Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex in Science and Inquiry

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Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Mary Roach

Start date: July 1, 2015

Finish date: July 31, 2015

Discussion: Book Club 2015

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Book Club 2015

* December 2015 - Violinist's Thumb
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last updated Jan 11, 2016 06:55AM

* November 2015 - Being Mortal
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What Members Thought

Jul 21, 2012 Petra lives on a little Caribbean island rated it really liked it

Shelves: sex, medicine-science

3.5 stars.

This was like cup of cocoa sex. Sex is always good but sometimes you can't help hoping it will be over soon and you can have a cup of cocoa, maybe with cream. Marshmallows even. Maybe a sprinkle of cinnamom and some grated chocolate curls. Oh there I go, mind drifted off.

Read 13 Dec. 2013 and forgotten about until now. Now what was it reminded me. Friday night. Hopeful. And if not... there is always cocoa. ...more

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Dec 15, 2008 Jim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 1paper, 2non-fiction, science, favorites

I didn't think she could write a better book than Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, but I was wrong. "Bonk" is fantastic. I read it because I love Roach's style, especially on tough subjects. I'm over 50, grew up on a farm, had an active sexual life before & after I got married almost 30 years ago & have raised 3 kids to adulthood. I'm a sysadmin & there isn't much I haven't seen on the Internet. So, how much new material could there be?

Plenty, but that wasn't what shocked me. There w I didn't think she could write a better book than Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, but I was wrong. "Bonk" is fantastic. I read it because I love Roach's style, especially on tough subjects. I'm over 50, grew up on a farm, had an active sexual life before & after I got married almost 30 years ago & have raised 3 kids to adulthood. I'm a sysadmin & there isn't much I haven't seen on the Internet. So, how much new material could there be?

Plenty, but that wasn't what shocked me. There was very little 'shocking' material. Roach kept the book very much in the realm of science with just enough humor to make it flow & keep it interesting. No, what shocked me was our lack of knowledge in this area.

Sex is one of the most important parts of our lives. I would have thought some one or some study would have all the answers. We've split the atom, but we don't really understand an orgasm. What's up with that? Well, sex is a taboo subject. Even after the 60's? Yup.

I thought we'd come a long way since the Victorian & 50's era repression, but apparently not. President Clinton (the man with the wandering cigar) actually fired his surgeon general for suggesting that teaching masturbation might help with the AIDs epidemic. Government money & review committees make sex studies a very tough sell. It's also very difficult to find people willing to be studied & even harder to take many measurements.

Roach really went all out to write this book. She literally traveled the world (from Danish pig farms to a private Egyptian clinic, all over the U.S. & to the far east) & even participated in some studies. She even talked her husband into helping. ("Dear, how would you like a free trip to London. There's only one little catch...") And then she wrote a fantastically in-depth book about it with just the right touch of humor.

I highly recommend it to everyone. I don't think there is a person on the planet that couldn't learn a lot from this book, even if it is just some of the difficulties the scientific method faces when it runs into our prejudices. ...more

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Jun 09, 2015 David Rubenstein rated it really liked it

Shelves: biology, audiobook, psychology

This is definitely an entertaining book. Mary Roach did a lot of personal investigations; she visited sex researchers to find out what they are up to, how they do research, what are their findings. She describes the early researchers, like Kinsey and Masters and Johnson. She even volunteers herself and her husband as subjects for some of their experiments. She visits scientists who put willing couples into an MRI to take images of the proceedings. She visits sex toy factories to find out how emp ...more

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Nov 25, 2010 bup rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010, science

Man do I love some Mary Roach. The woman writes great, funny, infotaining* books. It's true that I had to cross my legs and read through squinted eyes to get through some passages (it's as much about sexual dysfunction and painful stuff doctors think of to do to genitals as it is anything else), but I enjoyed it.

Somehow, though, this book seemed to lack a focus. Maybe that was also true of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, and I just didn't noti ...more

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Feb 16, 2009 Clay rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

Excellent book that explores what research has been done on sex, and the vast amount of what we do not understand about the subject.

The author approaches uncomfortable topics candidly and humorously at times.

I would have like a bit more time spent on conclusions but other than that I enjoyed it a lot.

Also, if you are uncomfortable with frank and explicit discussion about sex, I would stay away from this book.

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