Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) By Jenny Lawson (aka, the Bloggess) is just as silly, fun and goofy as her blog. I enjoyed every moment of reading this memoir. In fact, often while reading this, I was asked "what is so funny?" by my family. I also was offended, but only mildly so which I'm sure she would consider a win. Some of the stories were so unbelieveable but she had picture to make them up.This book was not only funny, but it had a lot of heart. Caution: the story about Hailey's Birth/Barnaby Jones Pickles are quite tearjerkers, even though they are funny. Also caution: lots of information about taxidermy/ animal parts are in these books. Even though it is presented in a funny way, I did feel squeamish at times. I am kind of a wimp, though- I almost passed out yesterday when Mr. B cut his hand and there was blood.
Disclaimer: after you read this book you will find your inner monologue begins to sound like Jenny's, or at least what I imagine it sounds like.
You can join the discussion about this hilarious memoir at Blogher.
This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own
Showing posts with label Blogher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blogher. Show all posts
March 7, 2013
February 21, 2013
A Good American Review
A Good American, by Alex George, is a (fictional) memoir by (fictional) James Meisenheimer. It starts before he is born, as his Grandparents Jette and Frederick meet, fall in love, and quickly escape to America from Germany. Their story is where the book really shines. Jette and Frederick's differing opinions on this new, foreign country are intriguingly different. James' characterization of his grandparents leaps off the page, and I find myself sympathizing with both Jette and Frederick, right or wrong, and my heart broke when (spoiler) America tore them apart.
The book then talks of Frederick's "American Dream"- the bar that he works at and eventually owns which morphs into different establishments through the book, then talks about James' parents and then ultimately James and his brothers, all four of them. This part of the book for me was less strong (some of the comedic elements were a little over the top-wacky, and sometimes this worked-sometimes it didn't). It was still a very enjoyable read, even if the "twist" at the end was unsettling to me and without any resolution.
Overall, this book was interesting, heartbreaking (there are some scenes that moved me to tears) and generally funny read that kept me coming back to finish (and that's not an easy task right now).
Please go visit Blogher to join the discussion about the book, A Good American
This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own (of course)!
The book then talks of Frederick's "American Dream"- the bar that he works at and eventually owns which morphs into different establishments through the book, then talks about James' parents and then ultimately James and his brothers, all four of them. This part of the book for me was less strong (some of the comedic elements were a little over the top-wacky, and sometimes this worked-sometimes it didn't). It was still a very enjoyable read, even if the "twist" at the end was unsettling to me and without any resolution.
Overall, this book was interesting, heartbreaking (there are some scenes that moved me to tears) and generally funny read that kept me coming back to finish (and that's not an easy task right now).
Please go visit Blogher to join the discussion about the book, A Good American
This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own (of course)!
September 29, 2011
Lunch Wars: A Review
Synopsis from Barnes and Noble:
There's a battle going on in school lunchrooms around the country...and it's a battle our children can't afford for us to lose.
The average kid will eat 4,000 school lunches between kindergarten and twelfth grade. But what exactly are kids eating in school lunchrooms around the country? Many parents don't quite know what their children are eating-or where it came from. As award-winning filmmaker and nutritionist Amy Kalafa discovered in researching her documentary film Two Angry Moms: Fighting for the Health of America's Children, these days it's pretty rare to find a piece of fresh fruit in your average school lunchroom amid all the chips, french fries, Pop-Tarts, chicken nuggets, and soda that's being served. But what, if anything, can parents do about it?
My Review:
I enjoyed reading Lunch Wars, and was appalled at the same time. I cannot believe how terrible school lunches have become, and how much red tape surrounds the process of cooking and serving school lunches. I also found many useful ideas to get healthy foods implemented in our local school cafeterias and many of them involved blogging. In fact, in some ways I found this book to be a recruitment for bloggers to post on their blogs and start a food revolution.
I was inclined enough by the scary information in this book to conduct my own experiment with my 3 year old son, limiting his sugar intake to less than I normally allow. The result was pretty significant, he was much calmer and focused. I have vowed to put an end to some of our bad habits, and for that alone, I think the book was a good read. Now will I completely revolutionize our eating habits, or take over my children's cafeteria? That remains to be seen, but I know I will make sure to be more aware of what he is eating for lunch.
Please go visit Blogher to join the discussion about school lunches.
This was a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are entirely my own.
There's a battle going on in school lunchrooms around the country...and it's a battle our children can't afford for us to lose.
The average kid will eat 4,000 school lunches between kindergarten and twelfth grade. But what exactly are kids eating in school lunchrooms around the country? Many parents don't quite know what their children are eating-or where it came from. As award-winning filmmaker and nutritionist Amy Kalafa discovered in researching her documentary film Two Angry Moms: Fighting for the Health of America's Children, these days it's pretty rare to find a piece of fresh fruit in your average school lunchroom amid all the chips, french fries, Pop-Tarts, chicken nuggets, and soda that's being served. But what, if anything, can parents do about it?
