Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

"If you want to learn more about arousal and fertility, you'll find some nuggets in Bonk. But information about human sexuality isn't the focus of this book which is a really about the difficulties of learning about human sexuality.

The barriers to knowledge include peculiar ideas based on nothing more than speculation, lack of technology to see inside the body, and prejudice against research into sexual relationships. In fact, to find out about how some of the techniques, Ms. Roach had to become a subject (including one time when she and her husband had to become the subjects . . . having marital relations in an MRI machine).

There are places in the book where you need a strong stomach to stick with the writing. I was vaguely reminded of the books based on the Darwin Awards at time, except the humor isn't as good here.

If you find reading about sexual relations easier if there are lots of funny animal stories and humor about research, you'll probably like this book better than I did. The information content (independent of the humor) could have been contained in a book about 25 percent of the length of this one."
~ Written on 2008-05-29