Readers are an odd lot . . . or maybe it’s just me. You, dear reader, should see my shelves. Really, you should. In truth, they are a teensy bit embarrassing, so I might be hard pressed to dole out the pictures, but I assure you, my stacks are significant. With hundreds of unread books gracing my place, normal people would expect a few stinkers in the bunch—books that ultimately are not compelling or well written enough to survive my tendencies toward finicky reading. If such is the case, then why on earth do I pressure myself to finish every single book I pick up, even when sometimes I just do not want to?

In part, it has something to do with the fact that chatting about books has become a major pastime of mine in the last seven years or so. Whether I blog about books, participate in book discussion groups at Yahoo! or other such sites, or just have a cocktail with friends to discuss our latest reads, I talk about books often. Who likes to admit they tossed a book unfinished—that they didn’t have the gumption to stick it out and hang in there until the last page? Who likes to be a big ole quitter? Not me. Oh no.

As I grow and change creatively, emotionally, etcetera, etcetera—I will avoid troubling you with a Holden Caulfield-esque diatribe on readerly maturity—I try not to force myself to finish books I don’t like even though it makes me squirm to set them aside. Such was the case this past week when I jumped headlong into a book that looked oh so promising only to find it bland and uninspiring. The book? Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by my beloved and cherished Mary Roach.

Mary Roach and I have a history. We even have an amusing anecdote. I mentioned here at The Finicky Reader just last week that my mother is a huge fan of true crime. Along with her penchant for the truly murdered comes a similar interest in the otherwise dead and decomposing. She loves books about forensics. With this odd interest in mind, I bought a pristine copy of Roach’s Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers to serve as her Mother’s Day gift in 2003. You should have seen the looks on the faces of her friends and our family members when she raved about her new book about dead people. “Happy Mother’s Day indeed,” they said. I happened to pick the book up on a whim and read it myself. Imagine my surprise when I whipped through it in just over a day and found myself laughing all the way! Roach is talented that way—humorous, that one. Only a gifted writer could make the plight of the dead, stiff, body-farmed, and maggot-ridden so wonderfully entertaining.

It was with a smile and a bounce in my step that I picked up Bonk from the library recently. I was ready to embark upon a journey through the sheets and fallopian tubes of time. Surely, a book about the history of sex research and contemporary studies on the subject written by my ever-so-humorous Mary Roach would be a big fat winner. To put my interest in this title in perspective, I am affectionately known as “the pervert” among my group of friends for my innate and unwavering ability to make even the most mundane things sexual. Chicken salad. Paint. A park bench. I was so very ridiculously excited about Bonk. A book tailor-made for me!

Then I tried to read it.

See what I get for being presumptuous? A big fat DNF. Did not finish.

While the book was funny, that satisfying laugh-out-loud type of funny at times, it just failed to blow my skirt up. Alfred Kinsey and his loopy research, medical imaginings of sex acts in progress, spatial placement of the naughty bits—it all seemed as if it should amuse me, enthrall me, and generally thrill me, but alas, it did not. The problem, I have decided after some deep thought, was a disconnect between the science and the humanity in Roach’s book. While Stiff was great because it presented the scientific oddities involved with cadavers, it was much more than toe tags and morgue drawers. Stiff, at its very core, was reverent and enlightening in addition to being hilarious. Bonk, on the other hand, was quite funny, odd, and more than a little gross, but that same humanity and reverence was missing.

I am always a little (okay, a lot) disappointed when a book that should work for me ends up a bust. I fight the urge to quit. I put a pretty bookmark in, place the book on my nightstand, and stare at it for a few days. Sometimes I open it up a few times, mull over a chapter or so, and put it right back on the top of the pile. Meanwhile all of the other neglected books in my hulking stacks stare at me and roll their eyes. They know what it means, this lack of interest. A sure sign of the DNF.

In the case of Bonk, I actually got through a whopping 164 pages before I put up the crime scene tape and declared it a cold one. I wanted to like it so very much. I struggled, I huffed and puffed, I generally felt a tantrum coming on. Sometimes when it doesn’t work, it just doesn’t work. There is no way to fight and win over the DNF. In some cases I can come back to the book later, open it up afresh and find a brand new ball of sunshiney enjoyment waiting for me. However, sadly, most of the time I find it wiser to leave the DNF alone. Do not resuscitate the DNF. Normally it will only bring frustration all over again. Just call me a big ole quitter. Maybe I can live with it after all.

Rest in peace, Bonk.


Andi is a recovering university academic employed by the North Carolina community college system as an English instructor. While she decided to forego a Ph.D. and career as a professor, she fills in all the free time her current position affords her with editing literary publications, reviewing, freelancing, and blogging at Tripping Toward Lucidity: Estella’s Revenge. Her work can be found in the journal, Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS), and Altar magazine as well as online in various venues such as PopMatters.com. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), and writes fiction. Her turn-ons include new books and gelato, while her turn-offs are reality television and washing dishes. Contact Andi.