Renard Dellafave

Both well structured and meandering

Revisado: 02-27-23

Despite loving the topic, I found this much harder to follow, much less get into, than other science histories that focus on one or a few big names. She starts off saying this book won’t mention big names. It does mention a lot of names, though, most with dates (some of which start with a mysterious “florowit”) that get tedious in audio. As does saying “mathematics” instead of “‘math”.
However, if you can get through the foggy gestalt, the topic is well divided into sections and there is a lot of good information about the time before what most of us think of as the scientific revolution.

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Outdated, Wrong, and Machine Narrated Trainwreck

Revisado: 07-21-18

First of all, this is machine text-to-speech, not narrated by the author. The author did an interview on the Life in Overdrive podcast and this is nothing like it. It's good machine speech, not like Siri, so if the Audible New York Times narration is OK, this is similar. Half the words in the book have "scare quotes" around them even when it's not necessary, and Every Single One is read out as "quote unquote _word_" instead of just as a change of intonation. Glad I got this "free" from Kindle Unlimited, otherwise it would be ideal for Audible's return policy.

The content is awful, but I couldn't stop listening to this trainwreck of a book. It's a facepalm every 10 minutes. "The majority of women under 30 can't have an orgasm", "most people meet at bars and clubs", outright eugenics, comparing men watching porn to women in the workplace and getting even that bad analogy's logic wrong, sociopathically naive explanations of the dating marketplace based on economics and big data but painfully ignorant of the emotions involved (might be OK for a statistical analysis matchmaking algorithm, but useless for individuals). The evolutionary psychology is perhaps the most misleading part, as this is a relatively recent book, but using 20 year old pseudoscience that is little other than culturally myopic "just so" stories. A good 20% of the content is why men should cheat, women should just deal with it, but they can't, so men should just lie. Seriously. Read Esther Perel's "Mating in Captivity" or "State of Affairs" if you want good information on infidelity and how to deal with it in a long term relationship. A biological imperative to stray does not mean it's as unavoidable as eating or sleeping. The author's libertarian and data-driven economic analysis bias come out in his insistence that personal freedom means doing whatever you individually want instead of what accounts for the feelings of people you're emotionally connected to.

Try Mary Roach's "Bonk" for a better comprehensive take on sex and relationships. Christopher Ryan's "Sex at Dawn" for a more accurate view of human evolution (hint: we didn't evolve mate choice in bars and clubs), Jesse Bering's "Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us" for a lighter exploration of human sexual nature, and Richard Prum's "The Evolution of Beauty" for explanations of why there are preferences and appearances from sexual selection that have no adaptive value in terms of "good genes" or fertility levels (and also why enough sperm to actually get someone pregnant isn't that cheap, and why men can't in practice have way more kids than women can no matter how widely they stray, Genghis Kahn being a unique case).

If you want a book on one of the most subtle topics, intimate human relationships, that is a combination of an Microeconomics 101 course, a crass rehash of old status-quo justifying evo-psych at its worst, and a dating manual worse than "The Game" (Pickup Artists) dating manual, then this might be the one for you.

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One of the best epic space trilogies ever

Revisado: 06-26-16

Everything Alastair Reynolds has written is good, but this trilogy is essential. Such memorable characters, ships, and settings. Try Peter F Hamilton or Stephen R Donaldson (Gap series) if you like this one.

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Not a big erotica or goth reader, loved it anyway

Revisado: 05-09-12

I have read some Clive Barker and Steven King, few Roald Dahl and Poe stories. My erotica reading includes some other Susie Bright collections, and a few stories from magazines. I think these stories hold up well as emotionally intense thrillers, in the vein of Poe or Dahl, just with a focus on a sexual (if not always "erotic") milieu.
If other erotica goes well with a nice chamomile tea, this collection goes well with a pagan herbal blend.

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Not What I Expected, But Happy With What I Found

Revisado: 12-28-11

I wasn't bored with any of these stories like many of the reviewers were. In fact there were a few that now are still memorable, but only as images. Makes me think it's time for a second listen (my first was right after it was released) . I'm fairly new to the genre, and don't know what others may be looking for in the book -- I found this no more titillating than some SF short story collections. It is, rather, a series of sexually charged intimate short stories. They go off each in their own, sometimes odd, directions. None the direction my fantasies lead, but then, they did stimulate the imagination.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas