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"You - Tim Ferriss - can do more outside the system than inside it."
- a supposed actual quote by an actual human being over an actual dinner.
I was bribed to read this book. So far I have accepted books from my wishlist, a hand-knitted winter hat, a hand-knitted scarf, and a gift sampler of assorted jerky. Bribes still accepted!
Ferriss suggests reading this book out of order and according to your interests, so I am doing so. (Obviously, I went straight for the 15-minute orgasm.) So there will be at least one more installment of this review.
I expected to hate-read this book. Instead, at least so far, I am reluctantly charmed by it. Tim Ferriss is fabulously wealthy businessbro huckster and I strongly suspect that at least 50% of everything in this book is complete bullshit, but he's also pretty funny and some of his advice is actually good. Here's a piece of actually good advice, which may seem obvious but the problem it addresses really is a major cause of failure at all sorts of things:
Take adherence seriously: will you actually stick with this change until you hit your goal?
If not, find another method, even if it's less effective and less efficient. The decent method you follow is better than the perfect method you quit.
And now for the 15-minute orgasm! This chapter is headed by a quote by Wilhelm Reich, who is called "an Austrian psychologist." This is correct, but incomplete. Wilhelm Reich was a crackpot Austrian psychologist who believed that the universe was powered by orgasms. He built boxes called orgone accumulators which were supposed to harness orgasm power. I once spent a month at the home of a Baba-lover family where the dad had an orgone machine that he tried to convince me to get in, claiming it was healthy. It was a box made of plywood. That's it. I declined.
Reich was also into UFOs. From Wikipedia: He and his son would spend their nights searching for UFOs through telescopes and binoculars, and sometimes, when they believed they had found one, they would roll out a cloudbuster to suck the energy out of it (the perceived-or imagined-UFO). Reich claimed he had shot several of them down. Armed with two cloudbusters, they fought what Reich called a "full-scale interplanetary battle" in Arizona, where he had rented a house as a base station. In Contact with Space, he wrote of the "very remote possibility" that his own father had been from outer space.
Sorry, I digress. Back to Ferriss. To learn about the female orgasm, he consulted a porn star (because they're famous for having real orgasms /s) and a "specialist in female ejaculation." Here's his big takeaway from the latter:
"For almost all women, the most sensitive part of the clit will be the upper-left-hand quadrant from their perspective, around one o' clock from the man's perspective."
I don't know about the rest of you, but my clit is the size of a pencil eraser. If you want to touch just one quadrant, you're going to need the pencil tip (dull and covered with a condom, please), a magnifying glass, and outstanding eye-hand coordination.
Ferriss learns that many women have never had an orgasm at all, and only a minority can have them solely through penis-in-vagina sex, with no stimulation other than the penis. With the help of a composite-character pre-orgasmic woman he's dating, and also a whole bunch of mostly female orgasm experts, he sets outwith a magnifying glass and a blunted pencil to give pre-orgasmic women orgasms.
The porn star says the first step is to learn to masturbate to orgasm. She has pretty good advice for this: address any sexual hangups like having been taught that sex was shameful or sinful, get a multi-speed vibrator, set time aside to explore, focus on pleasure rather than coming as a goal. I have advised all of this in actual sex therapy.
She then recommends a bunch of sexual positions and techniques, which Ferriss provides with diagrams. As is typical for sex positions and techniques, a number of them look awkward or overly athletic and/or would be fun once, and all of them probably work for some people.
Use the bottom of the opening of her vagina as a fulcrum for the penis, which will act as a lever. The goal is to catapult the woman over your head.
On to the 15-minute orgasm!
As I suspect is a theme in this book, the flashy headline is not what it sounds like. It's not about having an orgasm that lasts for 15 minutes. It's not even about having an orgasm within 15 minutes. It's a 15-minute "work up to a partnered orgasm" practice technique, consisting of a kind of awkward position and instructions for 1) how to discuss doing it with your female partner 2) how to actually touch the clit (light strokes).
The "how to discuss" is generally good. It's classic sex therapy stuff: the woman is not supposed to perform pleasure, the man isn't supposed to ask if she's enjoying what he's doing (because that tends to feel pressuring and will produce a yes whether she is or not) but instead to ask neutral questions like "harder or softer? higher or lower?," the goal isn't to have an orgasm but just to see what the exercise feels like.
It's one exercise, not a magic bullet, but the concepts behind it are good: no pressure, no goal, just an exercise to see what happens. Of course in the context of the entire book there is a goal, and if it turns out that the woman doesn't like this exercise they should try again with a different technique or body part but the same framework, but all things considered, I expected something much more bullshit than this.
Next I'm going to read the chapter on gaining 34 lbs of muscle in 28 days without drugs and by going to the gym a total of 4 hours in that entire time. I expect 34 lbs of bullshit.
If you're wondering about the wow! a clitoris! tag, see The Clitoral Truth and (locked for discussion of a college class) If the class is anything like that ridiculous book, we're all gonna draw our vulvas and worship the Goddess!
- a supposed actual quote by an actual human being over an actual dinner.
