Roach's forays offer fascinating evidence of the full range of human weirdness, the nonsense that has often passed for medical science and, more poignantly, the extreme lengths to which people will go to find sexual satisfaction. The payoff comes with subjects like female orgasm (yes, it's complicated), and characters like Ahmed Shafik, who defies Cairo's religious repressiveness to conduct his sex research. Now she explores the sexiest subject of all: sex, and such questions as, what is an orgasm? How is it possible for paraplegics to have them? What does woman want, and can a man give it to her if her clitoris is too far from her vagina? At times the narrative feels insubstantial and digressive (how much do you need to know about inseminating sows?), but Roach's ever-present eye and ear for the absurd and her loopy sense of humor make her a delectable guide through this unesteemed scientific outback.
) and whether you can weigh a person's soul (in Spook Instead, she ventures out to the fringes of science, where the oddballs ponder how cadavers decay (in her debut, Stiff In Bonk, Roach shows us how and why sexual arousal and orgasm. She doesn't write about genes or black holes or Schrödinger's cat. Mary Roach, the funniest science writer in the country (Burkhard Bilger of The New. All in all, a really excellent book, which managed to be incredibly interesting AND made me giggle every other page.Roach is not like other science writers.
Roach even participates in some of the studies herself, in the name of science and finding out what the hell goes on behind the closed doors of sexual research institutions. She is also a fantastically funny writer, with a wry and self-deprecating sense of humour that acts as the perfect antidote to the cringeworthy, the ridiculous, and the downright embarrassing elements of the research she pulls together here.Įverything from female libido to erectile dysfunction to primate sex is covered, with research drawn from the most ancient of philosophers right through to the most cutting-edge modern studies. And Mary Roach is one helluva lady - no situation is too delicate, no question goes unasked, no naked body lies uncovered. Even though I had to stop reading 'Stiff' because it was making me so queasy, I had an idea I'd be safer with sex than dead bodies - fortunately, I was right! It's really a fascinating book. I keep hearing about this little number from, ahem, 'satisfied customers' amongst the online bookish community on LibraryThing, so I thought I'd check it out for myself.
0 kommentar(er)
