A quick, lighthearted romp through the joys of motherhood as told by a real, honest and very funny mom.
Malloy presents a collection of 39 funny, charming and poignant snapshots of her life as the mother of two boys.
As is true of most mothers, Malloy notes that she used to have “an individual personality” with hobbies, interests and a career. Then the baby arrived, and the new mom discovered this arrival marked the beginning of a new series of identities: Baby’s Mom, Schoolhouse Mom, Frazzled Mom, Invisible Mom. With gentle humor and wit, the author recounts various moments of motherhood that most mothers will recognize from their own lives. The stories are not reflections on the big occasions of celebration or sadness or drama. These are the short, ordinary, everyday moments often taken for granted, but not here, where they’re examined and savored. Her approach serves as a good reminder that motherhood doesn’t require perfection; that it’s the everyday chaos that makes motherhood so exasperating and yet so worthwhile. This is what it is to be a “Real Mother.” Malloy makes no apology for her conclusions: that the parenting magazines might best be suited for lining the hamster cage; that fathers parent differently; that math will need to be learned all over again; and that the “Land of Perfect Parenthood” is as fictional as never-never land. Rather, Malloy celebrates what “no book could ever teach: common sense” mixed with a little levity. Any mother who has ever herded toddlers, coped with a child’s amazing array of questions and bodily fluids, or tried to appear calm while their insides were raging with worry over a teenager, will find solace, camaraderie and more than a few laughs.
A quick, lighthearted romp through the joys of motherhood as told by a real, honest and very funny mom.Pub Date: March 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-0615577319
Page Count: 136
Publisher: A Real Mother
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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