Taking Charge of Your Fertility, by Toni Weschler (1995)
The subtitle of this book is "The definitive guide to natural birth control and pregnancy achievement." No, no, come back here. The book describes a simple process that allows you to break your body's fertility code (assuming your body is female) and use that information to either achieve or prevent pregnancy. If this is a method you're interested in using, I recommend purchasing the book rather than getting it from the library: the reference benefit far outweighs the cost. I also recommend that you read the book through several times to make sure you understand.
Compatibility Test: Obviously, you'll want to be trying to avoid or plan a pregnancy.
Prizzi's Honor, by Richard Condon (1982)
The story is a great one, but the dialect and all the stuff about Da Family makes the reading like treading molasses. Charley is an assassin for his family. Irene is a free-lance, same career. They meet and fall in love, and everything gets tangled up from there, until the tongue-biting conclusion where we see if there's any happy-ending kind of way that all of this can be resolved. There isn't.
Compatibility Test: Recommended only for die-hard mafia fans; otherwise, perhaps the movie makes it easier to get through.
Is Your Cat Crazy?: Solutions from the Casebook of a Cat Therapist, by John C. Wright (1994)
I wish I could say that this was a fiction book, or that I found it in the humor section, but the truth is that this man is a cat therapist with a Ph.D. and he makes house calls to treat troubled cats. These are his stories and theirs.
He's a competent writer though not a good one: he overuses unnecessary words such as "simply," "promptly," and "then proceeded to"---but standards can be relaxed for people who are not writers by profession. His cases are amusing, more so because he intends to be serious: "Scooter wasn't always like this, Dr. Wright. What did I do?"
If you can get past Mr. Cat Detective's thrill at recounting his missions in the field, there are practical suggestions for getting your cat to behave---though he wouldn't say "getting your cat to behave," he would say "helping the cat owner help the cat." Prepare for a guilt trip along the way if you've dared to discipline ("traumatize") your cat in any way.
Compatibility Test: You need to have a cat, and it's better for everyone if you don't take things too seriously.
The Girlfriends' Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood, by Vicki Iovine (1997)
This is the continuation of The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy (see review, March 1998). She's still going for the easy jokes, including those dumb "no pun intended" ones. And Vicki, oh, Vicki, why'd you have to do that "nine (ten) months" thing again? Didn't anyone talk to you about this after the first book? We can share these things between girlfriends, Vicki, and so I'm telling you that your math skills are sad, very sad.
Also, Vicki, eat something. Anyone who reads this book should skip the chapter called "I Want My Old Body Back!" It claims to be about "what you can fix and what you can't," but the advice it gives is to "eat practically nothing," exercise hard, and consider plastic surgery (seriously), all for paranoid reasons about the way a little weight here and a little weight there can make your husband stop loving you. This is not the first time that Vicki's attitude about appearance has had me wondering about her husband, and I don't think you need to buy into her self-image problems. Furthermore, there's some risky information in this chapter about keeping your children from having "eating disorders," by which she means eating too much. She says to teach your children to eat when they're hungry, but then she says you should deny yourself when you're hungry so your children won't follow your example and end up (*shudder*) fat. Trust me and skip chapter eight.
Another issue: Vicki has a much higher view of her own objectivity than she should: she'll say it's totally up to you, then give you 10 "things to consider when making your choice" that all point in one direction. I would recommend this book "just for fun," except that those people likely to be reading it will be under the stress of pregnancy or new parenthood and may not be able to handle it. I'm going to have to slap warnings on it for the skewed/dangerous advice about weight, and also for the survey she did in which she assumed that women who were physically attractive were the ones who would be the "best at" sex.
Still, I'm reluctant to ban the book altogether because of helpful information like what you can take home with you from the hospital, and reassuring information about how tired and crazy you might be when you get home. I personally found more to be annoyed or alarmed about than I was comfortable with in a child care manual. She can put disclaimers about her authority all through the book, but she's still publishing her opinions and I'm holding her responsible.
Compatibility Test: Use your own judgement; it's a tough call. Maybe ask someone with children what she thought of the book.
Daddy: the Diary of an Expectant Father, by Dennis Danzinger (1987)
I thought it would be nice to get the male perspective on pregnancy, but this was the wrong male to ask.
The problems start when the author and his wife are trying to conceive. He takes pride in his ignorance of his wife's cycle; then, when she doesn't get pregnant even though they conscientiously have sex every single day that she's not fertile, he dismisses all scientific knowledge as foolish.
Let's skip ahead, to after he somehow manages to impregnate his wife despite the accumulating evidence that Darwinism is not on his side. How about the morning when she tells him that she's scared that having this baby will mean the end of her career and he retorts, "Then get an abortion!" Or the day when, during an argument about why he left a light on, he pins his pregnant wife's head to the pillow by grabbing her throat, and then slaps her across the face. He thinks it over and decides he did it because he expects too much of himself. He gives himself permission to be human. He is at peace with himself, and he moves on. Me, I was not ready to move on.
