A Humorous Read
Discovering the article “Local Man Refuses to Accept Gay Penguins” by Alex Cooper brought much enjoyment that forced the purchase of his book The Mating Game. The book proved an equally pleasurable experience, not unlike watching Animal Planet mate with E-harmony to produce a mutant reminiscent of Gary Larson’s Farside. Unique, fun, and educational, The Mating Game is a must for the animal lover’s library.
The well-edited book contained a few forgivable, minor errors making reading easy. Dissuading my initial assumption of another cute animal collage factoid, reading The Mating Game reveals a hilarious zoological sex education course covering many species. From the start, the book caught my attention with a silverback’s foreword that launches a series of profiles for an animal dating app. Many strange, unknown facts concerning nonhuman dating emerge from the reading, which collectively expresses life’s rich diversity. I enjoyed this element immensely compared with reading textbooks or watching bizarre animal pornography.
More than a sex education class, The Mating Game forces contemplation of human sexual behaviors and beliefs: not all bad, not all good. For sure, humans enjoy safer sex than the mantis, who may lose his head during the act, but animals also seem far less prone to homophobia. Learning the Booby will hurl brothers and sisters from the nest to survive doesn’t evoke hate for the species, elucidating human propensity to kill one another for far less necessary reasons of money, race, or desire. The Bonobo having sex to say hello, goodbye, or just for the hell of being social reflects the need for human communities to be more receptive to different races, creeds, and nationalities. These introspections speak to the book’s informative function but also to the underlying theme of respecting diversity. I commend this educational quality that steers readers away from animals anthropomorphized with ridiculous religious perspectives, which is ironic since the book accomplishes this task using anthropomorphism. Bravo!
Cooper’s ability to show diversity may form the book’s only weakness when he sometimes strays from this sexual diversity theme going deeper into animal facts. I would enjoy, perhaps in a future iteration, a focus on other aspects of sexual diversity. This is not to say that The Mating Game lacks this quality, just that gender and sexual diversity could clarify and strengthen further without clobbering the reader.
My harshest criticism focuses on a formatting issue caused by words embedded in illustrations. Separating text from photos would disrupt reading less by eliminating constant adjustment to the font size. Again, this is a forgivable issue because illustrations can be a challenge in KDP.
The book’s greatest strength is the author’s affinity for this planet’s creatures, and though The Mating Game is a humorous read, much wisdom gleans from the author’s respect and love for life.
This makes the fourth in over a year of attempted reviews of They can’t kill us until they kill us by Hanif Abdurraqib, not for difficulty understanding but seeking a starting point. Perhaps more than the book, Abdurraqib is the best beginning since we travel his life as a poet, culture, and music critic. These occupations carve honesty’s treacherous path, and walking with him shares this danger for needing to open yourself to the truth. As...
Read MoreThere are moments reading If We Break when Kathleen Buhle irks with such passion you may want to reach into the pages, shake her by the shoulders, and scream, “Would you please wake up and do something about your husband!” There are moments you will roll your eyes and sigh at the grotesque privilege the novel effuses. There are moments you will grit teeth, expecting her to spiral deep into Al Anon's Twelve Step pseudo-religion...
Read MoreContains Spoilers: Read the book first. As a harsh critic of genre fiction and even harsher critic of the genre writers, I found many of my criticisms validated by the novella, Micro God by K.R. Martin. Martin is a book critic on YouTube whose review of an indie author’s book, first caught my attention. This thorough, funny review sent me searching Amazon for the indie author and to learn if Martin published books. The discovery...
Read MoreDiscovering the article “Local Man Refuses to Accept Gay Penguins” by Alex Cooper brought much enjoyment that forced the purchase of his book The Mating Game. The book proved an equally pleasurable experience, not unlike watching Animal Planet mate with E-harmony to produce a mutant reminiscent of Gary Larson’s Farside. Unique, fun, and educational, The Mating Game is a must for the animal lover’s library. The well-edited book contained a few forgivable, minor errors making...
Read MoreReluctance failed to steal the reading felt owed to Faith Jones after an unkind discussion of her TEDx. Now, Sex Cult Nun leaves an undesired compulsion to review, feeling disappointed and disturbed by this writing disaster. Torn between culprits, I settle on both publisher and writer sharing the blame for a book filled with just terrible writing that lacks substance. Just Bad Writing Publishing reached a new low with the haphazard editing and total lack of respect given to this...
Read MoreTerry Trueman’s award-winning teen fiction novel Stuck in Neutral exemplifies the negative impacts of categorizing fiction. The book easily falls into the adult literary fiction category being thematically superior to most teen books dealing with dating or bullying issues. Mentioning this issue is important because the book doesn’t receive enough credit or audience, despite winning awards. Certainly, I would not have read this book since I rarely peruse children or teen literature except when coming...
Read MoreLending copies of the Book of Five Rings to people across the years resulted in subsequent repurchases of the beloved novel. The theft and willingness to repurchase copies speak to the book’s strength, having purchased the sixth, final, unstealable digital eBook. As a martial arts and philosophy enthusiast, I continue to find value in Stephen Kaufman’s interpretation of this book since its discovery in 1996, spurring many recommendations to fellow readers. Hanshi Kaufman 10th Dan...
Read MoreFactotum (Fair Use) My editor friend says Charles Bukowski is an easy target for haters, and I agree after reading some of the approximate 70,000 Goodreads’ comments and reviews characterizing Factotum as “smut,” “misogynistic,” or “the writing of a nasty drunk.” I cannot deny these descriptors, but even positive reviews often erroneously depict Bukowski as a rebel or nonconformist hero who relentlessly pursues booze and sex while rejecting work. Factotum’s winding path through drinking, sex,...
Read More