The mistake wasn’t telling my friends that I had a blog where I reviewed books. The mistake was my insistence that I would review whatever they gave me. I just assumed that this would lead them to handing me books where they suspected I would disagree, and I would thus be inundated with books politically dissimilar from my own leanings. That I could manage without a problem. What I instead I got was ‘The Penis Book’
I am pretty sure I can be brief here. This does what it says on the tin. It’s a book about the male genitalia, and it is pretty comprehensive as far as that goes. It goes into how the penis works, why it sometimes doesn’t, and all the different things that can go wrong with it. It does this with a fair amount of humor, some of which works and some of which does not. The humor is pretty necessary to get the topic of the book down comfortably, and it seems to work pretty well to that affect.
Really, the most shocking thing about this was to what extent I already knew much of the information that was here. I don’t think I really learned a whole lot by reading it. Nor was much of it the information here all that applicable or actionable in any way. If, however, anything should ever go wrong with some male anatomy in my presence, I may have some kind of edge on whatever the problem may be. But if I am wanting to be charitable, I should at least say that I don’t really think that the virtue of the book lies solely in the facts and knowledge it gives. Something should be said about the humor the author puts into the book. I book about a singular piece of anatomy would normally be incredibly dull, and fact that I actually got through this (and pretty easily at that) speaks to the author’s skill.
I don’t think I really have anything much else to say about this. So in lieu of a substantive review, know that this book was just on a shelf as I was moving from one place to the other when an elderly neighbor knocked on the door. I’ve known her for some years and she is nice enough, but is in her late eighties, a little conservative, and suffering from pretty horrible cancer. I let her in and we got to talking about whatever it was she needed, and as we spoke her eyes found this book resting on that shelf. From that point forward she gave me some pretty judgmental looks, and I had to hide my internal laughter.
So thanks to the friends who got me this book. I was happy to read and review it.
Failures in Polymathy 