Well there. I gave it all away in the title. But yes, lately I’m obsessed with reviews from real people who’ve used the real things and can tell me whether or not whatever it is turned out to be a good purchase, read, or visit.
And for some super clothes coveting fun, read all the Anthropologie reviews.
Meanwhile for today, I’d love to read your reviews. What have you read and loved lately? What song makes you sweat (or more likely, swoon)? What have you used and loved?
For a few examples, here’s a review of Loving Frank (back from the days when I wrote here regularly), and here’s a review of a workout (loosely), and here’s a review of a “personal device” in video, which really gives you the chance to gaze deeply into my skin folds.
Now you! Please post your submission in the comments OR post in your blog and leave a link to your blog in the comments. You do can do your review in video or words or song.
To bone up on PROMPTuesdays, read a bit about it here.
A review I wrote on Goodreads of The End of Your Life Book Club (Will Schwalbe). What can I say? I’m cranky…
This is a hard review to write. Because what’s not to like about a mother and her grown son reading books together as she is dying of pancreatic cancer? The idea of it alone is profoundly moving.
But this mother, this son… Will Schwalbe professes love and admiration for his mother. What I read, between the lines and sometimes in them, is a son who feels his mother failed him, a son angry at his mother. His mother, he tells us, is a humanitarian and advocate for social change, especially on behalf of unempowered women in countries like Afghanistan. I do not doubt that she is all of these things, but within her family she is controlling and frequently annoyed, exasperated, and short.
The books these two read are discussed only cursorily; ditto for their relationship. I’ve never read a memoir in which the protagonist seems more out of touch with his own feelings than this one.
As Mary Anne Schwalbe’s cancer worsens, Will starts a blog to inform family and friends about his mother’s condition. Mary Anne, still overbearing, sends him text for the blog. She has written it in his voice, to make it appear that he is writing the blog when in reality she is. He complies (good son!) and publishes her words as his own — which may in fact say everything there is to say about this book.
I’m sorry Mrs. Schwalbe died — she seems to have done a lot of good for a lot of people. But her son has unwittingly loosed the skeletons in her closet, and I come away from The End of Your Life Book Club believing that this woman cared more for her causes than for her family.
You said “bone up” and “skin folds”. Ha.
Can you tell I live with a 16-year-old boy?
Yes, I could offer up fairly good reviews on deodorant, after shave and hair gel.
(This is what my life has become.)
LOVED that review, Sarah! It makes me think of other people I’ve known who were exactly that – more in love with their persona and less with their real self.
Thanks. I took a lot of heat for it. How could I not like a memoir of a son detailing his mother’s DYING? Oh, well.