“No reliable statistics are available on the average time lapse between utterances such as ‘I just can’t’ or ‘This probably isn’t a good idea’ and the commencement of [adulterous] foreplay, but sociolinguists should consider investigating their peculiar aphrodisiacal power.”

–Laura Kipnis, Against Love: A Polemic. This book oscillates wildly between acute social satire–kind of like if Jane Austen and Walker Percy had a love child who couldn’t write very well–and dumb-as-a-stump naivete. I found it much more interesting and insightful than I expected. (Read it for review, not for pleasure–ironically, given Kipnis’s pleasure-at-all-costs pose.) She has a strong sense of the contortions adults go through to preserve or change our self-images; but a, shall we say, less-robust appreciation of the fact of pregnancy.