People I Want to Punch in the Throat: Competitive Crafters, Drop-Off Despots, and Other Suburban Scourges by Jen Mann
My rating: 3/5 cats
the title of this book is fantastic, and appeals to my own simmering inner rage towards all the various types of people i myself would like to punch in the throat. i didn’t know anything about this woman before i read the book, although she has a very successful blog, but you know me—i don’t have my finger on the pulse of the interwebz so good. so i didn’t know that her blog was about motherhood and married suburban life, which is way out of my range of experience, and might be why i didn’t love this book as much as i had hoped to.
but it’s still very enjoyable. i love her voice—her lack of vanity as she recounts her struggles with her tightwad “hubs” and the various ways she doesn’t fit in to her cookie-cutter suburban town—saying the “wrong” thing, letting her kids do their own homework, not getting into the spirit of a sex-toy party. she’s funny and awkward and she’s gonna embarrass the hell out of her kids when they get old enough to notice. but in a good way; one that when they outgrow the teen-embarrassment years, they will look back on and think, “my mom is pretty cool.”
but the subject matter—her dependence on her cleaning woman, her desire to own a mini-van, her hubs’ monitoring of her spending, while amusing, didn’t really speak to my own experiences, so it was a sort of removed amusement, and not one of recognition. also, while she definitely isn’t a suburban stepford wife, she is far too domesticated to ever actually punch someone in the throat. she has more pique than actual rage.
but if you can relate to her stories of carpools and school bullies and juggling a career and children and a hubs, this is probably a book you want to read, because she’s really charming, and there are definitely giggles to be had, even if you are a childless urban lady like myself.
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