My Review:
I enjoyed reading Lunch Wars, and was appalled at the same time. I cannot believe how terrible school lunches have become, and how much red tape surrounds the process of cooking and serving school lunches. I also found many useful ideas to get healthy foods implemented in our local school cafeterias and many of them involved blogging. In fact, in some ways I found this book to be a recruitment for bloggers to post on their blogs and start a food revolution.
I was inclined enough by the scary information in this book to conduct my own experiment with my 3 year old son, limiting his sugar intake to less than I normally allow. The result was pretty significant, he was much calmer and focused. I have vowed to put an end to some of our bad habits, and for that alone, I think the book was a good read. Now will I completely revolutionize our eating habits, or take over my children's cafeteria? That remains to be seen, but I know I will make sure to be more aware of what he is eating for lunch.
Please go visit Blogher to join the discussion about school lunches.
This was a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are entirely my own.
September 8, 2011
Slow Love Review: Time to stop and smell the roses
Recently I got an opportunity to review the memoir Slow Love for BlogHer Book Club. Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put on My Pajamas, and Found Happiness by Dominique Browning is a book about learning to slow down your life and appreciate all of your surroundings.
In 2007, Dominique Browning lost her job as editor for Home and Garden Magazine and found herself adrift, questioning her purpose in life and her identity without her job. This memoir is how she finds that purpose.
Browning goes through many stages to find new purpose in her life. Her growth takes time, and often she was wallowing in food and drink and poor relationships, which I can completely relate to. I often found myself agreeing with many of her opinions and ideas (seriously, what single woman would want to cook dinner for herself), and felt by the end of the book that Browning was a friend and confidant of mine and was invested in watching her learn to be comfortable with a slower paced life. It really made me wonder if I could ever do the same, and it made me interested in trying to slow down as well. (Oh, who am I kidding? Maybe one day...)
Want to find out more? Please come join in the discussion at Blogher!
In 2007, Dominique Browning lost her job as editor for Home and Garden Magazine and found herself adrift, questioning her purpose in life and her identity without her job. This memoir is how she finds that purpose.
Browning goes through many stages to find new purpose in her life. Her growth takes time, and often she was wallowing in food and drink and poor relationships, which I can completely relate to. I often found myself agreeing with many of her opinions and ideas (seriously, what single woman would want to cook dinner for herself), and felt by the end of the book that Browning was a friend and confidant of mine and was invested in watching her learn to be comfortable with a slower paced life. It really made me wonder if I could ever do the same, and it made me interested in trying to slow down as well. (Oh, who am I kidding? Maybe one day...)
Want to find out more? Please come join in the discussion at Blogher!
June 25, 2011
What Happened to Goodbye Review
Please enjoy my review of What Happened to Goodbye on Blogher. Here is a snippet for you to enjoy....
I am very glad I am not a teenager in today's world. There are so many additional pressures and worries that I never had to think about. Luckily there are authors like Sarah Dessen to portray real teenagers and those pressures that they face in the young adult novel, What Happened to Goodbye.
Read more at Blogher.
PS will be back with a post this week I swear!
I am very glad I am not a teenager in today's world. There are so many additional pressures and worries that I never had to think about. Luckily there are authors like Sarah Dessen to portray real teenagers and those pressures that they face in the young adult novel, What Happened to Goodbye.
Read more at Blogher.
PS will be back with a post this week I swear!
June 18, 2011
A Discovery of Witches Review
Deborah Harkness' novel, A Discovery of Witches, is not what you would call an average Vampire story. It builds mythology of a different world than we know -- a secret world using history, science and folklore -- and weaves these components into a unusual love story.
Check out the rest at Blogher
Check out the rest at Blogher
June 10, 2011
Getting to Happy Review
On top of being the busiest I have ever been on my life, I have been reading and writing review for #BlogHerBook Club. Here is an excerpt for my latest one for Getting to Happy from Terry McMillan.
The road to happy may not be an easy one, in fact they are lots of twists and bumps along the way. Sometimes it is those twists that make us realize what is really important in our lives. In Terry McMillan's book, Getting to Happy, we are there for the women from Waiting to Exhale : Savannah, Robin, Gloria, and Bernadine's bumpy travels towards the hope of happiness. We enter their lives 15 years after "Waiting to Exhale" took place (the women are in their 50s at this point). All of the women had an expectation to be happy in their lives, sadly most of them are not. Read more at Blogher
The road to happy may not be an easy one, in fact they are lots of twists and bumps along the way. Sometimes it is those twists that make us realize what is really important in our lives. In Terry McMillan's book, Getting to Happy, we are there for the women from Waiting to Exhale : Savannah, Robin, Gloria, and Bernadine's bumpy travels towards the hope of happiness. We enter their lives 15 years after "Waiting to Exhale" took place (the women are in their 50s at this point). All of the women had an expectation to be happy in their lives, sadly most of them are not. Read more at Blogher
May 9, 2011
A Review for me and for You
Hey all,
I got a great chance to review books with #Blogherbookclub and I am happy to say the first one went live tonight. Here is an excerpt:
Girl in Translation, by Jean Kwok , tells the semi-autobiographical story about a girl named Kimberly Chang and her mother who emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn. Due to family debts from the immigration and a lack of employment, her mother begins working in a sweatshop. Kimberly must help her mother in order to make any money, forcing her to lead a double life, one of an exceptionally bright schoolgirl in the day and a sweatshop worker by night. This is the story of her childhood and the struggles of life in America, which was not as wonderful as she was promised.
