February 3rd, 2010
Wells Tower Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned | Stories to pillage by.0 comments
January 27th, 2010
Q & A • Nick Flynn The Ticking Is The Bomb | Torture ticks him off while his daughter’s on the way.0 comments
January 20th, 2010
Elizabeth Gilbert Committed | The bother of being the bride.0 comments
January 13th, 2010
The Neverending Story | Various bits of information about the Moth.0 comments
January 6th, 2010
William Langewiesche Fly By Wire0 comments
December 30th, 2009
Matthew Flaming The Kingdom of Ohio | The secret, sordid origins of...Toledo?0 comments
December 9th, 2009
Profile: Jay Ryan | Meet the king of warm-and-fuzzy rock posters.1 comment
December 2nd, 2009
Jennifer Burns Goddess Of The Market | Ayn Rand’s prickly life.0 comments
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?1 comment
 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?
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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. ...
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