The rest of the book is story after story about how no one realizes how awful it is to be the expectant father. He's mad when, on Father's Day, no one gives him any presents. No one appreciates how difficult it is for him. He resents not having what he calls "an active role," and comforts himself by assuring himself that he is the entire support system of this operation.
At one point he says that he doesn't know if pregnancy is harder on the woman or the man. I have a reply, but I'm going to need him to stand within reach so I can deliver it.
This is non-fiction, I'm sorry to say.
Marrying Mom, by Olivia Goldsmith (1996)
This book is written by someone who watches too much television. Personalities are half-hour-show-based: everyone has an impossibly one-dimensional role. The dialogue and wisecracks are from sitcoms and commercials, sometimes stolen verbatim. The plot is from an afternoon movie, the kind referred to as "a rollicking farce." The jokes are connected to cultural events that were happening when the book was written (O.J. Simpson, Lorena Bobbitt, Menendez brothers, etc.), and by now they've all been said so many times we're sick of them. Skip it.
Compatibility Test: You know those commercials that say that when you can't smoke, you should chew such-and-such a brand of gum? This is for when you can't watch television.
A Frozen Woman, by Annie Ernaux (1995)
The translation from the French gives A Frozen Woman the pleasantly odd flavor of being just slightly off: "dust sheep" under the beds, a few untranslatable French phrases here and there. If the book jacket is to be believed, the book is semi-autobiographical, so one peeks more and more at the paragraph about the author on the back cover. One notices that the book is about a woman trapped in an unpleasant marriage with two sons, and that the book jacket says that Annie Ernaux has two sons . . . but doesn't mention a husband. There's a thrill in getting a glimpse of someone else's life and not knowing how much of it is for real. The plot is depressing for any woman considering marriage and family: a young woman with potential gets married and has children and finds that her life loses all meaning in an endless cycle of dishes and diapers. The entire thing is gently feminist, commenting on a sad state of affairs without necessarily claiming that men are to blame for them.
Compatibility Test: If you're already married and pregnant, don't read it. If you're on the verge of marrying some guy just because you feel you ought to settle down and do what's expected of you, buy it and have every page laminated.
Hello Darling, Are You Working?, by Rupert Everett (1992)
I liked it. It was clever, and the little illustrations by Frances Crichton Stuart were amusing. The chapter headings in Winnie-the-Pooh format (e.g., "in which Rhys skates on exceedingly thin ice and meets The Crazy Gang") ice the cake. The story is that a man named Rhys Waveral, a bisexual actor (he'd say "actress") and prostitute, accepts a job for the weekend with an older woman and her psychic traveling companion. They plan to go somewhere remote, but everyone Rhys knows---family, friends, co-workers, former lovers---shows up there for various reasons. Everyone Rhys knows is out of his or her mind; "quirky" doesn't begin to cover it. The combination of all these people is surprisingly smooth for everyone except poor Rhys. Silly and crazy, and worth a try if you don't have Issues with homosexuality/bisexuality. My favorite review is from The Times Literary Supplement: "Deplorable." The one major flaw: the ending is so ambiguous I'm tempted to think the author couldn't think of one.
The Sadness of Witches, by Janice Elliott (1988)
Martha is a witch. Molly and Walter are a married couple who move to the same seaside town Martha lives in. Martha makes a friend out of Molly and a lover out of Walter.
I had no interest in or sympathy for any of the characters, or for any of their baseless relationships. Walter seemed like a big jerk, though we were supposed to be fascinated by his absentminded environmental charm. Martha, too, was supposed to be fascinating--but if she was, the author never revealed it.
The whole book was too poetic and dancey for me, taking the easy way out by flitting from one thing to the next without ever exploring any person or emotion or story in detail. It's a tease: an interesting fact is mentioned, then dropped and never referred to again. Important questions are left unanswered, and important issues are left unresolved. Frustrating, and never better than depressing or irritating.
Compatibility Test: You should know within the first 25 pages whether it's your sort of book, but don't base your interest on any hints of stories to come because they never will. Concentrate only on writing style and character development, because it never gets any better or deeper.
Marriage, by Gloria Nagy (1995)
The author was so entranced by her own writing style, she forgot to develop realistic characters or a plausible plot.
The story isn't exceptional in any way: childhood sweethearts marry and have a perfect relationship, described at length in lofty, contraction-free paragraphs about how they were soul mates because they did everything together and because everyone thought it couldn't ("could not") possibly work out. Twenty-five years later, somebody cheats.
The love scenes are hilariously awful: when the author finds she can't write anything sexy, she settles for crude. The dialogue is just as bad: people are always making speeches instead of talking normally. The author throws in a lot of swear words to make it seem more natural, but if you try reading out loud anything anyone says, you'll see that she doesn't have a knack for dialogue. We're introduced to every plot twist via gimmicks: a newspaper clipping describing the family, a letter from the main character to herself, people talking to themselves using excessive rhetorical questions, etc.
