It wasn't my favorite book in the world, but it was really entertaining. Altman has a very easy and funny style which makes the book interesting and fairly comical at times. I thought it was going to have a little more into the science of orgasm, but instead focused more on the emotional. It was informative, but read more like a fiction journey. I think the lightness and the journey aspects of it made it interesting and worth reading. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a simple, entertaining read. ( )

Short version:

I didn’t always agree with what she was thinking, or what she thought she should do, or her opinions on people or situations – but the way she told her story kept me along for the ride anyways, acknowledging her point of view even when it ran against everything that I believe in. I was sad for her when things weren’t going well, and happy for her when things started to look up. I almost wanted to go and buy her a vibrator my own damn self a couple times, frustrated with her adamant refusals to actually follow the advice that so many people were giving her and use one of the damn things.

Full version:

http://readingthroughlife.ca/thanks-for-coming-review/

This comes on like creative-nonfiction self-exploitation, "hot twentysomething in search of her first orgasm", but it develops by surprise into an affecting thesis on our human needs, our ability to provide for one another, the limits of that ability, but the inadequacy of going it alone. We are built to take care of each other--so the implicit argument goes--and that's all. And that's what orgasm is--and by extension fulfilling sexuality, and one of the things Altman does really well is represent her struggle to let go of this negative, self-defeating obsession with the goal and just enjoy the experience. Giving each other pleasure, learning how to take pleasure ourselves and give others the pleasure of giving us pleasure. It's all just taking care of each other.


I think the concatenation of weird characters hovering around what I'll, for lack of better term, call the orgasm industry--the sex therapist, the aging pornstar, the "masturbation queen" and her champion the sex mystic--is fun but ephemeral. What lasts from this book is the powerful rendition of the mental blocks, the bugbears in Altman's head throwing her off every time she gets back in the saddle (yes, she is riding block and bugbears, and yes, I support mixed metaphors under all circumstances). the discomfort with the nonchalant, ugly language of modern sex (this I can relate to). The despair as narrative after narrative falls apart, especially her return to Israel to meet a serious, sensual boy and have an earthy Jewish marriage in best rabbinic tradition. Most of all, the inability to relinquish control, to just ride with her body and say "this feels good" until it . . . does.


It makes it really mean something when Altman achieves her goal (which is not when she has her first orgasm; that, of course, is just the beginning). It make you hope she'll remember what she's learned about herself, and become a more loving, more patient, softer partner--and more human, less mechanistic, glorying in every moment. It's a good message. ( )