Let's Panic About Babies!: How to Endure and Possibly Triumph Over the Adorable Tyrant Who Will Ruin Your Body, Destroy Your Life, Liquefy Your Brain, ... Turn You into a Worthwhile Human Being Author: Visit Amazon's Alice Bradley Page | Language: English | ISBN:
031264812X | Format: EPUB
Let's Panic About Babies!: How to Endure and Possibly Triumph Over the Adorable Tyrant Who Will Ruin Your Body, Destroy Your Life, Liquefy Your Brain, ... Turn You into a Worthwhile Human Being Description
Review
Advance praise for LET'S PANIC ABOUT BABIES!:
“LET’S PANIC ABOUT BABIES! is the hilarious antidote to all those serious, earnest books that make you feel like you’ll never master parenthood. Deeply irreverent, and surprisingly comforting, this book will resonate with any parent or parent-to-be.”
- Gretchen Rubin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of THE HAPPINESS PROJECT
“There are a lot of pregnancy books out there that purport to be "funny." This book is different in that it’s actually hilarious. LET'S PANIC ABOUT BABIES is the brilliant reply to every fear-inducing baby manual out there. You already screwed up royally by getting pregnant-- now do something smart and buy this book.”
- Diablo Cody, Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Juno
“The next time I am invited to a baby shower, LET’S PANIC ABOUT BABIES! is what I'm getting the mom-to-be. Then I'm going to sit in the corner and read it, and it will be the first time in history that someone has had a howling good time at a baby shower. I love this book unconditionally. Brilliant, funny, fabulous. Every pregnant human being should have a copy.”
- Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author of STIFF, BONK, SPOOK, and PACKING FOR MARS
"Please read this book while wearing an adult diaper, because you will laugh very, very hard."
- Susan Orlean, New York Times bestselling author and staff writer for The New Yorker
"An outrageously humorous, over-the-top guide to surviving pregnancy and child-rearing.
What's the most important thing women need in order to prepare for a new baby? According to the debut book by mommy bloggers Bradley and Kennedy, it's not formula, blankets or even a car seat. Come prepared with a sense of humor. Through absurd anecdotes, lists, charts and pictures, the authors satirize typical pregnancy handbooks in a comically ironic and often bawdy manner. Despite the inclusion of much useful scientific data, readers will more likely be drawn to the insight the authors have gained on the front lines of parenthood. There's advice for readers looking to throw a baby shower that will make friends suffer as much as the expectant mother; a World War II theme should do the trick. Ever wonder how to choose a baby name that fosters a desired trait? Macarena is a great choice for future dancers. With uncensored humor and honesty, Bradley and Kennedy provide future moms with comforting tips on how to cope with the appalling terrors of pregnancy, including how to satisfy the urge to vomit in public, deal with annoying family members and strangers and avoid insanity during bed rest. The authors show how laughter can be the most effective remedy to assuage the panic that often accompanies pregnancy.
A refreshingly unorthodox approach to a subject typically portrayed in a sappy, sentimental fashion."
-- Kirkus
About the Author
Alice Bradley writes the award-winning blog Finslippy (www.finslippy.com). Her work has been featured in numerous anthologies, magazines and websites, including The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 2, Redbook, Nerve, The Sun, The Onion News Network, and Fence. She was nominated in 2009 for a Pushcart Prize in nonfiction. Alice lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, son, dog, and cat.
Eden M. Kennedy is the author of the web site Fussy.org, which was celebrated as one of the top ten parenting blogs by the Wall Street Journal. She has been featured in The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, and on the BBC, and her work has appeared in several anthologies. A former bookseller and magazine editor, she lives with her family in Southern California.
See all Editorial Reviews
- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (March 1, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 031264812X
- ISBN-13: 978-0312648121
- Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 7.9 x 0.7 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
I am a mother of two growing young men, and that has caused me to be crotchety toward the things that young people do. One thing that I am especially given to crotchets about is the use of the acronym LOL. I don't hate laughing, mind, and I certainly don't expect anyone to laugh silently. Laughing out loud is great! I just don't love LOL.
And yet, I have found myself LOLing every time I open this book. And everyone in my family is LOLing every time they open this book, including my 11-year-old and 8-year-old sons. Everyone where I work LOL'd when they stole it off my desk to read when they were supposed to be working and you should ask before you put your dirty paws all over someone else's brand new book, Megan!* My point is that, despite how much I hate LOL, I wouldn't be able to describe how much laughing out loud this book has been providing everyone around me without using that very shorthand. So, there you go.
Here's why I love it. A hundred years ago when I first saw that little blue line on that urine-soaked stick (which I then jumped around, waving in the air. Gross!) I ran right out and bought a certain book about what a woman should expect when she is expecting a certain thing. The certain thing is a baby. Well, I sat right down and devoured that book, and when I was through...I was afraid to move. Or eat. Or think too much. When I finally got over the trauma, I told my husband that vaunted tome should really be called, "1,000 Things to Be Paranoid About Over the Next Nine Months. HA HA, You Should See How Crazy Your Eyes Look Right Now!" I picked it up with a pair of tongs and tossed it in a box never to be seen again. Clearly, these two women understand the way I felt back then. They get me. They get you too.
I've never written an online review of anything, but this book is so outrageously hilarious and fills such a valuable role in the literature of pregnancy, I was moved to say something -- to let other women know that reading Let's Panic About Babies! will not only make you weep with laughter but may also even, in a small but significant way, if it catches you at the right moment, change your life.
For some women, pregnancy is a beautiful, sacred, magical thing. For others, it's a little more complicated than that -- words such as alarming, bizarre, terrifying, mystifying, dread-inspiring, really freaking weird, grotesque, and horror show (ok, that's a phrase) come to mind. When I first stumbled on this book, I was about two months pregnant and, for a variety of reasons, feeling distressed to the point of in denial about the whole thing. I could barely bring myself to tell my mother the good news, let alone crack any of those standard volumes that whisper in breathy tones about the fecund female bliss you're supposed to be experiencing. (Keep in mind, I wasn't, like, 17 and single; I was, and am, 39 and engaged and doing this by choice.) I felt lost, unmoored, unable or afraid to articulate my true, socially unacceptable thoughts and emotions about having a muffin in the oven.
Then one night, perusing the Staff Picks rack at Powell's, I saw Let's Panic About Babies! and started flipping through it. Suddenly--maybe it was the photo of the seahorse, depicting "your baby!" at one month, that did it--I found myself helplessly cracking up. This was wrong. One was not supposed to crack up about pregnancy. Pregnancy is serious and sacred and too shameful to be written about except on pages of books with pink covers and titles with words like "Within" and "Pregnancy".
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