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sarahetc's Reviews (1.17k)
I may have been spoiled by David Wong's hilarity, but this installment (conclusion?) of Christopher Moore's vampire love stories just did not bring the lulz that the previous two did. Bloodsucking Fiends was laugh out loud funny and You Suck was even more so. In fact, when I started Bite Me and saw that Abby was going to be the primary narrator I was super jazzed-- she was the best part of You Suck. But then everything just fell flat. I laughed out loud exactly once. The whole book felt like a little short story that just got beefed up by the random Chet storyline. And, having concluded it, maybe there will be another book, strictly about Jody and Otaka. Who knows. But I missed the Tommy voice of the previous books here, and the wacky hijinks of The Animals and the noble voice of The Emperor. The whole thing just felt phoned in. If you loved the first two, I'd recommend skipping this one.
I wasn't prepared for this book to be as literary as it was. I am so used to supernatural, or spiritual warfare, or medieval warfare books being written in a sort of lowest common denominator style that this threw me for a loop and it took me nearly a month to get through it. In fact, had I not come down with a scorching case of stomach flu last week I'd probably still be working through it. That said, it's a well-told, interesting, compelling story about a second war in Heaven that breaks through to Earth during the first run of the Plague. A dishonored knight, an apostate priest, and an orphan girl start in Normandy and work their way to Avignon, seat of the Pope in the 14th century, to aid the side of Heaven, although they are barely aware of why they're doing what they're doing.
The story is harsh but lovely and the characters are memorable. Recommended for those who want to elevate their reading of supernatural stories.
The story is harsh but lovely and the characters are memorable. Recommended for those who want to elevate their reading of supernatural stories.
I think most people understand the idea that if you're questioning whether or not you're a good mother, for whatever value of good, then you are, in fact, a good mother. Just as crazy people don't know they're crazy, bad parents don't care whether or not they're parenting well. Waldman disproves this in so many ways it's not even funny.
I decided to read this book after reading the controversy surrounding her statement that she loved her husband more than her children. That didn't seem like a particularly strange sentiment to me. A woman may love her children with every molecule of her being, but they will grow up and go on to have their own independent lives. After that, one hopes, the husband will still be around and the marriage will benefit from maintenance of the love that made the babies. What I expected from the book was some genuine confrontation of the fundamental, ever-present game of second-guessing and worry that is motherhood. What I got was a rambling, self-indulgent, and, at times, openly hateful series of essays about what a good, thoughtful person Waldman is, even though she has children.
Waldman's essays, which mention her children and family but don't particularly adhere to any theme, seem to be contrived to prove what a good person she thinks she is, according to her own standards of goodness. While she and I are diametrically opposed politically (she's a liberal progressive, I'm a conservative libertarian), I chose not to judge her until she wrote that she had taught her children to hate John McCain "as much as they hate Dick Cheney." No, Ayelet, you are not a good mother. Good mothers, no matter how passionate they may be about the world and its issues, do not teach their children to hate.
If you are a liberal progressive who would like to read a bunch of self-indulgent tripe from a very wealthy Jewish woman with more time than sense, please, enjoy the book with my blessing. It's boring, uninspired and the prose is lackluster at best. Frankly I can't believe anybody ever enjoyed this book at all.
I decided to read this book after reading the controversy surrounding her statement that she loved her husband more than her children. That didn't seem like a particularly strange sentiment to me. A woman may love her children with every molecule of her being, but they will grow up and go on to have their own independent lives. After that, one hopes, the husband will still be around and the marriage will benefit from maintenance of the love that made the babies. What I expected from the book was some genuine confrontation of the fundamental, ever-present game of second-guessing and worry that is motherhood. What I got was a rambling, self-indulgent, and, at times, openly hateful series of essays about what a good, thoughtful person Waldman is, even though she has children.
Waldman's essays, which mention her children and family but don't particularly adhere to any theme, seem to be contrived to prove what a good person she thinks she is, according to her own standards of goodness. While she and I are diametrically opposed politically (she's a liberal progressive, I'm a conservative libertarian), I chose not to judge her until she wrote that she had taught her children to hate John McCain "as much as they hate Dick Cheney." No, Ayelet, you are not a good mother. Good mothers, no matter how passionate they may be about the world and its issues, do not teach their children to hate.
If you are a liberal progressive who would like to read a bunch of self-indulgent tripe from a very wealthy Jewish woman with more time than sense, please, enjoy the book with my blessing. It's boring, uninspired and the prose is lackluster at best. Frankly I can't believe anybody ever enjoyed this book at all.
Gosh, I just feel so sorry for anybody who reads this book and comes away thinking it is "empowering." It's a trite, cliched, predictable little turd of a novel, although not without a few moments that were minorly interesting. It is a Lifetime Movie of a novel, only lacking in the White Wine Moment of Revelation in the Bathtub. I've said it before and I'll say it again: life is so much easier when you're not a feminist.