This book is written by an author accustomed to getting a laugh. His take on computer dating is probably typical and definitely funny. Trying, he claims, to overcome the fact that he’s thirty-seven and unmarried, lonely, and has only one chair, he launches onto the vast sea of the Internet where, he believes, he just might connect with the ideal mate.

He quickly learns the ropes. Yes, he does have secrets, and his profile has to be creative and alluring without revealing too much. For a while he gets no responses and continues to hone his description, admitting, “Maybe I’m not quite as magnetic an online prospect as I had hoped.” He begins to get responses he doesn’t want, and to see that there are thousands of beautiful women online begging for a man who are sincere, marriageable, and trouble, such as the lovely blondes from the former Soviet Union desperate for a green card.

His first actual Internet date goes well. He meets a woman in a bar, and they get along pleasantly. He’s encouraged, excited even, until she stands up. She’s too tall. This leads to an examination about why we like what we like and can’t get turned on by anything else.

At a certain point, Sean, or perhaps the publisher who agreed to pay for his Internet experimentations, decides that his book will be fatter and funnier if he recalls every bad, self-loving, childhood to teenage and beyond sexual encounter he’s ever had. That’s where the book springs a slow leak. I believe he should have opted for a shorter book that stuck to the point. A few reminiscences interspersed in the Internet plot would have been enough, but the totality of Sean’s inner erotic life just isn’t all that interesting.

The book is saved by the dates. An Asian woman tries to have his baby, a girl he quite fancies rejects him without an explanation, and he does finally opt for a bit of post-Soviet Union trysting involving not one but two eager blondes that paradoxically just makes him feel morose. Sean tags these women with their Internet monikers – Bongowoman, Catwoman6, and the like, reminding all of us how absurd such appellations are in the cold light of reality. The book ends happily, if predictably, when Sean finds that almost-perfect woman who’s “even – incredibly – seen my lack of furniture and not worried about it overly.” Sean still has to ask himself, “Have I slept with enough women?” Apparently he decides he has, and goes through with his wedding while humorously detailing the weddings of various friends.

My advice: read the book for its droll moments and skip past the dull ones.