Book Reviews

I LOVE to read and I used to LOVE to read romance novels. But these days those books hold my interest far less because they are SO not real, not that I expected them to be, but they tell the tale of love bathed in SO MUCH sunlight I can hardly stand it anymore. I love a fairy tale as much as the next girl but let's at least sprinkle in a little truth while we are at it. So a new genre of books has captured my attention, I call them Funny Mommy Books!

I'm big on laughing and don't have a lot of time for boring advice books, but if someone wants to tell me a funny story to illustrate a point, I'm in! :) So for Christmas I asked for several books along these lines. I thought...as a service you ;) ...I would review them so you could decide if they were worth buying and reading as well! I am going to try and take this seriously so some publisher or book nerd site will find my little blog and publish it and make me some cash for reading, seriously wouldn't that rock!!! A girl's gotta have dreams after all! lol

First on the list is actually one I've owned for awhile but its what made me want to read more in this style of writing so it gets the first "honors".

"I Was A Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids" By: Trisha Ashworth & Amy Nobile

I love this book so much that I gave it to several of my girlfriends for Christmas! This book is great because it doesn't give you advice and it doesn't tell a story but it does walk you through your choices in motherhood with humor, honesty, and a sense of "realness". It doesn't try to tell you what to do (I HATE THAT) but instead asks you questions to help you work out if what your doing is working or not. They talked to 100s of moms and got real answers to the real issues of motherhood like the Fake Cupcake Problem (are you a "good" mom if you buy cupcakes for your kids party instead of making them from scratch?). And the answers were surprising, honest, real, funny, sad, outrageous, and everything in-between.

Each chapter starts off with a "quiz". Questions like:
Does this sound like you?
A. You secretly wish you had your own apartment
B. If you play Go Fish one more time, you will definitely poke your eyes out
C. You consider a trip to the dentist your special "alone" time

Rank these questions in order of bitchiness?
A. Have you asked your dentist about all the candy they eat?
B. Is your daughter still in pull-ups?
C. That's so cute- he has Spider-man shoes and a Spider-man lunch box. Does he watch a lot of TV?

And at the end of each chapter is a series of question to help you align your thinking with what really important to you (so you can block out all the bitchiness other mothers can purposely or accidentally hurl at you). Any time I am feeling maxed out by the worlds expectations of me in the role of Mother I read this book and it helps me get a hold of what I think is really important.

This one gets 5 cupcakes!

OH, did I forget to mention that? I am going to rank/rate them using cupcakes, also in honor of this book because it has a big cupcake on the front cover...and my little one LOVES cupcakes and since I am planning her birthday party they have been on my mind. We'll be having "fake" ones just in case your curious!

This book will cost you $17.05 on Amazon plus shipping. (as of 1/9/09)