November 18th, 2009
Paul Mccartney: A Life Peter Ames Carlin | A McCartney bio takes superfans a step beyond the Beatles.0 comments
November 11th, 2009
Tom Krattenmaker Onward Christian Athletes | Is Christianity’s monopoly in sports evangelism fair?0 comments
November 4th, 2009
The Opposite Field | A father and son connect by way of the summer game.0 comments
October 28th, 2009
Q & A • Jon Raymond | Of hot springs, lost dogs and the Oregon Trail.0 comments
October 21st, 2009
Jonathan Lethem Chronic City | Manhattan goes meta.0 comments
October 14th, 2009
R. Gregory Nokes Massacred For Gold | Anatomy of a (120-year-old) mass murder.0 comments
September 30th, 2009
David Byrne Bicycle Diaries | A Talking Head on two wheels around the world.0 comments
September 23rd, 2009
Jen Yates Cake Wrecks | The cakes are so wrong, but the blog is so right.0 comments
August 19th, 2009
Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano, Flotsametrics and the Floating World | Of junks and shipping trunks.0 comments
August 5th, 2009
The Impostor’s Daughter Laurie Sandell | A daddy’s girl gets a rude awakening. And bad credit.0 comments
![]() Sex-crazed scientists. |
[April 23rd, 2008]
Bay Area-based author Mary Roach is no stranger to topics both arcane and stomach-turning. Her fascinating 2003 book Stiff tackled the “Curious Lives of Human Cadavers”; two years later, Spook tackled the science of the afterlife. Droll yet frank, like Auntie Mame with a yen for medical journals, Roach excels at transforming dry lecture notes into giddy nuggets of improper dinner-party fodder. But her shot selection is a bit off with her latest, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (W.W. Norton, 288 pages, $24.95). Her whirlwind tour through the world of sex experiments, from tickling pig clitorises and bumping uglies in MRI machines to shadowing Taiwanese penis surgeons, is mind-boggling fun to be sure. But the subject itself: sex—and the myriad ways brave researchers have road-tested the act—is stale in a decade when Oprah already won’t shut up about her damn va-jay-jay. Roach’s gift, thus far, has been shining a light on topics nobody thought they’d ever want to know about and proving us wrong in less than 300 pages. Handing us a well-researched tome on the thing that’s already on all our minds? Well, where’s the challenge in that?
RECENT COMMENTS ON “Mary Roach, Bonk”
Bonk has four stars on Amazon, and her book about Death has 4.5 stars. Second books are always tougher, and Sex is a tricky subject to make funny. Death is not. As books go, I'd give this one a B. ...












