This book seemed to promise something that I had always
wanted, and interesting, funny look at science and sex. However, I didn't
find it to really accomplish what I hoped it would. I was expecting to learn something
interesting about the study of sex, and there was only limited amount of
this. I was especially expecting a clear
call to action or something that we should all do to help improve the research in
this important area. I was really left
cold on that aspect of things. I think I
could have come up with a more specific, dramatic call to action myself,
without having nearly the passion for this subject that Mary clearly has.
I think I could have covered the useful bits of this book
in about a quarter of the time, maybe less.
Overall, there was just too much jumping back and forth to footnotes and
various other things that Mary found funny or entertaining, but that weren't
generally engaging or relevant to what I thought the book was supposed to
cover. Even worse was when she jumped
into the macabre and unusual sexual practices for no apparent reason other than
she thought these various stories were interesting to her. They didn’t help build the points she was building
to in any way. Often times they were
actually contradictory to what she was trying to say. That was true about much of the research that
she mentioned. She didn’t take any clear
stance on most of the issues either, she just presented ‘things you might want
to know.’ That’s not my interest in reading
a book from someone that has clearly spent much more time thinking about this
than I have. I do appreciate the effort
to try and bring to light our general puritanical views about sex and sex
research, and how much we still have to go before we really understand sex on a
scientific level. However, that could
have been accomplished better and in less pages.
Personally, I would not read it again, nor would I
recommend to most people. If there is an
abridged version, it might be somewhat more compelling.
