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Aug 25, 2009

Manny rated it:

(Joint review with JORDAN, who's actually finished the book)

- George?

- Mmm?

- Don't go to sleep.

- Mmm.

- You are going to sleep!

- Mm-mm.

- George, tell me something you did today.

- Um... I read a book.

- That's better! Move around a bit. Yes, that's right, put your hand there. Good. What book?

- Bonk. By Mary Roach.

- That silly book about sex?

- It's not silly More...

23 comments like (81 people liked it)

Nov 11, 2008

Trevor rated it:

I’ve never had internet sex – there must be another word for it, cybersex, obviously, but I’m thinking more along the lines of keyboard sex. All the same, a couple of years ago (and purely as a community service, you understand) I started working on a series of words that could be typed using only the left hand. It was another of those projects that I started and fairly quickly lost interest in.

If this book is about anything I think it would be fair to say that it is about the ab More...

7 comments like (34 people liked it)

Jul 24, 2008

jess rated it:

i audiobook'd this, the third feature-length scientific expedition of mary roach. i love! love! love! mary roach. i have bought multiple copies of her first book, stiff, and have managed to permanently "lend" every one of them out. audiobooking the curious couplings of science and sex, however, was a very strange experience. picture this: i am walking around downtown pittsburgh, just like every morning, and there are strangers passing me left and right with serious or sleepy looks, bri More...

0 comments like (12 people liked it)

Jun 26, 2008

Lori rated it:

(Review starts with a recent blog post, written mid-book, then my conclusion)

Well, maybe it is, just a little bit.

As I've often stated here, I read very little non-fiction. Too dry, too dull, too fact-intensive. Just too. A couple of months ago, I read Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. Roach's good-natured obsession with researching anything and everything that interests her is infectious. Plus, I'm fairly morbid, so the topic appealed to me. Serio More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Apr 10, 2008

Sandy added it

One in every 5000 women is born without a vaginal canal.
who knew?

this is the kind of fact mary roach loves to ferret out of medical journals and research papers--and then, she loves to create puns and laugh out loud smarty-pants remarks about the sexologists and their crazy ideas and inventions. she's a science writer for the masses who footnotes like a fiend.

but hey, it's not all penis cameras, pyrex tubes and statistics about ER visits for 'object retrieval'. More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Sep 01, 2011

Coco rated it:

In a few words, this book is poorly written and less than informative. The information, IF YOU CAN FIND ANY, in this book is mostly trivial and/or useless. (The actual amount of info in the book might have made a long magazine article in Cosmo.) The book is shamelessly padded with jokes and cutesy side remarks, found both in the text and in anecdotes in textual 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 f More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Apr 15, 2009

Bells rated it:

This book has it all!!!!
-A little history of studies on sex (Kinsey! Masters and Johnson)
-Erections
-Use of erections in martial arts (go rent Iron Crotch!)
-Surgery for erection enhancement. (Graphic. It made my stomach churn)
-Dildos (or use of electric toothbrushes as dildos.)
-Orgasms (and a lady who has orgasms when she brushes her teeth… awesome!)
-Failure to orgasm (Princess Bonaparte blamed it on a distant clitoris for the ladies. If the clitoris is m More...

13 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 02, 2008

Mindy rated it:

Unlike any science book I've ever read--enlightening and hilarious! I can't remember the last time I laughed so much with a book. (OK, I don't really read a lot of funny stuff. Occupational hazard?) Almost every footnote made me LOL and want to mark the page so I could post it on GR somewhere, but there were just too many good ones. But you know what stuck with me most about this book? How revolutionary it is for women to have control of their bodies, sexually, reproductively, to be intellectual More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 27, 2009

Shivering William rated it:

A book about sex. You might not want to read on.

My uncle and I have read all of Mary Roach's books together. We had stomach churning conversations about cadavers at dinner parties and discussed the after life at meant-to-be light-hearted gatherings. He approached me with red in his cheeks after he finished this. "It's raw. But good." And that was the end of our conversation.

This was the kind of book that kept me laughing so hard people around me had to ask More...

4 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jul 24, 2011

Michael rated it:

This book review has received a strong 'R' rating for disturbing sexual content. If you are eating, you might not wanna read this review right now.

DON'T go into this book thinking it'll get you in the mood. In fact, it may disturb the mood right out of you.

