Review: Practical Sexuality Laugh & Learn

Title: Practical Sexuality Laugh & Learn by Noah Holder
Pages: 248
Rating: 1 star

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I rarely give a one star rating but this one was very much deserved. On the details section of this book on Netgalley is a disclaimer I should have taken seriously. I only wish I had paid more attention to it before asking for this book. It would have spared me from having to read the book and having to write this review.

I’d like to believe that I am a person who is respectful of other people’s opinion even if they conflict with mine. That belief was thoroughly tested when I could barely read this book without wanting to throw something. In this case, this book which was unfortunately not a hard copy.

 I had toyed with the idea of not writing a review but I thought that people deserved to know what they were getting into with this book. I, like any other reader had some expectations of what this book was about. I expected it to be funny, informative even controversial but all in all a good book.

It was advertised as a guide to the battle of the sexes and how to win. Which sounds interesting right? If only they had stuck to what was advertised. This book was the product of jumbled up thoughts, written in a haphazard manner which did not make sense as a book. If these ideas were published as articles in a newspaper or a magazine I would definitely understand, but as a book? No. I honestly can’t tell what this book was about so I’ll tell you what was in it. Cliché advice, misguided information which can be heard in everyday conversation (which is not even proven to be right), quotes from other people and my least favorite the jokes at the end. Some of them might have actually been funny but this is not a joke book, so why then did they have to be included? It looked like the author ran out of random things to write about so he decided to add some jokes to increase the amount of pages.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, the author remembers what kind of book he was supposed to write and tries to come up with some advice. Case in point, the 5C’s in chapter 24. This is exactly the kind of content which should have been in the whole book.

Within the book the author writes, “my intent in these last two paragraphs is to slam our gentle readers with ugly emotionally charged, stiletto-like material aimed at creating upset and anger." I’d like to say, it was not just in those two paragraphs. It was the whole book!

The author succeeded in writing a shockingly offensive and annoying book. I also assume that the editing of this book was also intended to serve this purpose, which is to shock. Why else would an editor allow pages of capitalized words and at times written in red to be published? So who would I recommend this to? No one I would ever have to see again. Then again, I’m sure somebody has and is likely to enjoy this. I will however not be part of that fan club.