I feel a bit odd about reviewing a book that I *only* read. I haven't actually gone through his six month training plan, but I did read the rest of thI feel a bit odd about reviewing a book that I *only* read. I haven't actually gone through his six month training plan, but I did read the rest of the book, and did find myself wanting to hate strength training slightly less than I normally do. Schuler was aware of the fact that he is a man trying to prescribe a set of activities to women, and I felt like he was doing his best to stick to useful, well documented advice and not veer off into mansplaining. I think he mostly succeeded though I take umbrage with the idea that because I am a woman my entire goal in doing lifting must, of course, be weight loss. One practical thing that bothered me was that although he outlined a very detailed six month plan for lifting (complete with meal and nutrition planning and advice), he doesn't mention what you should be doing after those six months....more
Tim Ferriss, time management guru/guy on the internet I love to hate, followed up his first book, The 4 Hour Workweek, with a book designed to teach pTim Ferriss, time management guru/guy on the internet I love to hate, followed up his first book, The 4 Hour Workweek, with a book designed to teach people how to hack their bodies. It's a hodgepodge of advice on everything from weight loss, bodybuilding, sex, running, sleep, and nutrition, and attempts to eschew conventional wisdom in these areas in favor of small (except not really), easily done (except not really), often overlooked (except not really) hacks that anyone can employ. Now, I expected to eye roll a lot at this book (and I did), but I thought it would be interesting. Instead of mild interest, though, I spent the entire read alternating between spitting anger and abject boredom.
The cornerstone of the book is Ferriss' self-experimentation. As he says, he's gone out and tried all the crazy treatments and bought all dangerous products so you don't have to. And that's very nice of him, certainly, though I suspect he's really only indulging his own neuroses and OCD issues rather than doing these things out of any sense of altruism, but whatever. And I do believe that there is a ton of value in self-experimentation. Self-experimentation is where the big theories and scientific discoveries start, take shape, and get you thinking about the world in ways you hadn't before. It's is not, however, science. Science is what you do after you've come up with all these great ideas and interesting observations. Ferriss doesn't seem to understand this, though, skips the middle science part all together, and goes straight to doling out advice on what the reader should be doing to change themselves. The result is contradictory recommendations that are at best benign and at worse dangerous to the user on a physical and mental level.
And then I got to the sex chapter. Ferriss, you see, decides to teach the world (men) how to give a woman a 15 minute orgasm. As though they too are something to be hacked and experimented on so that men can feel better about themselves and their mad skillz. So he talks about his 'experiments' in female sexuality while nudgenudgewinkwinking his way through the parts where he finds his 'test subjects' and talks to 'experts'. And, you know, as disgusted as I was with the whole tone and objectification throughout the chapter, I think I could've forgiven a small part of it if I had learned something interesting or been presented with a novel sexual technique. But no. Ferriss' road to mindblowing orgasms is...manual clitoral masturbation. And I'm still not sure where the 15 minutes comes in. Ugh.
"No, I was more concerned with increasing sperm count than isolating variables."
And that, my friends, pretty much sums up the book for me....more
Loading...
