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    Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
    Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
    Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
    Audiobook9 hours

    Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

    Written by Mary Roach

    Narrated by Sandra Burr

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The study of sexual physiology—what happens, and why, and how to make it happen better—has been a paying career or a diverting sideline for scientists as far-ranging as Leonardo da Vinci and James Watson. The research has taken place behind the closed doors of laboratories, brothels, MRI centers, pig farms, sex-toy R&D labs, and Alfred Kinsey’s attic.

    Mary Roach, “The funniest science writer in the country” (Burkhard Bilger of The New Yorker), devoted the past two years to stepping behind those doors. Can a person think herself to orgasm? Can a dead man get an erection? Is vaginal orgasm a myth? Why doesn’t Viagra help women—or, for that matter, pandas? In Bonk, Roach shows us how and why sexual arousal and orgasm—two of the most complex, delightful, and amazing scientific phenomena on earth—can be so hard to achieve and what science is doing to slowly make the bedroom a more satisfying place.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateApr 7, 2008
    ISBN9781423316725
    Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
    Author

    Mary Roach

    Mary Roach is the author of five best-selling works of nonfiction, most recently Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War. Her writing has appeared in Outside, National Geographic, and the New York Times Magazine, among other publications.

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    Reviews for Bonk

    4/5

    1,498 ratings145 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

      ★★★★

      This was an incredibly fun, although a sometimes awkward, book. I am not a big science reader (I barely passed in college, if at all) but Mary Roach has a way of making things fun and light and educational, all at the same time. I could not get enough of this book, even though at times I found myself crossing my legs as the descriptions alone made me feel pain. I definitely enjoyed Roach’s thoughts and commentary throughout; she had me laughing so hard at times. I found this book so amusing and enlightening that I actually read the entire book out loud to my husband, who also found it great – although I can only imagine what my surrounding neighbors in the complex, as they walked by my open window, were thinking as they heard me reading this one to my husband! This was my first book by Mary Roach but it definitely won’t be the last.
    • 4/5
      Bonk is a hoot! Mary Roach has written a book of science that is not at all dry and boring, and it's also not at all a serious or academic work (although there is plenty to learn from it). It is, however, full of interesting and surprising facts about the human sexual response and the history of the scientific study of it. I often fail to find humor in books that are meant to be humorous. I don't know why but it's hard to get me to laugh at a book, its much easier to make me cry, and it's not like I don't have a sense of humor. This book made me laugh out loud even before the first chapter: It's dedicated "To Woody" and begins, not with a "forward" but with "foreplay". It's a quick and easy read and very enjoyable. Recommended.
    • 3/5
      Maybe I need to stop reading books that others tout as amazing and setting myself up for disappointment? I had high hopes for this audiobook, but it was just okay. Some of that might have to do with the narration, I didn't enjoy her voice.
    • 4/5
      Mary Roach strikes just the right balance between serious inquiry and hilarious commentary on sex research past and present. The book is an exploration of how scientists know what they know about sex, and what isn't known, and who gets involved in this particular line of work.
    • 5/5
      An informative and hilarious book discussing the often difficult subject of human sexuality. Mary Roach takeout on a journey, through human sexuality through the ages. Well written and humorous, this book is recommended to everyone who wants a lighthearted insights to our own bodies and urges.
    • 3/5
      This is a pretty quick read. It's not very cohesive, the transitions between chapers are brief and some of the chapters read like bullet lists of disparate facts, historical events mixed with present day research. I learned a little bit but it was short on useful information (the bibliography may yield more interesting results).
    • 4/5
      Loved it! Mary Roach approached what could be an awkward topic with humor and made it interesting. There were times when I shuddered (men, don't read some of the footnotes around the surgery chapters) but overall, it was an interesting book with stuff that, while not necessary to know, is definitely cool!
    • 3/5
      I wasn't as interested in this book as I thought I might be. I so liked Roach's Stiff book, but this one didn't catch my attention quite like that one did. It was so technical with so many words that assumed you knew genital anatomy. The title is spot on. This is all science. Nothing else. I listened to most of this book while doing yard work and never once felt distracted or embarrassed by the material speaking into my ear. So, I guess I got what I asked for, pulling this book off the bookshelf. Nothing else.
    • 4/5
      A wonderful book. Most people are curious to learn about stuff that might seem a taboo to lot. But this is not a taboo but a necessity to learn and know about how we reproduce and what might be the reason it is such a fun.
    • 3/5
      Very interesting book. I would've preferred to read the other Mary Roach books, but this was the only one available via Amazon kindle library. I enjoy this kind of books - full of interesting facts. Although I doubt I'd be able to show off my new knowledge during dinner conversation. In fact I was reading this secretively, covering the chapter title when Ed came near by.There are many surprising facts, but non I was too fascinated by. The biggest selling point to me is the author's sense of humor. I literally laughed out lot many times. I am going to try to read the other Mary Roach books.
    • 3/5
      Good company on a long flight. Well-researched, with the occasional one-liner that will cause you to laugh out loud. In public. Be warned.
    • 4/5
      I enjoy the dry humour of Bill Bryson and Lynne Truss, and the writing style of Mary Roach is similar. Even though I listen to Dan Savage podcasts there's always something new to learn about human sexy times (not to mention that of monkeys), though when it comes to the finer details (e.g. natural lubrication of the anal sphincter) I'm going to listen to Dan before Mary. Whether the clitoris is in fact a vestigial penis is still up for debate in other quarters, despite Mary's somewhat reluctant insistence that it is so. In short, I would read this book as entertainment. Though at times, some serious issues (in feminist world and in homosexual world) are given a light touch that I find almost disturbing, and I definitely had to skip over the section on penis modifications because I'm queasy. And I don't even have a penis. My phantom penis was in pain just reading about the things that go on in China.

