Snarky, unconventional humor that pokes fun at just about everything.
One woman’s quirky perspective on life.
The creator of Bravo’s Odd Mom Out, Kargman (Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut: Essays and Observations, 2011, etc.) dishes out a variety of essays that poke fun at herself, her family, friends, and the world in general. Short, acerbic, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, the narratives come from her experiences as a teen, a wife, a mother, and from observations of the world around her. In “Orlandon’t,” she covers the multiple reasons not to take your child to Disney World: the color scheme, the endless lines, the expensive and tacky merchandise, etc. She writes about things that irk her—children in leopard leggings, identical twins who are dressed alike, tapas bars, “people in the audience at the Oscars who clap harder for some dead people than other dead people”—but also offers sweeter pieces such as her celebration of her mother’s words of wisdom. Her humor is often laced with expletives and slang terms, adding a hipster attitude that’s not really needed to achieve the level of humor she’s striving to reach. If you want to know how she and her family got coveted plots in a cemetery on Nantucket, read “Dying to Get In.” Curious to know who she’s had a lifelong crush on? “You’re the One that I Want.” Ever wonder what a stripper class is like? Kargman attended one and lets you know what she thinks. Everything is fair game as the author babbles about the difficulty of getting her son into kindergarten in New York, why her family resembles the Munsters, being a Jewish child and attending summer camp in Maine, questions she poses to the universe, her love of Thanksgiving, or euphemisms she’s invented. The collection is an odd mix best read in short spurts. Prepare to laugh, but then move on, as this fluff is not very filling.
Snarky, unconventional humor that pokes fun at just about everything.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-59457-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