Did you know? Before Viagra, guys who couldn't maintain a good stiffy would often have "stilts" of some sort inserted inside of their penis skin, and they would essentially wander through life with a half More...

10 comments like (15 people liked it)

Jan 14, 2011

Michelle rated it:

Roach is a master at taking squeamish topics (cadavers, their stages of decomposition, and the history of their use in research in here earlier work "Stiff") such as the history of research into human sexuality and making it not just dryly informative but hilariously so. She also introduces the reader to the scope of bizarre experiments and cast of researching characters, both historical and current. She gives a good feel for how far we've come in research, how long it took us to get More...

5 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 20, 2008

Geoff rated it:

I really wanted to like Bonk. Mary Roach seems joyous in her celebration of the science of sex. It's clear she's spent (and thoroughly enjoyed) her time researching the subject, unfortunately the book never really comes together. Mary Roach's 'signature wit' comes of more as juvenile as she seems lost in her perspective on her subject. Is Bonk a personal essay about her journey through the world of sex research? A portrait of the history of sex and the science surrounding it? Roach never settle More...

1 comment like (9 people liked it)

Apr 29, 2008

Sarah rated it:

okay i didn't REALLY read the *entire* thing. But I read like 85% of it and skimmed the rest. And for the most part it was pretty hilarious. I had some problems with it thought. I felt like I spent the whole book waiting for her get to the point about people having different kinds of sex. The book, supposedly, is about sex. But it's never really clear how she defines sex. She (and scientists) seem to be working mostly from a sex-as-intercourse assumption. This was most clearly illustrated when s More...

5 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 05, 2008

Kathy rated it:

Bonk is an absolutely fascinating book on the physiology sex (mostly) and the people who study it. Roach has a wonderful writing style. She makes the science simple and you actually feel like you've met the people she interviewed. I especially loved her footnotes that provided trivia related anecdotes and humorous comments.

Just some of the subjects and people covered: Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, penile implants, sex toys, turning on and inseminating pigs, monkey sex, why Viagra d More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Apr 02, 2011

Jayme rated it:

So glad I came across this at the book store. Mary Roach has been on my list for a while, so when I saw it on sale (only $6 for the hardcover!) I couldn't help myself.

This was full of all sorts of things I did and didn't want to know, all of them really interesting. Considering the century we live in it was amazing how throughout the book you get to see how little we really know about human sexuality and how hard it is for scientists to get the funding they need to study these things.
More...

6 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 27, 2011

Meg rated it:

I just read this one in my book club and I am here to tell you that book clubs are not just for ladies bored with cookie exchanges and Tupperware parties or for those with a hall pass to get drunk and catty. In fact I recently joined one filled with funny Kindergarten moms who happen to like wine, a lot, and chocolate (which happens to be brought in Tupperware) while talking about a lot of things, including good books.

We recently sought out a book about sex. We didn't really need a how More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 07, 2008

Jenne rated it:

I might have said this on an earlier review, but Mary Roach is on the top of my list of interesting people to have dinner with...or actually maybe dinner isn't the best idea. Maybe we could just hang out in a non-food-related setting.

This is a woman who is truly dedicated to her work. I won't go into the details, but wow.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 06, 2010

Meghan rated it:

This is perhaps not the best book to have put on audio cd. Today as I pulled in to the parking garage and the words orgasm and clitoris were being said loudly, I quickly snapped it off hoping my coworkers in the garage couldn't hear. But it is very interesting so far.

9/6/10: I enjoyed this book. At times it was somewhat explicit. At others it lingered on certain topics for too long. But it was interesting to see that due to morality and people's general uptight treatment of se More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 20, 2011

Amy or "Ames" rated it:

After getting over the giggles and settled down to read this seriously, I found this book educational, interesting and jaw-dropping. If I'd recorded the soundtrack of me reading this it would be full of giggles, gasps, oh my gods and ewws. Anyone listening would assume I was Bonking, instead of reading about it.

Mary Roach fully immerses herself in her research, even taking part in some studies to experience the experiments for herself. I feel for her husband. Being married to her ca More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 10, 2008

Ann rated it:

This woman knows how to do research! And to think of the years I wasted putzing around with soybeans...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 21, 2008

Jamie rated it:

Mary Roach's Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex is a book about sex. Well, sort of. It's not erotica. Or a how-to manual. Or an exploration of sexuality in our culture. Or an examination of sex in the media. Rather, while it does touch briefly on some of those topics, Bonk is the history of the scientific study of sex. It's also very funny.