      This book makes much use of footnotes. Sometimes they fill half the page. This is part of the humour -- footnotes lend a pseudo-scientific flavour to a work designed to entertain, and they do achieve that. But footnotes are like parentheses -- whenever I read them I feel I've been taken out of the real story, and when they occur with such frequency it gets annoying, stopping mid-sentence before turning the page to read the footnotes. And these footnotes should rightly have been placed within the text, because you've really got to read them to get the most out of this book.

      This is the first book by Mary Roach that I've come across, but now I'm fascinated by what she has to say about human cadavers.
    • 4/5
      3.5 starsIn Bonk, Mary Roach looks at the science of sex. She looks at the history of studying sex, talks to various scientists and even participates in a few studies herself!It was interesting. And, Roach is, of course, also humourous at times. I read the ebook, which unfortunately didn't work very well for the footnotes. They are all clustered at the end, so if you read through them at that point, you're missing the context.
    • 5/5
      Very informative and entertaining! Some cringe worthy cocktail party conversation starters!
    • 4/5
      Everything you wanted to know (and a lot you didn't) about sex research. This light-hearted and whimsical tour of research methods and theories about men and women and how they come together will enlighten and amuse by turns. There are a few wince-inducing moments but you'll come away with so much fascinating and practical knowledge. Believe me, you won't regret giving this one a whirl (probably).
    • 4/5
      I love Mary Roach's books. There's no way I can give an objective review. Read her; love her.
    • 4/5
      This is a breezy, funny overview of the science of sex. Possibly a little too light, if you think about it. The author is nothing if not determined to go the distance, as it were, with providing info for you. A visit to a penile surgeon in Taiwan? Trying to get in touch with Virginia Johnson? She does it.