Read more at Blogher
I got a great chance to review books with #Blogherbookclub and I am happy to say the first one went live tonight. Here is an excerpt:
Girl in Translation, by Jean Kwok , tells the semi-autobiographical story about a girl named Kimberly Chang and her mother who emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn. Due to family debts from the immigration and a lack of employment, her mother begins working in a sweatshop. Kimberly must help her mother in order to make any money, forcing her to lead a double life, one of an exceptionally bright schoolgirl in the day and a sweatshop worker by night. This is the story of her childhood and the struggles of life in America, which was not as wonderful as she was promised.
Read more at Blogher
July 21, 2009
This post talks entirely too much about puke (Why I am not going to BlogHer 09)
Everyone is all atwitter about going to the BlogHer Conference, what they are going to wear, who they will meet, etc.. I am not jealous of all of you and I have no interest in going to BlogHer. This is why:
I am a total scaredy cat, nervous Nelly, Shy guy, what ever cutesy term works for a borderline social anxiety disorder. This means I would end up following around the least interesting person in the room too scared to talk to anybody, then eventually when I did talk to someone I would lie about my subscriber account to someone to seem cooler than I am and then shortly after that I would end up drinking too much out of nervousness and throwing up in my purse out on a hotel balcony and then spend the rest of the conference tipping people with pukey dollars, spreading disgusting germs around (and yes I AM speaking from experience, I HAVE puked in my purse before- please people wash your hands after holding cash because someone might have puked on it) and then ultimately I will end up drunk, pukey and fawning over someone from MamaPop and try to explain to them why I think Coldplay is a good band, and they will slowly sidle away from me as I ramble on... and then I will run up and hug The Stilleto Mom and tell her how funny I think she is and she will see a. I am overly touchy-feely when I am drunk and b. that I am wearing flip flops with my dress and I will be so embarrassed, and proceed to tell her what an asshat I am, at which point I might just start lobbying all those around me for asshat to be included in the standard English dictionary....
I will wake up and spend the next morning searching for Advil because I will, of course, not have packed any and I will clean out my pukey purse crying that it will never be the same purse again, and oh this is worse than the time I spilled a jumbo sized pop into my purse at the movie theater when I jumped at a scary scene watching the Dark Knight, (oh that is such a good movie).
Oh yeah, and it was BlogHer or Lollapalooza; I couldn't afford both. That might have factored into my choice as well.
So all of you attending.... go, have fun! Socialize with (shudder) strangers. I'll stay here in my house while Mr. Bee is on his Golf weekend and I am home alone with the children and you are all having fun and tweeting about it, and I will curse you all for your #blogher tweets and stare longingly at my computer, wondering if next year I will be rich and brave enough to attend .... No, go have fun. I'll be okay (sniff). Just take my advice: don't puke in your purse... or you'll smell like vomit all weekend.
I am a total scaredy cat, nervous Nelly, Shy guy, what ever cutesy term works for a borderline social anxiety disorder. This means I would end up following around the least interesting person in the room too scared to talk to anybody, then eventually when I did talk to someone I would lie about my subscriber account to someone to seem cooler than I am and then shortly after that I would end up drinking too much out of nervousness and throwing up in my purse out on a hotel balcony and then spend the rest of the conference tipping people with pukey dollars, spreading disgusting germs around (and yes I AM speaking from experience, I HAVE puked in my purse before- please people wash your hands after holding cash because someone might have puked on it) and then ultimately I will end up drunk, pukey and fawning over someone from MamaPop and try to explain to them why I think Coldplay is a good band, and they will slowly sidle away from me as I ramble on... and then I will run up and hug The Stilleto Mom and tell her how funny I think she is and she will see a. I am overly touchy-feely when I am drunk and b. that I am wearing flip flops with my dress and I will be so embarrassed, and proceed to tell her what an asshat I am, at which point I might just start lobbying all those around me for asshat to be included in the standard English dictionary....
I will wake up and spend the next morning searching for Advil because I will, of course, not have packed any and I will clean out my pukey purse crying that it will never be the same purse again, and oh this is worse than the time I spilled a jumbo sized pop into my purse at the movie theater when I jumped at a scary scene watching the Dark Knight, (oh that is such a good movie).
Oh yeah, and it was BlogHer or Lollapalooza; I couldn't afford both. That might have factored into my choice as well.
So all of you attending.... go, have fun! Socialize with (shudder) strangers. I'll stay here in my house while Mr. Bee is on his Golf weekend and I am home alone with the children and you are all having fun and tweeting about it, and I will curse you all for your #blogher tweets and stare longingly at my computer, wondering if next year I will be rich and brave enough to attend .... No, go have fun. I'll be okay (sniff). Just take my advice: don't puke in your purse... or you'll smell like vomit all weekend.
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