Pornology - erotic book by Running Press Book Publishers - review by Timaree

It would be inaccurate to say I hate this book, Pornology. There is actually a font of information about pornography, strip clubs and sex toy stores that would be of incredible use to those readers who are entirely uninitiated to sexuality beyond old episodes of Sex and the City. Yet, as much as the book itself does not merit hatred, I have never before disliked an author so fervently since, well, Mein Kampf.

Before further explaining this declaration, I want to take a moment to write three nice things about the book.

1. Ayn Carillo-Gailey, the author, does a great job doing the perfunctory research leg work that many women are uninterested, unable or unwilling to do.

2. Pornology is a supremely easy and light read. There are no complex thoughts, rambling sentences or obscure vocabulary that would cause any reader to grow weary of thinking too hard.

3. For the women for whom this book is intended, this may be a life-changing experience, getting the inside scoop on a world into which they could never dare contemplate entering alone. Perhaps they will feel empowered to seek out new sexual frontiers and find betterment in their personal lives.

That said, the valuable tidbits these readers will find are spaced about 10-30 pages apart, separated by the most self-indulgent, humorless, pathetic, name-dropping pap I’ve had the misfortune to encounter.

I am clearly not the target audience for this book, seeing as I’ve never equated sexual naiveté with making one a “good girl.” I am also not one of those women who ever found Cathy cartoons to be a clever take on the lives of modern women, but rather, wondered how the cartoonist managed to go a day without slashing her wrists. Don’t get me wrong: I love mindless girly crap that gets bashed all the time and have eaten ice cream directly from the container like a recently dumped heroine in a romantic comedy. But this tripe is unbearable.

It’s as if Ayn Carillo-Gailey believes that if she went an entire chapter without promoting the career of one of her friends, droning on about her fat thighs or referencing that she went to Harvard (8 specific mentions in the first 50 pages) and is, like, way intimidating too smart for everyone to handle, the world would implode. If you took MTV’s The Hills, subtracted all the glamour and purported beauty, had all the characters constantly remind us of their intellectual superiority and periodically inserted helpful 20 second PSAs from sexpert Sue Johanson, you’d have Pornology.

What’s unfortunate about this book is how it is marketed, really. From the outside Pornology looks like a clever social scientist found a way to utilize her research skills on the world of sex and wants to show us the information she has discovered, while dropping in funny lines periodically. What Pornology is, in fact, is Carrie Bradshaw for easily impressed and terribly erotophobic. Should they happen upon this sex positive site, they’d do well to purchase this tome and read it cover to cover. Everyone else, however, should steer clear.

I revisited this text while moving a bunch of books in my basement. It's still obnoxious and I can't help but hate the author for being so terrible and managing to get published. And I totally hate her editors for marketing the book the way they did. It's misleading at best.