As anyone who has read Mary Roach knows, this woman will do anything in the name of research on her chosen subject (and if you haven’t read any Mary Roach, you should do something about that). In Packing for Mars, she experiences zero gravity (or as close as you can get while still on earth). In Spook, she tracks down scientists who have attempted to measure the weight of the soul. She’s gone to funeral homes, packing plants and countless universities. he’s admitted several times that librarians find her very strange due to the books she checks out and the questions she asks. So obviously, in pursuit of her research on sex for Bonk, she and her husband sign up to have sex on camera (she talks him into it by presenting it as a free trip to London).
What I like best about Roach’s books is her incredible sense of humor. Her footnotes crack me up. She pokes fun at her subjects, but has looked into them so closely and with such detail that I feel she has the right to. She learns as much as she possibly can, then present it to the reader in as interesting a way as possible. And she’s fearless: sex on camera, asking for directions to a sex toys exhibit, talking to some rather odd scientists and reading some very strange papers. For instance: “The paper does not provide the exact number of penises eaten by ducks, but the author says there have been enough over the years to prompt the coining of a popular saying: ‘I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat.” Yeah.
While I don’t think Bonk was my absolute favorite of her books, I did really enjoy it and learned quite a bit about how sex works, how the body works and how the various studies done over years (stretching back centuries) have brought us this information (and how much remains unknown).
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.