You may be unsurprised to find out that sex as a research subject has a history of taboos and upturned noses once you stray outside of More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jul 02, 2008

Alexis rated it:

i want mary roach to be my friend. here's what sealed the deal:
"Likewise, we are going to ignore the erectile tissue in the lining of the nose - which does, very occasionally, expand when its owner is sexually aroused. It too is made erect by increased blood flow. Nasal congestion is an erection inside your nose."
can't you just hear her giddy smile while writing that?

overall roach's research bent is more hetero than i would have liked. another reviewer on here More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jun 02, 2008

Don rated it:

If you're interested in sex - and I do know people who claim not to be, so don't laugh - and you have a healthy curiosity, or a sense of humor, or both, you'll definitely enjoy this book. Roach writes very much the way I think, with long, digressive footnotes and frequent humorous asides, so maybe I like her writing better than I ought, but this wide-ranging survey of human sex research surely has something for almost everyone.

Unless you're an expert on everything there's bound to be More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 23, 2008

Katie rated it:

Sex, sex, sexity, sex, sex, sex! Bonk is hilarious and informative as it explores all types of sex research from a scientific perspective. The studies referenced include a variety of humans, animals, and mechanical devices. The reader gets an inside look at many diverse topics, from the artificial insemination of pigs, to masturbatory techniques, to sex following a spinal cord injury. Roach's style, as seen in her other books, is blunt and honest, sparing no one, including herself and her h More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 19, 2008

Paul rated it:

A book about science and sex written by Mary Roach really should have inspired me to more than three stars, but I felt she was so amused by the little tidbits that she was constantly wandering away from her own topic. And for all the times she was laughingly talking about how early sex scientists stripped their research of any titillation, I found this book very dry as well. As Mary states several times in the book, science has mostly found that the best sex is decidedly more than simple bodily More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 31, 2009

Jafar rated it:

Stiff, Spook, and now Bonk. I wonder what the title of Roach’s next book will be. Whatever it is, I’ll read it. She definitely has a special eye for the odd (even if the subject is not odd at all, like sex), and a good sense of humor to write about it.

So, this book is not about sex per se. It’s about people who’ve studied sex and the things that they did/had to do. It’s a research on the research on sex. Quite amusing – and informative as well. One of my long-held views on sex that More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Sep 16, 2010

Alex rated it:

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach: We are now eight years into the twenty-first century and the world has made many great strides in areas like medicine, anthropology, sociology, politics, and increasing our knowledge and respect for our planet and the many different peoples who live on it. And yet the United States is still a country that views sex as an act to be hidden behind closed doors, performed infrequently (preferably for the purpose of reproduction), and as qu More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 12, 2010

Afiq rated it:

There's a thin line that distinguished between cheap porn book and scientific sexual study book. Luckily, this book is not a cheap porn book. To make sure that the writings are not sound so perv, she write too many in-direct sentences, that make me drift away into the sea of her story. In other words, her writing is too damn boring, it takes me forever to finish it. Alas, I already finished it. Thank God bless upon us.

Let be fair with her effort to make sex go mainstream. Yes, she trav More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 23, 2008

Coffeeboss rated it:

After the uneven Spook, Mary Roach returns to top form with Bonk, her take on science and sex. What I love about her style of research is that she is not afraid to laugh when something is funny, and you have to admit, there is a lot about sex that is funny. She shares studies involving rats with polyester pants, conventions where (male) inventors show off their sex robots meant to please women, surgeons that specialize in treating, erm, erectile dysfunction in creative ways, and on and on. This More...

0 comments like

Jun 16, 2008

Howard rated it:

Somehow, the information doesn't seem new, which would suggest I spend my time reading up on obscure sexual research, but I swear I don't. Or I'm not aware that I've made that a priority, anyway, but between the Science Times, and the various sociobiology books, it seems pretty familiar.

But, still, Mary Roach is very entertaining, and it's worth reading just for her humor. It's like she's a very good improv group, and somebody shouted "Do sex!" and she did a book length riff More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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