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3.37 AVERAGE
3.37 AVERAGE
I've read this a few times, and like it more as I get older. I feel the narrator and I would like each other a lot. She'd be a good addition to TDGSC.
I first encountered "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing" via Selective Shorts on NPR, and loved it so much I had to get the book. It's the best thing in the collection, and still a favorite.
this was was okay. A little too urbane for my tastes.
While there was definitely some outdated language, for the most part, the book holds up and is a prescient look at the hoops women jump through to just exist as women and how much more is expected of them than men. I can see why this book has been so widely read and is still considered a classic.
CWs: slurs (R-word, slurs against Indigenous people); age gap relationship (both adults); mention of suicide; affairs; cancer, chemo, treatment, death[of parent] ; alcoholism
CWs: slurs (R-word, slurs against Indigenous people); age gap relationship (both adults); mention of suicide; affairs; cancer, chemo, treatment, death
This book broke my reading slump.
I wanted to read it fast but I didn't want it to end. The style was so beautifully unique that I instantly wanted to read everything Melissa had ever written.
I wanted to read it fast but I didn't want it to end. The style was so beautifully unique that I instantly wanted to read everything Melissa had ever written.
Meh. Read like a colleciton of essays and I struggled jumping through time and relationships. Take it or leave it.
This sat on my "want to read" shelf for well over a decade and I'm stunned at how much of a letdown it was. I didn't know anything about it beforehand except what I thought the title suggested and that there was a female main character. This was so boring, so lacking in humor despite being praised for the exact opposite, that I couldn't even make myself read all of it. I skimmed at least half. I made zero connection to anything in this book, and I'm still baffled about how that could be.
2.5 Stars
This book was framed as a series of short vignettes, mostly from the life of Jane, from her teenage years through late twenty-something yuppie days in New York City. Jarringly, one chapter from the point-of-view of Jane’s neighbor was also thrown in – I liked it for offering a different perspective from and on Jane, but it felt isolated from the rest of the book.While Bank’s prose often is gorgeous and her witty one-lines fall pointedly from Jane’s mouth, the writing fails to excavate something original amongst the trite issues she digs at.
Plot-wise, to be honest, I loved the beginning and then it went downhill from there. As a teenager, her protagonist Jane’s voice feels simultaneously fresh and jaded, divulging surprisingly insightful impressions of familial relationships and burgeoning romances. But as she grows and becomes entangled with Archie, a much older man whom she is dependent on personally and professionally, I cease to relate to or respect her choices. The woman is man-fishing and husband-hunting in utterly wrong ways, largely trying to conform to what she imagines males want her to bring to their relationship. It’s dated and, worse, strikingly anti-feminist. Banks should’ve stuck to the non-romantic loves, because it’s when Jane discusses her cancer-struck father or her adored big brother that her story is most moving despite the cliche.
In a sea of worthwhile books, TV shows, and films about being a young woman grappling with adulthood and singledom, this is nothing special. Jane can be an everywoman but, in the end, she doesn’t give us any wisdom or hope that we don’t already know and have. Completely forgettable.
This review can also be found at https://time2tome.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/the-girls-guide-to-hunting-and-fishing-by-melissa-banks/.
This book was framed as a series of short vignettes, mostly from the life of Jane, from her teenage years through late twenty-something yuppie days in New York City. Jarringly, one chapter from the point-of-view of Jane’s neighbor was also thrown in – I liked it for offering a different perspective from and on Jane, but it felt isolated from the rest of the book.While Bank’s prose often is gorgeous and her witty one-lines fall pointedly from Jane’s mouth, the writing fails to excavate something original amongst the trite issues she digs at.
Plot-wise, to be honest, I loved the beginning and then it went downhill from there. As a teenager, her protagonist Jane’s voice feels simultaneously fresh and jaded, divulging surprisingly insightful impressions of familial relationships and burgeoning romances. But as she grows and becomes entangled with Archie, a much older man whom she is dependent on personally and professionally, I cease to relate to or respect her choices. The woman is man-fishing and husband-hunting in utterly wrong ways, largely trying to conform to what she imagines males want her to bring to their relationship. It’s dated and, worse, strikingly anti-feminist. Banks should’ve stuck to the non-romantic loves, because it’s when Jane discusses her cancer-struck father or her adored big brother that her story is most moving despite the cliche.
In a sea of worthwhile books, TV shows, and films about being a young woman grappling with adulthood and singledom, this is nothing special. Jane can be an everywoman but, in the end, she doesn’t give us any wisdom or hope that we don’t already know and have. Completely forgettable.
This review can also be found at https://time2tome.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/the-girls-guide-to-hunting-and-fishing-by-melissa-banks/.
This has been on my to-read list for ten years. Finally took the plunge after learning it is a possible read-alike for "Olive Kitteridge" by Elizabeth Strout, a truly great book. While the two books are not as similar as I'd hoped, this is a well-written novel. The title suggests light chick-lit to me - and this book is generally considered to have started the chick-lit genre - but there are really serious overtones in all of the various story lines, including fidelity, self-esteem, impotence, age differences, parental opinions, and death. Has nothing to do with "hunting and fishing."