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whimsical_bookworm 's review for:
What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat
by Aubrey Gordon
2.5 stars. The topic of this book and its message is extremely valuable, but the execution left a lot to be desired. I listened to this on audio. The narrator was fine, but the flowery writing was eye-roll inducing over audio in a way that it may not have been were I reading the print copy. The lack of organization was the most frustrating, however. I think her topic choices were definitely interesting: diets/diet culture; reality television/entertainment, medical discrimination, etc., but it was difficult to tell what the focus of each chapter was with repetitive examples used multiple times in the separate essays. I've never read Gordon's blog, but it seems like the book was perhaps just her blog essays minimally stitched together with no thought given to the whole? In books like this, I prefer the science to take center stage with anecdotal examples weaved in to add a personal touch. This was the opposite, with Gordon's personal anecdotes taking center stage with minimal science woven in. For example, she mentions that there are 59 types of obesity (twice), but doesn't ever dig deeper into that. Overall, I think it is a valuable entry into this topic, but no more than a toe-dip into the water of fat activism.