by James A. Grant ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 11, 2018
Candid instruction and enthusiasm buck any notion that readers are ever too old for satisfying sex.
A debut manual rejects the idea that the elderly can’t have active and exciting sex lives.
Grant’s perceptive guide puts a strong focus on senior men—who can no longer rely on the energy of youth or even reliable erections to sustain their passion for sexual activity—and post-menopausal women, shrugging off the idea that with age must come celibacy. More of a self-help and instructional resource than a scholarly one, the book nonetheless provides extensive background for many of its conclusions, looking at the history of the sexual revolution, the proliferation of blunt advice and pornography on the internet, the chemical responses humans share with animals, and the physical reactions the human body has to stimulation. Information on the work’s 16 types of orgasms and ways to reach them are included as well. In addition, the author provides techniques that range from the romantic to the clinical in discovering how to stimulate a partner or oneself, emphasizing the normalcy of such practices while answering age-old questions like “Does size matter?” and examining the “vital skill” of female ejaculation. Not purely physical in its interests, the book also seeks to inform monogamous couples on how to keep tensions and conflicts low in their relationships while encouraging a self-study of inhibitions and their origins. Much as it encourages readers to do so, the guide likes to tease the audience, offering bits of advice only to follow up with more detailed instructions later. This repetition is explicitly intended to help with retention but will likely be discouraging to readers who wish to easily revisit specific tips. While the manual supplies a short bibliography, stronger in-text citations would have helped to separate the anecdotal from the factual, and photographs or illustrations might have better conveyed certain techniques. But the guide’s commitment to ending the stigma of conversations about sex, particularly among seniors, active or not (there’s even a brief chapter on performing with physical limitations), remains admirable and effective in its straightforward ardor.
Candid instruction and enthusiasm buck any notion that readers are ever too old for satisfying sex.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5320-4581-3
Page Count: 276
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Cheryl Strayed ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2015
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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by Rebecca Skloot ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 9, 2010
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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