I was bribed to read this book. So far I have accepted books from my wishlist, a hand-knitted winter hat, a hand-knitted scarf, and a gift sampler of assorted jerky. Bribes still accepted!
Ferriss suggests reading this book out of order and according to your interests, so I am doing so. (Obviously, I went straight for the 15-minute orgasm.) So there will be at least one more installment of this review.
I expected to hate-read this book. Instead, at least so far, I am reluctantly charmed by it. Tim Ferriss is fabulously wealthy businessbro huckster and I strongly suspect that at least 50% of everything in this book is complete bullshit, but he's also pretty funny and some of his advice is actually good. Here's a piece of actually good advice, which may seem obvious but the problem it addresses really is a major cause of failure at all sorts of things:
Take adherence seriously: will you actually stick with this change until you hit your goal?
If not, find another method, even if it's less effective and less efficient. The decent method you follow is better than the perfect method you quit.
And now for the 15-minute orgasm! This chapter is headed by a quote by Wilhelm Reich, who is called "an Austrian psychologist." This is correct, but incomplete. Wilhelm Reich was a crackpot Austrian psychologist who believed that the universe was powered by orgasms. He built boxes called orgone accumulators which were supposed to harness orgasm power. I once spent a month at the home of a Baba-lover family where the dad had an orgone machine that he tried to convince me to get in, claiming it was healthy. It was a box made of plywood. That's it. I declined.
Reich was also into UFOs. From Wikipedia: He and his son would spend their nights searching for UFOs through telescopes and binoculars, and sometimes, when they believed they had found one, they would roll out a cloudbuster to suck the energy out of it (the perceived-or imagined-UFO). Reich claimed he had shot several of them down. Armed with two cloudbusters, they fought what Reich called a "full-scale interplanetary battle" in Arizona, where he had rented a house as a base station. In Contact with Space, he wrote of the "very remote possibility" that his own father had been from outer space.
Sorry, I digress. Back to Ferriss. To learn about the female orgasm, he consulted a porn star (because they're famous for having real orgasms /s) and a "specialist in female ejaculation." Here's his big takeaway from the latter:
"For almost all women, the most sensitive part of the clit will be the upper-left-hand quadrant from their perspective, around one o' clock from the man's perspective."
I don't know about the rest of you, but my clit is the size of a pencil eraser. If you want to touch just one quadrant, you're going to need the pencil tip (dull and covered with a condom, please), a magnifying glass, and outstanding eye-hand coordination.
Ferriss learns that many women have never had an orgasm at all, and only a minority can have them solely through penis-in-vagina sex, with no stimulation other than the penis. With the help of a composite-character pre-orgasmic woman he's dating, and also a whole bunch of mostly female orgasm experts, he sets out
The porn star says the first step is to learn to masturbate to orgasm. She has pretty good advice for this: address any sexual hangups like having been taught that sex was shameful or sinful, get a multi-speed vibrator, set time aside to explore, focus on pleasure rather than coming as a goal. I have advised all of this in actual sex therapy.
She then recommends a bunch of sexual positions and techniques, which Ferriss provides with diagrams. As is typical for sex positions and techniques, a number of them look awkward or overly athletic and/or would be fun once, and all of them probably work for some people.
Use the bottom of the opening of her vagina as a fulcrum for the penis, which will act as a lever.
On to the 15-minute orgasm!
As I suspect is a theme in this book, the flashy headline is not what it sounds like. It's not about having an orgasm that lasts for 15 minutes. It's not even about having an orgasm within 15 minutes. It's a 15-minute "work up to a partnered orgasm" practice technique, consisting of a kind of awkward position and instructions for 1) how to discuss doing it with your female partner 2) how to actually touch the clit (light strokes).
The "how to discuss" is generally good. It's classic sex therapy stuff: the woman is not supposed to perform pleasure, the man isn't supposed to ask if she's enjoying what he's doing (because that tends to feel pressuring and will produce a yes whether she is or not) but instead to ask neutral questions like "harder or softer? higher or lower?," the goal isn't to have an orgasm but just to see what the exercise feels like.
It's one exercise, not a magic bullet, but the concepts behind it are good: no pressure, no goal, just an exercise to see what happens. Of course in the context of the entire book there is a goal, and if it turns out that the woman doesn't like this exercise they should try again with a different technique or body part but the same framework, but all things considered, I expected something much more bullshit than this.
Next I'm going to read the chapter on gaining 34 lbs of muscle in 28 days without drugs and by going to the gym a total of 4 hours in that entire time. I expect 34 lbs of bullshit.
If you're wondering about the wow! a clitoris! tag, see The Clitoral Truth and (locked for discussion of a college class) If the class is anything like that ridiculous book, we're all gonna draw our vulvas and worship the Goddess!
, and am saving it for the winter break, when I will have more relaxed time to read. Also, Sherwood Smith's 
, sequel to Coronets and Steel, is out! I read it in manuscript, and it is excellent. Both series will satisfy all your "women who fight with swords amidst a background of history and intrigue" needs.
