Charmingly bizarre. Likable but dysfunctional man mail orders a sex doll and earnestly tries to pass her off as his new girlfriend. Having the whole town attempt to just play along is a recipe for comedy. If your friends can’t put up with your aluminum and silicon imaginary girlfriend, then what kind of friends are they? The writer apparently saw an ad for the Real Doll and came up with this crazy premise. I have to admit that’s not what popped into my mind when I first saw the Real Doll, but perhaps I am at a gender disadvantage.

Dawkins was most interesting in this book when he was talking about biology and speculating about whether there are evolutionary reasons for humans to tend toward religious belief. Most of the rest was a bit long-winded. I am sympathetic to his message that society should acknowledge religion as a powerful tool for getting people to unthinkingly accept beliefs of any sort and its intrinsic danger. Perhaps there should be an international body akin to the IAEA to monitor the use of religion as a dangerous technology (and if that idea sounds absurd to you, I wonder if that is the religion meme protecting itself).