The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Dating & Sex

Rating:
Summary: Funny, sometimes useful, but not required
Review: As a book of humor, it's great. It has interesting scenarios and some good tips I wouldn't have thought of. I use it to decorate my coffee table in my dorm room for friends to flip through while they're hanging out. Not a serious read, though.

One scenario is something like What To Do If You Wake Up In Bed With Someone Whose Name You Forgot. One suggestion is to look through medicine cabinet and find perscription meds with her name. Kind of funny scenario, but the tip is actually helpful.

The recommendation for having too much gas on a date is to go in the bathroom, get on all fours, stick your bottom... in the air, and it'll help you get it out. Kind of hard to do even in your own room, much less a dirty public restroom.

If you want humor (with some good real tips), this is a good book, but if you want real advice, spend your money on a real dating tips book.

Rating:
Summary: Great humor, but not actually super useful.
Review: I'm hoping the "Worst Case" series doesn't degenerate much further. The original actually *was* pretty useful, but this, the third or so in the series, is just humor, with little that's actually useful on a date.

What are my dating worst-case scenarios? Getting spaghetti sauce on one's shirt, getting too drunk, inadvertently bringing up something controversial, discovering some Awful Truth about your date that makes you want to get up and run away, etc. Some of these are addressed ("How to leave a date in a hurry", "How to tell if your date is really married"), but too few to make sense. The rest are just silly (like "how to tell if your date is really a woman"). Frankly, I view this book as an enjoyable foray into bizarre problems, but not actually something useful. For all that, it IS terribly funny. The style is different from the earlier two books, but it's still hilarious imagining someone in these situations (like a guy running around a girl's apartment hoping to figure out her name from her mail before she wakes up.. advice which totally disregards that a lot of women don't go by their "official" first names!).

Rating:
Summary: Useful and humorous!
Review: Some books come along that I regret having not read much
earlier in my life . . . such is the case with THE WORST-CASE
SCENARIO SURVIVAL HANDBOOK: DATING AND SEX by Joshua Piven, David Borgenicht and Jennifer Worick . . . it contains much useful information (often presented in humorous fashion) that would have helped me over the last 35-some years.

But that said, I still learned and laughed from short but insightful
chapters as:
How to Survive Snoring;
How to Determine If Your Date is an Axe Murderer;
How to Have Sex in a Small Space;
How to Deal with a Cheating Lover;
How to Remove Difficult Clothing;
How to Fend Off an Obsessive Ex;

and, of course:
How to Survive If You Wake Up Next to Someone Whose
Name You Don't Remember . . . the key, if you're at their place:

Do not panic. Evidence of your partner's name exists somewhere
nearby. Your task will be to find it before she awakens or before she starts any sort of meaningful conversation.

You can go the bathroom. The bathroom is a normal first place to visit first thing in the morning, and it is also a place where you might discover her name.

Look through the medicine cabinet for prescription medicines with her name on the label.

Sort through magazines, looking for subscription labels with her name and address.

Go through a wastebasket to find discarded junk mail addressed to her.

Return to the bedroom. If she is awake, ask her to make coffee for you. Use the time alone to search the bedroom for evidence. Look for: wallet, checkbook, ID or name bracelet, photo album, scrapbook, business cards (a stack of cards, not just one), or luggage labels. If she is still sleeping, look for these other items throughout the house.

I was impressed by the fact that while some of this material
might sound frivolous to those never having encountered such
situations, the authors nevertheless did a thorough job of searching their work . . . they consulted a wide variety of experts, including directors of violence-prevention programs, doctors and sex educators.

In addition, the illustrations by Brenda Brown greatly added to my enjoyment of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Things Can Always Get Worse
Review: This book teeters between gut-splitting entertainment and must-have knowledge. Some of the chapters are too far-fetched to be realistic, but they are hysterical to read nonetheless. Once I picked up the book, I couldn't put it down. I was amazed to learn some things-like how to deal with body odor on a date, how to avoid gas, and how to deal with bad breath. Other chapters were more fun than reruns of Seinfeld. For example, How to Fake an Orgasm, How to Determine if Your Date is an Axe Murderer, and How to Stop a Wedding are all reminiscent of recent cult comedies that are now available from your local video store.

The fun continues in the index, as the authors teach you how to write a "Dear John" letter, (all you have to do is insert your name and the name of the person you're dumping!) and the worst pick-up lines that you should NEVER use. But tucked into the index is something very useful-a chart of good and bad body language signals.

As a relationship expert, body language is extremely important if you want to deal from a position of strength. If you learn to read body language correctly, you can avoid wasting your time on someone who just isn't interested, or you can change your tactics so your date will be more responsive to you. Reading body language will also weed out the sickos, weirdos, liars,..., and married folks that we all want to avoid.

Bottom Line-this is a great book to read when you want to recover from a bad date. After all, things can always get worse, and laughter is the best medicine.

Rating:
Summary: Everything you need to know about dating and sex...
Review: Want to know how to stop a wedding? Maybe even your best friends...just fake a cesiure in the isle. Well, at least that is what this book suggests. Not only is this book completely and untterly entertaining, it gives logical, step by step instructions on what to do when your on a date and somthing goes wrong. Can't get your date's trick bra un-done? Read this book. Your date is choking while at dinner...learn how to give the heimlich maneuver. Or worst yet, your date's boot is stuck and won't come off. Find out how to properly remove the book with out hurting him. :) I definitely give this book two thumbs up.