Mary Roach: Stiff, Spook, Bonk
Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 10:08 pm
A science writer with a wicked sense of humor. Stiff is about cadavers, and she can still make you laugh. Spook is about various scientific attempts to define the after life.
Bonk is about sex. Very well researched. Her parenthetical asides alone are worth the price of the book. For example:
The year 1760 saw the publication of a slim, pernicious work of hyperbolic quackery called Onanism; or, A Treatise upon the Discorders Produced my Masturbation. A shrewd blend of the clinical and moral it spread like a virus through the medical circles of Europe and the United States. The author, Samuel Tissot describes the effect of "self pollution" on a watchmaker referred to as L.D.: "A pale watery blood often dripped from his nose, he drooled continually; subject to attacks of diarrhea, he defecated in his bed without noticing it, there was a constant flow of semen... "Hello, yes, this watch you sold me is all sticky and stuff?"
Bonk is about sex. Very well researched. Her parenthetical asides alone are worth the price of the book. For example:
The year 1760 saw the publication of a slim, pernicious work of hyperbolic quackery called Onanism; or, A Treatise upon the Discorders Produced my Masturbation. A shrewd blend of the clinical and moral it spread like a virus through the medical circles of Europe and the United States. The author, Samuel Tissot describes the effect of "self pollution" on a watchmaker referred to as L.D.: "A pale watery blood often dripped from his nose, he drooled continually; subject to attacks of diarrhea, he defecated in his bed without noticing it, there was a constant flow of semen... "Hello, yes, this watch you sold me is all sticky and stuff?"