and revealing story, which entertained me and, in the end, moved me.
This long-married couple achieved a magical sort of intimacy they didn't have before the three-month marathon. "We touched more," Doug writes. "Our conversations seemed easier and more lit with honesty. I felt I understood Annie's interior world better than ever, and she felt the same about me."
The book includes frank talk about all sorts of different ways the Browns spiced up their lovemaking, including Brazilian waxes, lingerie, massages, dirty movies, Viagra, yoga and Doug throwing away his comfy but icky sleeping pants. More important was the ever-present good humor and laughter, and the deep affection the two share.
Here's the chapter list:
1. What Will Help Us Cross the Finish Line?
2. I'm Going to Like It
3. Don't Wait for Chemistry
4. Screwing Ourselves Together
5. Nasal Shrapnel
6. Catcalls of the Past
7. Scat
8. The Power of Love
9. The Singing Heart
10. The Common Good
11. The First Move
12. The Reading of the Lists
13. To Bask on the Island of Our Own Creation
14. Making Love in the Afternoon
15. That's Sexcellent
 entertaining, but don't buy it for the sex June 27, 2008
22 out of 28 found this review helpful
What this book is:
Cute anecdotes from a Denver journalist who has a sex column. He and his wife have a sex marathon for 101 days. They get emotionally closer as a result. They decide "sex" means intercourse. They keep it basic, usually quick ins and outs late at night after they put the kids to bed. They have an occassional weekend away. They watch porn. They try out a vibrator and a cock ring and some herbs and viagra.
The book is filled with cute stories about their kids and their work lives. The author deeply loves his wife and family, and is very cheerful and very careful with what he writes about them.
What it isn't:
There isn't detail about the actual sex other than the conversations they have before and after, and a quick description of how they "do it". It is a very PG book, very clean and pc. It definitely isn't a deep exploration of the emotional landscape they traverse. The author's tone is light and chatty throughout. No problems or doubts or challenges ever surface. Which comes across is if not unbelievable, then at least somewhat whitewashed.
The sex isn't that adventurous. I imagine most college kids would have more variety in their history. This couple has sex in the basement once. And outdoors once. That's about it for creative approaches. There is very little sharing about their positions or techniques. And certainly nothing shared about what works for Annie. Sex is basically described as kissing, intercourse,sometimes with an orgasm,then sleeping (for about 200 pages). I'm sure a lot more may have occurred, but the author doesn't reveal it here.
It is definitely NOT like being a fly on the wall in someone else's sex life.
Overall, it's a cute book. Entertaining fluff. They seem like a really great, likeable couple. I enjoyed reading about their relationship, their conversations and their kids. But not about their sex.
A love story June 26, 2008
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
I bought the book to discover what sorts of mystical, sexxxy, purrfectly sensual suggestions these two could offer me. Like the Browns, I'm married with 2 kids and have little time for the old romps my husband and I so often enjoyed. How to find time to do it when we so rarely even turn on the TV let alone each other?
What I did discover reading the book is a pure, simple, and movingly beautiful love story. Doug Brown's writing is wonderful and wonderfully funny. He brings you into his world and you feel like you're best friends. (Or at least you want to be!)
Screw screwing...right now I just want to get back to reading the book!
But really, the secret that Doug and Annie share...all you need is love.
 A waste of good paper June 27, 2008
7 out of 28 found this review helpful
I bought this after reading a glowing review in the New York Times. The writing is terrible, the story is not believable, and it's not even erotic unless you enjoy detailed descriptions of nose blowing and food poisoning incidents. I'd give it no stars, but that's not an option on Amazon.com I think it's probably mostly fiction, and not even good fiction at that.
Savouring the Hot Taste of Life July 3, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
"Just Do It" will no doubt "crinkle the fat" about the eyes of the prurient and cause the ultra-conservative to babble in shock. But such knee jerk reactions belie the true import of the book.
On January 1, 2007, Douglas Brown and his wife Annie (at her suggestion) pledged to have sex with each other for 100 straight days. While the caring, tenderness, and communication between them was good after fourteen years of marriage, their experiment enabled them to bond ever more closely--in spite of the demands of children, careers, and life in the twenty-first century.
The preparation for the project speaks of the seriousness with which the Browns tackled the chore. Besides defining parameters, there was a visit to the family doctor for both, as well as researching destinations for variety in locales and dietary considerations to enhance performance and stamina.
One destination was THE Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, which Brown, a feature writer, covered for the Denver Post. Annie asked porn star, Randy West, for an autograph, prompting Doug to approach Smoking Mary Jane with the same request. Annie took his picture with his arm around the corseted woman "bedecked in subtle dominatrix attire." And while they were there, they picked up sex toys, to add dash to their daily endeavor.
But in the way of things, glitter, neon, and swag can be supplanted by state-department-level negotiations for their two daughters' bedtimes, or tending to cases of strep throat and copious vomiting spells.
Social commentary on current attitudes toward sexual practices vies with glimpses of family life, dealing with the sale of Girl Scout cookies and story telling. Titillating sex toys are described, and the couple's physical delight in each other is revealed.
Yet the book's appeal lies in the delicate balance Brown maintains, never resorting to purple prose or raunch. The narrative is thoughtful, lively, and engaging. Annie says they have fun, and it's their fun that imbues the tale.
Douglas Brown tells a tender love story here and pays glorious tribute to his wife. But he experienced an epiphany all his own. As a result of this madcap sexventure, he learned the definition of "home."
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