Reviews - What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding: A Memoir

800 reviews for:

What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding: A Memoir

I was hoping for a book that perhaps, despite a snarky title, talked about building a child free life I cousine of friends and travel. Instead I got a book that was shockingly ignorant for coming from a person so well traveled (comments about Haiti being full of AIDS??). To top it off, the end is her talking about life with her husband and step children. Seems like a strange end to a book with a title that is so dismissive of people being pregnant and giving birth.

I really wanted to like this book but it sadly fell very flat

maureenrust's review against another edition

4.0

Many thanks to the author for writing this book. She is a fantastic travel writer, and she blows up any stereotypical image of how a woman should conduct herself at home or abroad. I found her writing to be vivid, relatable, funny, and a little shocking (in a good way).

hannahferne's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective fast-paced

bethaniekay's review against another edition

3.0

This sat on my Kindle for a long time until I finally decided to read it. I just wasn't sure about it, and the reviews weren't that great. That being said, I'm glad I finally opened it up.

This book certainly isn't for everyone. Some won't be able to relate to the desire for solo traveling, or to the perpetual singlehood of the author, or even to the casual way in which she views sex (which, BTW, if she was a man, people would be applauding her behavior - the double standard that exists still in 2017 disgusts me).

But if you go into this book realizing it's mostly humor, with some travel memoirs and a few life-lessons thrown in, you may enjoy it more. Being a single 42-year-old who does a fair bit of solo traveling and has had at least one major vacationship, there were various parts of this book that spoke to me. Other parts made me laugh out loud, and I highlighted a few passages that I thought were pretty good advice or just profound thoughts.

So, in the end, I enjoyed this book. Not sure if I'll recommend it to anyone else, but, maybe.