It baffles me that writers don't know that it's okay to tell us outright what they want us to know. They don't have to fool us with "Of course, everyone knows that in 2050 the President signed the....." tricks.
1,001 Helpful Tips, Facts & Hints from Consumer Reports, by Monte Florman
If you've ever leafed through an issue of Consumer Reports Magazine, you'll have noticed that they don't just give you a chart and tell you which are the best versions of a product. They accompany the chart with an essay about the elements that make the product a good one or a bad one, plus some of the ad jargon to look for or ignore. This book is a hodge-podge of that sort of essay, one or two paragraphs per subject. Brand names are not mentioned in the book, though sometimes a bit of a well-known ad campaign will clue you in to which one they're talking about. The book is set up in alphabetical format: Air Conditioners, Airline Overbooking, Allergies, Automobile Batteries, Baby Nutrition, Back Pain, Bathroom Cleaners and so on. As the editors mention, this is not meant to be a set of exhaustive reports; it's meant to be a quick reference to let you know which subjects need more research on your part. The section on Baby Nutrition, for example, mentions the approximate age that infants should start on solids, and a few safety tips about jarred food storage and food-allergy awareness, but that's it. It doesn't say how many fruits and vegetables your baby should eat per day, or what kind of spoon to use, or whether the food should be heated. It's a good book for learning a little something about a lot of subjects. One flaw: I wish they hadn't done the "1,001" thing.
Compatibility Test: For people who like to know a little something about everything.
Tales from Gavagan's Bar, by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt (1978)
The regulars at Gavagan's bar never run out of things to talk about. Usually Mr. Witherwax has read something interesting he wants to discuss, and then the group is interrupted by a stranger who has something to say on the subject. Always this results in the telling of a long, odd story. For example, Mr. Witherwax reads about universal languages like Esperanto, which leads to a discussion on how most misunderstandings are a result of different interpretations of words, and this prompts another patron to tell the story of the time his half-witted houseboy mistook the word "gin" for "jinn" and brought him a genie in a bottle. The stories are highly entertaining, as are the accompanying sketches.
Compatibility Test: For everyone who listened wide-eyed to tall tales in elementary school.
Love, Loss, and What I Wore, by Ilene Beckerman (1995)
I'm not going to take a stand either way about whether Ilene Beckerman can be considered "Everywoman" as the jacket suggests. I will say that for such a simple idea, this book is surprisingly good. Each page has a sketch of a person wearing an outfit; the facing page tells the story that the author remembers about the outfit. She manages to turn fewer than 70 such illustrated anecdotes into her life story. A sample: "Black-and-red-print taffeta maternity dress worn to holiday parties. First worn Christmas, 1960, in Stamford, Connecticut, when I was pregnant with Isabelle, and then in 1962 when I was pregnant with David. (David died when he was eighteen months old from a forty-eight-hour intestinal virus.)" The author has turned her wardrobe into a diary/scrapbook. I loved it.
Compatibility Test: Has a sweater ever made you remember an old flame?
The Debutante's Guide to Life, by Cornelia Guest, Carol McD. Wallace, and Jon J. Gould
Because elitism and shallowness never go out of style, Cornelia Guest---who has the distinction of being "Deb of the Decade"---has lent her considerable talents to the task of posing for pictures and making vapid remarks about how wonderful it is to be rich and privileged.
Compatibility Test: This might give you a good laugh, or it might make you sick to your stomach. Consider your social conscience before trying to read this.
Birthdays: Their Delights & Disappointments, Past & Present, Worldly, Astrological, & Infamous, by Linda Rannells Lewis (1976)
Could we, with a little extra effort, have made this title longer?
It's difficult to write a review for this book. On one hand, she's done a wonderful job pulling together anecdotes and poems and quotes from letters, all related to birthdays. On the other hand, her organization is poor and the segues are forced, and there are a few places where she wanders off the topic completely. I'd had all I was interested in by halfway through the book, though I kept reading until the end. I think this is more of a leaf-through-it-in-the-bookstore book.
Compatibility Test: Are you obsessive about birthdays and other holidays/celebrations, to the point where friends have rolled their eyes at you?
Delivery: A Nurse-Midwife's Story, by Jennifer Crichton (1986)
It's fiction, but it isn't. The author spent a year talking with midwives, then wrote a fictional book about it. I'd say it's about three-quarters textbook, along the lines of "And while meconium aspiration is more serious in a oligo case, it's also more likely, since oligohydramnios increases the chances of an hypoxic event," and one-quarter novel. You'd think it would get boring to read 531 pages of day-in-the-life-of-a-midwife, but for me it never did. Well done, informative, interesting, and challenging. Furthermore, you can benefit from what I didn't notice until page 400: there's a glossary in the back.
Compatibility Test: If that textbooky quote didn't scare you off. Also, you should be able to tolerate reading about a little blood and goop.