Book Review: Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
Starting off the year with a book about sex surely bodes well for my sex life this year...doesn't it? :-)
I love Mary Roach. I read Spook last year and really enjoyed it. Her style is very down-to-earth and her obsessive curiosity is endearing. She asks the questions that everyone really wants to ask but has too much tact to ask. For example, a doctor who does penile implants allowed Mary to observe a surgery (with the patient's permission of course). After he had inserted the silicone rods, Mary thought it looked like a normal enough erection, but she wondered if it felt like a real erection. So naturally she asked "May I squeeze it?" The patient was numb in the nether-regions and didn't speak a lick of English, so the doctor said "Mary, you have traveled a long way. You can do whatever you want." I should mention that she did wear gloves. And she indicated that it didn't feel entirely authentic, but it wasn't too bad. "It's sort of bionic-seeming" is her observation.
She talked to Danish pig farmers who were stimulating female pigs just before insemination to improve their fertility. She visited a factory that manufactures rubber vaginas. She talked with an Egyptian doctor who has published hundreds of journal articles on a variety of subjects, including whether or not polyester affects sexual activity. And get this, he tested that theory by PUTTING POLYESTER PANTS ON LAB RATS. PANTS. ON RATS! Awesome. And for the record, the rats in pants (who wore them for a year) had less sex than the pantsless rats.Then of course, there is the time that Mary and her husband allowed a doctor to ultrasound them as they had sex (the doctor thought that having ultrasound images of sex as it happened would help to find solutions for sexual dysfunctions).
Overall, a quick and entertaining read. I highly recommend it.
Stealing from the concept of rating by stars, I am going to rate books with...books!
= Supercalifraglisticexpealidocious
= Good
= Okay
= Meh
= Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad book
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
Rating:
I love Mary Roach. I read Spook last year and really enjoyed it. Her style is very down-to-earth and her obsessive curiosity is endearing. She asks the questions that everyone really wants to ask but has too much tact to ask. For example, a doctor who does penile implants allowed Mary to observe a surgery (with the patient's permission of course). After he had inserted the silicone rods, Mary thought it looked like a normal enough erection, but she wondered if it felt like a real erection. So naturally she asked "May I squeeze it?" The patient was numb in the nether-regions and didn't speak a lick of English, so the doctor said "Mary, you have traveled a long way. You can do whatever you want." I should mention that she did wear gloves. And she indicated that it didn't feel entirely authentic, but it wasn't too bad. "It's sort of bionic-seeming" is her observation.
She talked to Danish pig farmers who were stimulating female pigs just before insemination to improve their fertility. She visited a factory that manufactures rubber vaginas. She talked with an Egyptian doctor who has published hundreds of journal articles on a variety of subjects, including whether or not polyester affects sexual activity. And get this, he tested that theory by PUTTING POLYESTER PANTS ON LAB RATS. PANTS. ON RATS! Awesome. And for the record, the rats in pants (who wore them for a year) had less sex than the pantsless rats.Then of course, there is the time that Mary and her husband allowed a doctor to ultrasound them as they had sex (the doctor thought that having ultrasound images of sex as it happened would help to find solutions for sexual dysfunctions).
Overall, a quick and entertaining read. I highly recommend it.
Stealing from the concept of rating by stars, I am going to rate books with...books!
= Supercalifraglisticexpealidocious
= Good
= Okay
= Meh
= Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad book
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
Rating: