Bad Sex Culprits: And the Shortlist Has Been Announced!

So, confession time: have you read any particularly cringe-worth sex scenes in a book recently? We’re only asking because the shortlist for the 2012 Bad Sex Award has been released. However, there are two major names missing.

The Guardian reports that both JK Rowling and E.L James have missed out on a chance to add the notorious Bad Sex trophy to their mantelpieces this year.

According to Jonathan Beckman, the senior editor at the Literary Review (the body that organises the annual award) said that while nominations poured in for JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy, the judges concluded that she failed to meet the criteria for the award.

Mr Beckman stated that despite the fact that the book has “a couple of queasy moments” her writing is not nearly bad enough.”

And why is the notorious Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy missing? Mr Beckman said that the trilogy did not qualify “Because the prize’s rubric explicitly excludes pornographic and erotic literature.”

“I don’t think she needs any more publicity, does she?” Mr Beckman added.

Surprisingly, Fifty Shades of Grey didn't make this year's cut for the award

The Bad Sex award was established “to draw attention to the crude and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel – and to discourage it.”

Basically the award celebrates random passages of badly written sex contained with books and hopes that by humiliating people with the award, it will discourage them for adding sex to a book just for the sake of it.

Here is this year’s shortlist:

Tom Wolfe – nominated for the second time with his novel Back to Blood.

Nicola Barker – The Yips.

Nicholas Coleridge – The Adventuress.

Nancy Huston – Infrared.

Paul Mason – Rare Earth.

Ben Masters – Noughties.

Sam Mills – The Quiddity of Will Self.

Craig Raine – The Divine Comedy.