      This book will provide you with many amusing anecdotes to share at dinner parties, such as "the volume of pig ejaculate is over 200ml." Possibly this is why I am not invited to dinner parties.
    • 4/5
      Mary Roach has a knack for distilling complicated scientific topics into prose that the general reader can understand. She does it with her own sense of curiosity and humor, which makes the learning fun. Previously, I’ve chortled my way through books that examined the afterlife for human cadavers (2003’s Stiff), and human spirits (2005’s Spooks), space exploration (2010’s Packing for Mars), the digestive system (2013’s Gulp), and the military (2016’s Grunt). Somehow I had missed reading her second book, Bonk (2008), although not from a sense of squeamishness about the subject. Or at least, not my squeamishness; for a long time it was the only Mary Roach book my local library did not have on the shelves.Happily, that was no longer the case when I checked the ebook catalog earlier this year, and I was quick to add myself to the holds list. I can report that the expected mix of knowledge and good humor were present in the usual abundance for a Roach production, even as the subject once again would not seem to lend itself to jocularity. Sure, people take death and war seriously, but sex occupies a particularly fraught place, at least in modern American culture. For proof, you’ve only to look at the fact that a movie is much more likely to receive an R rating for showing a woman’s bare breasts than for showing crowds of people getting mown down with an automatic rifle.The idea of studying sex as a scientific topic, in a lab with experiments involving real people, seems particularly fascinating. Roach provides a good overview of the difficulty in quantitatively measuring something whose most notable effects seem psychological rather than physiological. And that’s not even to get into the aversion of funders in providing money to study such a ticklish subject (no pun intended). Roach’s interest was piqued years ago when she stumbled on a medical journal article about a 1980s UCLA study that measured human sexual response. One group of men were asked to manipulate “the more usual suspect” during the experiment, while the control group was asked to rub their kneecaps at measured intervals:Requesting that a study subject twiddle his knees is not immoral or indecent, but it is very hard to explain. And even harder to fund. Who sponsors these studies, I wondered. Who volunteers for them?One of my favorite features of Roach’s work is how she cheerfully submits herself to observing and sometimes participating in the scientific research, the better to understand and explain it to her readers. And Bonk is no exception, although I’ll leave it to you to discover exactly how she accomplishes it. (All I’ll say here is her husband Ed must be a singularly good-natured and accommodating spouse.)I can’t say Bonk is my favorite Mary Roach book (that’s a tie between Gulp and Stiff), but it was an enjoyable romp through the laboratories of sexuality.
    • 3/5
      Very interesting. Not for the squeamish though, there is some fairly cringeworthy description of surgery for impotence that even made me cross my legs. I can't say that I learned a great deal but I was certainly entertained.
    • 4/5
      This book was a bit of an impulse purchase when I was out running errands and had failed to bring a book. I'd just recently finished reading Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, which I loved, so I decided to go pick one of Roach's other books.I did really enjoy this one, but it didn't blow me away like Stiff did. I expect that most of the difference was just from being more familiar with the subject matter. I read a lot of articles on the developing scientific understanding of sex and sexuality, so there were fewer surprises here. Plus the passage of time and the way expectations have changed in just a few short years about LGBTQIA+ inclusion. There is some inclusion here, of course, there were just moments that seemed to call for more.What I enjoyed most about this book was when Roach got into the weeds with truly weird research -- implanting "donated" testicles to boost virility, the weird devices scientists have built to measure different kinds of sexual response, etc. I was also fascinated by the story of Marie Bonaparte, who herself became fascinated by why some women orgasm from intercourse and some do not. Her entire chapter was just amazing.A good read.
    • 3/5
      Here's a tip: Don't listen to this audiobook when it's warm enough outside for you to drive around with the windows down. Stoplights become very awkward places.
    • 4/5
      Breezy run through the science of sex - it's clear that we don't really know a great deal about so many facets of coitus, mainly due to the difficulty and controversy of any attempted studies.

