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4.18 AVERAGE
4.18 AVERAGE
Intelligent and funny. Natalie Angier is a renaissance woman. A should-read.
If you've ever wanted a qualitative, beautiful and well-written review of women's biology, this book is half of a "here ya go." The other half is going to incur some eye rolls with the seriously dated "women drive like this! men drive like this!" kinda stuff.
The female body is amazing and there is so much I did not know until I read this book. I love my body even more now :-) Every woman and every man who loves women should read this book.
I loved this book but found it challenging and eventually had to assign myself 5-10 pages a day. Every paragraph of Angier's study of women's physiology is packed with enough scientific concepts and ideas to fuel a half-day discussion, and she is one of those writers who makes you use your dictionary, who makes you think, and who also makes you think "I could never write that." She starts with a study of the human egg cell and takes you into the operating room where a woman is donating her eggs. From there, Angier explores the uterus, menopause, breasts and breast milk, female hormones and the menstrual cycle. Throughout the book, she considers why nature made women the way they are, how much is evolution and how much is influenced by culture. She dips into chemistry, anthropology, literature and psychology in an attempt to explain biology.
You could pick up some of the science in this book in any number of places, and she quotes myriad studies and interviews scientists and researchers and ordinary women. But only here can you find Angier's stylized and stylish prose.
"We are all yeses. We are worthy enough, we passed inspection, we survived the great fetal oocyte extinctions. In that sense, at least— call it a mechanospiritual sense— we are meant to be. We are good eggs, every one of us."
You could pick up some of the science in this book in any number of places, and she quotes myriad studies and interviews scientists and researchers and ordinary women. But only here can you find Angier's stylized and stylish prose.
"We are all yeses. We are worthy enough, we passed inspection, we survived the great fetal oocyte extinctions. In that sense, at least— call it a mechanospiritual sense— we are meant to be. We are good eggs, every one of us."
instructive, funny, entertaining, and inspiring. all women should read this.
Seminal (or should I say ovular?) read in my personal formation as a feminist. Like the female body, Angier's prose is both tender and strong, and it's absolutely bursting with insight and information. Quite funny, too!
challenging
funny
informative
lighthearted
slow-paced
informative
slow-paced
This book needs illustrations! You can't scrutinize and analyze and critique the geography of the vagina (chapter 4) without providing visual aids to those of us who don't possess one or haven't sighted one in... well... a long time. You might as well be talking about the album cover of Sgt. Pepper - yes I vaguely remember the layout, no I don't recall exactly where Ringo was standing.
That said, Angier doesn't just explain female physiology, she celebrates it. Loudly. Intelligently. Frankly. This is no college textbook, but maybe it should be. Women 101, freshman syllabus, M-W-F, 9am - noon.
And it's not just physiology, it's also biology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, chemistry, and primatology. (I laughed rather loudly at the labeling of the rhesus monkey's capacity for social compromise as "rhesus peaces"). Science geek nirvana.
Speaking as a man, I was humbled and sometimes horrified. For all the splendor and beauty of the female body, there is a lot there that can go wrong. Even when it goes right it's still messy and complicated. A nice place to visit, but I would not want to live there.
That said, Angier doesn't just explain female physiology, she celebrates it. Loudly. Intelligently. Frankly. This is no college textbook, but maybe it should be. Women 101, freshman syllabus, M-W-F, 9am - noon.
And it's not just physiology, it's also biology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, chemistry, and primatology. (I laughed rather loudly at the labeling of the rhesus monkey's capacity for social compromise as "rhesus peaces"). Science geek nirvana.
Speaking as a man, I was humbled and sometimes horrified. For all the splendor and beauty of the female body, there is a lot there that can go wrong. Even when it goes right it's still messy and complicated. A nice place to visit, but I would not want to live there.