Gulp

Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

By: Mary Roach

Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller

Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

Best-selling author Mary Roach returns with a new adventure to the invisible realm we carry around inside. Roach takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour.

The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: The questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in Packing for Mars. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis?

In Gulp we meet scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks of - or has the courage to ask. We go on location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal. With Roach as our guide, we travel the world, meeting murderers and mad scientists, Eskimos and exorcists (who have occasionally administered holy water rectally), rabbis and terrorists - who, it turns out, for practical reasons do not conceal bombs in their digestive tracts. Like all of Roach’s books, Gulp is as much about human beings as it is about human bodies.

©2013 Mary Roach (P)2013 Tantor

Not all toilet humor, but not all encompassing

Would you listen to Gulp again? Why?

No. Plenty of funny anecdotes, but nothing life changing here.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

I was amazed at how many people have died of constipation. Wow!
We seem to skip from upper tract straight to lower while skipping the small intestines, the longest part, completely.

Which character – as performed by Emily Woo Zeller – was your favorite?

Was unaware there were characters other than the author.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I giggled or chortled a bit. Nothing stomach turning though.

Any additional comments?

A decent buy for a book on sale

My favorite Roach book thus far

Any additional comments?

I adore Mary Roach's writing, and I think she just keeps getting better! My favorite so far.

Lots of interesting information

I almost gave up on this one (glad I didn't) because of the narrator's voice. She has an almost child-like sound throughout, which is inappropriate for this book. When she used different 'voices' to distinguish people in conversation, it pulled me right out of the narrative. Very distracting.

Great! But not my favorite

I love Mary Roach, and I may change my mind after another listen, but so far my least favorite of hers. Still very entertaining and informative though, with a great performance!

Enjoyable book

This is an enjoyable book about what we eat, how we eat, our gut, and our bowl movements.

Entertaining and educational!

Excellent book with an enjoyable reader. Mary Roach does a great job of interweaving the study of the alimentary canal with fun anecdotes and asides. Strongly recommend!

Brilliant

Mary Roach delivers as usual. Creating a fascinating world that you cannot wait to delve deeper into. This woman sure knows how to take an ordinary subject find the most fascinating interesting and hysterical parts of it and delivered with aplomb. excellent

Gross but titillating.

I always like Mary Roach humor. I listened to this book in chapters as I don’t do nonfiction all at once, I need to absorb the information a little at a time. Good information, MR is always a little quirky, so the information keeps you interested. Narration is good.

Super interesting!

Who knew the digestive system could be so interesting?! Sometimes freakishly so. This book was chalk full of information about our internal organs that I never even knew I was curious about. I loved a lot of the historical cases and scientific experiments - some of them almost unbelievable! Super interesting, and very well presented.

Good infomration

Narration of this book is awful and might have detracted from my enjoyment of the story. The narrator has a terribly annoying sing-song quality to her reading. These intonation problems were exacerbated by very bad pronunciation or articulation of scientific words, i.e., even highest quality Boze speakers could not deliver clarity on many of the highly technical words. It was often like words were slurred.

As for the story, there were some fascinating details and nothing near as good as Mary Roach's "Stiff."