I'm a terrible person: I start reading a book, and then I never finish it. I check it out from the library, only to return it once I've reached the renewal limit. So it's a pretty significant feat that I've finished TWO books in the last month or so.
I first learned about this book while listening to an interview with the author on NPR. Long drives back and forth from school are made so much more enjoyable by talk radio. At any rate, I learned some interesting things from listening and it sounded like an interesting book. Then, I was in the library one day and I happened upon a copy of this book. Why not? The interview was engaging, maybe the book will be too. And so it came to pass that I checked out Gulp by Mary Roach.
In a nutshell, its about all the things you ever wanted (or didn't want) to know about human digestion, from the smell of food all the way down to how it's expelled. It would be easy to make such a topic rather dry and textbook-like, but Roach's style is quite the opposite: I thoroughly enjoyed her stories of people she met and experiences she had on the way to writing this book. From the dog food industry to what may have killed Elvis, Gulp is an adventure in topics not normally discussed in polite circles. And it made me chuckle on more than one occasion.
So if you're up for an in-depth exploration of your innards, I highly recommend Mary Roach's Gulp.
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