Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
January 18th, 2010
- ISBN13: 9780393334791
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
“Rich in dexterous innuendo, laugh-out-loud humor and illuminating fact. It’s compulsively readable.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review The best-selling author of Stiff turns her outrageous curiosity and insight on the most alluring scientific subject of all: sex.
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
January 18th, 2010 at 11:19 pm
Well, I’ve read several popular science books by the female authors and all of them were as weak as hell. This one is too! Instead of addressing questions of how and why things are as they are, author devotes large number of pages to prosthetic penises and how Taiwanese doctor operates on people.. Instead of giving hard facts Roach just tells off-topic stories and tells them and tells them.. It’s not supposed to be a novel, or is it?
Rating: 2 / 5
January 19th, 2010 at 12:22 am
Since I cannot help out with packing and there are only so many hours a day I can find the TV or internet interesting, I went bookshopping again. This time I bought, among other things, “Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.”
The jacket loudly proclaimed, “In Bonk, Roach shows us how and why sexual arousal and orgasm-two of the most complex, delightful, and amazing scienctific phenomena on earth- can be so hard to achieve and what science is doing to slowly make the bedroom a mores satisfying place.”
Sounds intriguing right? Plus all the reviews on Amazon were 5 stars. It must be good, right?
Well, no. I don’t think so.
Don’t get me wrong, the subject matter is interesting. I am amazed by secual reproduction of all types of life, including jellyfish, but that is a tale for a different day. The problem is that I guess I just don’t cotton to juvenile sex humor. Maybe it’s because I am old (late 20s). Maybe it is because I am a scientist or really open about my sexuality and thus do not feel uncomfortable thinking or reading about, OMG! Sex! I don’t know, but I found this woman’s humor to be a distraction at best and outright retarded at worst. I wonder whether I could make it through coffee talk with her and here’s why:
In one passage she is talking about meeting with a researcher who studies the sexual activity of rheus monkeys, where come on cues are referred to as presentations. The note for this tidbit within the continuing story is as follows: “A visit to Yerkes [the research facility] will forever after distort your image of Corporate America. On my flight home, the woman behind me was talking about a presentation she was planning for a man named Mark. Her seatmate had just finished up a series of displays at the regional sales conference.” [Pg. 284, emphasis the author's]
Or when speaking about the G-spot, she mentions that “Zwi Hosh, of the Center for Sexual Therapy at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, published a paper in which he trained 64 percent of a group of 56 noncoitally orgasmic women [those who do not orgasm simply from intercourse] to have orgasms by stimulating the front wall of their vagina. While most were using the finger, some had managed ot with ‘anteriorly directed intercourse.’” The note on this one:
“No one in Israel titters over the seeming irony of a sex therapy center in a hospital called Rambam. Rambam is short for the Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (a.k.a. Maimonides). Though I now associate him with rear-entry intercourse, the rambam, as he is known there, was an important medieval Jewish philospoher.” [pg. 80]
Sadly, this book just didn’t deliver. Yes, sexual research is interesting, provided it is presented properly. This feel more like an aside into the author’s personal absorption and juvenality, especially once you get to the points in the book when she begins (more than once) to volunteer to be a research subject. If she gets off on that, great. If it helped her understand her subject matter, great, but I don’t necessarily want to hear about her personal experiences having sex while being ultrasounded. Do you know why researchers randomize the identities of the people they research? It’s not for the subject’s privacy, but because the last thing most people want to think about is what two other people look like during a sexual experience, especially when it’s not porn.
I don’t know. I forced my way through this book, but it was a total waste of energy. If you want an enjoyable read, pick up: “Sex: A Natural History.” It is at once more intelligent, tells a better story, and is actually funnier in a very adult way. For ridiculousness associated by a woman who clearly hasn’t made it past 4th grade humor, read Bonk.
Rating: 1 / 5
January 19th, 2010 at 2:20 am
The information, such as it is, in this book is mostly trivial and/or useless. There is also not that much of it. The actual amount of info in the book might have made a long magazine article but no more. The book is shamelessly padded on almost every page with endless jokes and cutesy side remarks, found both in the text and in anecdotes in textual footnotes (the sole purpose for which the book uses footnotes). Since they often have nothing to do either with the book’s subject or the material on the page at hand, they quickly become first disruptive and then irritating. A few are funny. More would be funny on their own but fail as irrelevant asides. Some are just stupid. The footnote on page 31 ending with former President Millard Fillmore’s last words is an example of both irrelevance and idiocy. So also the one on page 263 that reveals that nominations for the Nobel prize are secret for 50 years so “make the claim, and nobody can prove otherwise until after you’re dead. Add one to your resume today.” The cutesy remarks in the main text can be found on virtually every page. Not a very well written book, not a very informative book, not a good book.
Rating: 1 / 5
January 19th, 2010 at 4:21 am
“Bonk” was supposed to be riotously funny, a real laugh-a-minute book about sexuality and sex. Well, it’s not nearly as funny as I’d hoped. In fact, I only laughed once or twice. Mostly, the attempts at humor are mild and fall just a little short in timing or set-up. Roach has a decent touch for writing funny material, but not a great touch.
So, the delivery ain’t great. Then there’s the material. Most of this stuff is from Re-tread City. Masters & Johnson? Please. The MRI study? Old news. If Roach wanted an uproarious romp through sex research, there’s a lot more funny stuff out there.
It’s an OK book, but I think it’s overhyped. It’s pretty average.
Rating: 3 / 5
January 19th, 2010 at 5:37 am
When Bonk arrived and I saw that it was by the “best-selling author of STIFF”, I got kind of worried. The subtitle “The Curious Coupling of Science of Science and Sex” had suggested that this was a treatment of, well, science and sex. But one written by the best-selling author of STIFF? I considered the implications and thought about sending back the book.
But I didn’t.
As it turns out, Stiff is not about what you might think it is. In fact, it deals with “The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers”. Relieved by this finding and thinking therefore that the book I had just purchased was not simply smut, I waded into Bonk.
It begins, “Albert R. Shadle was the world’s foremost expert on the sexuality of small woodland creatures”.
OK…
From here Roach moves deftly and with much humor through the work of well known investigators such as Kinsey and Masters and Johnson, as well as a host of less well known and sometimes seemingly prurient practitioners such as Robert Latou Dickinson, Giles Brindley and Dorcus Butt.
Is it possible that there is actually a sex researcher by this name? Apparently so – a fact also uncovered by the author’s relentless research.
Eventually though, the book bonks (this is also a terminology to describe what happens to an endurance athlete expending too much energy and hitting the wall). Ultimately the exploration of material more and more bizarre and over the top just becomes too much.
For instance, the author travels to Taiwan to observe a penile implant operation.
When complete, and clearly in the interest of science, Roach asks Dr. Hsu (the surgeon) “May I squeeze it?” He answers, “Mary, you have traveled a long way. You can do whatever you want”.
I guess this should have been expected given that it’s written by the “best selling author of STIFF”.
Rating: 3 / 5