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What Members Thought
This was a wonderful book that entered my life at precisely the right moment. It seems that nearly everyone (EVERYONE) in my life is due to pop out a kid sometime between late August and the end of the year. I've counted no fewer than seven (7!) baby gifts that I need to purchase. While I'm thrilled for my friends, some of whom have wanted this for a long time, it has forced me to confront that... well... I don't. The writers featured here felt like my people. They were all thoughtful, reflectiv
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Gets a bit repetitive at times, and obviously there's a sampling bias, but reading great writers tackle a touchy subject is deeply satisfying.
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I will begin by voicing genuine disappointment in the production of this audiobook: both narrators were terrible: Jo Anna Perrin sounded like a game show host--especially horrendous was the passage in which she attempted to perform a child's voice; and Johnny Heller's odd slurry speech and flat delivery didn't differentiate authorial voices at all, even though one essay was patently tongue-in-cheek, and another rooted in logic.
Audio aside, I found a lot to mull over in this set of essays. Some ...more
Audio aside, I found a lot to mull over in this set of essays. Some ...more
Like many essay collections, this one had some hit or miss selections. Overall, this is a great contribution to the rather lacking discussion of why people do or don't have kids. I'm not sure someone who wants or has kids would enjoy this? There is a palpable smugness in some of the essays about all the traveling people with no children can do, which annoys me because traveling still depends on money and the ability to take time off of work. I found these essays to be surprisingly sad. Not so mu
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Although this is all essays from the same profession (writers) and they're all, in a general and broad way, from fairly similar cultural and social backgrounds, the strongest part of this book is the variety of perspectives on being 'childfree'. There were some statements and arguments I nodded along with, some which had never really mattered to me, and oh boy, Lionel Shriver's white supremacist essay which was a car crash - unable to look away, I read it in jaw dropped horror. Having never seen
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When you don't have kids, people make judgments about you. It was nice to read this story about other people's decisions, and I enjoyed the wide range of stories.
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Jan 06, 2015
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