      Some interesting anecdotes and tidbits, good light read.
    • 3/5
      Mary Roach, the popular science writer who has the sense of humor of a 12-year-old, investigates medical research of human sexual intercourse.  There are some guffaws, and Roach even volunteers for some experiments with her husband, but this book is surprisingly a straight-forward account of historical research and current studies of sex. Roach draws on the writings of famous sex experts such as Alfred Kinsey and Masters & Johnson, and interviewing and observing today's researchers. Along the way she details with sex machines and penis cameras, erectile dysfunction treatments, artificial insemination, and the mysteries of the female orgasm.  It's an interesting account but it doesn't feel like vital read.
    • 3/5
      Many eons ago I had a friend at work who was always boasting how many times he did it per week: 'We've experimented with positions, more than 100 altogether' and some-such. There was a sense it had become a bit of a braggadiccio thing. Well, firstly the idea of counting all these positions is risible but of course there aren't over a 100 different sexual positions, merely 4, maybe 5 that give scope for various variations. At the time I'd have been interested to hear the wife's views on it all. A friend of my former friend was once part of some kind of pseudo Buddhist sexual cult and whilst it was free sex with everyone she had a particular boyfriend there who practiced tantra sex, long lasting, multiple orgasms etc ....my friend asked how this was, thinking it must have been pretty amazing and her friend said: “No, actually it's really tedious having it go on for so long, lying there for ages whilst the bloke continues to gyrate.” I do wonder if 2 hours conjoined in a swimming pool is as much fun as it may first seem...think about it. Anyway as always with these books you can't help but wonder about sex is all about.Sexual intimacy can be a full on experience of ecstasy with someone. When your partner is also someone with whom you have a truly deep simpatico and many years of experience it is an almost singular body-emotion-mind space. It is about as close as we get to occupying a unified state: two-as-one-as-none. There are non-sexual intimacies that can have a similar quality. It comes down to being naked enough to be with someone to experience each other in the moment in an unconditional way. It could be meditating together, or watching the sea crash against rocks, or gazing out at the Milky Way at night in the wilderness, or just walking together through a farmer's market and encountering fragrances, sounds and sights that set off the mirror neurons in a dervish dance of intimate awareness. There are many doorways into beautiful and unifying experiences, provided each is open and trusting of the other in a way that allows being together without contracting and sequestering a part of oneself. We often use the word 'love' to encapsulate this, but the real trick is being so present with another that words to describe it are not rising into the conscious mind. As soon as you find words rising to frame or describe it, you have already separated by a few degrees. Total intimacy has an ineffability to it where words are vanquished as silence holds moments that stretch like taffy and feel eternal.(I know; you're thinking: "I feel my food chaffing just reading this.")
    • 4/5
      Amusing and interesting. Slightly awkward to read on public transit. Removed the jacket and just told people I was reading a book on physiology when they asked. Generally, they didn't follow up on that.An excellent book for those curious about how the science of sex is done and the difficulties in actually doing it.
    • 5/5
      Mary Roach is great. I loved Stiff, so when I saw Bonk at my library I couldn't wait to start it! Fun, informative, and mostly lighthearted, even though Sex is a serious subject. Loved it!
    • 3/5
      Mary Roach is fabulous... no questions left unasked! "Stiff" is still my favorite though.
    • 4/5
      Another fun pop science/history book from Mary Roach. Great audiobook for a long, otherwise boring drive.
    • 3/5
      Interesting stuff, although I have mixed feelings about pop-sci in general, the subjects are interesting, and I enjoy going through the research, but the endings tend to feel lackluster, not much of a conclusion. This may simply be the nature of science books, most of the time. I feel I would gain *most* of the same information, if I did my own research for various articles on the subject. The personal stories while doing research/interviews do make it worth the read, it's just a smaller part of the book. So, that's why it's only 3 stars, I might give it another half, but not 4.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this scientific look at sex. What's almost as enjoyable as the topic, is Mary Roach's writing. She has a manner that is a bit quirky, and rather funny, given that she is writing non-fiction. I learned a few interesting facts, and actually hit upon some information that I had been recently seeking, but never expected to read in this book. It was a pleasant and timely surprise. I will definitely read more of her books, when the timing is right. I have many unread books on my shelves and have a goal of reading as many of those as possible before buying additional books. Thanks go to my friend, Jennifer Stone, for recommending this book to me.