Okay so the book review I’m posting is actually the second book I reviewed on the weekend.. The reason I’m not putting the first one up is because it’s bad. No I’m not been overly critical. But after a rather bad sleep (and dreaming of sharks eating a random guy.. which according to the dream diary might be the author..) I realised something.
I don’t want to write BAD reviews and I don’t want to review bad books. Now I’m not weaselling out of my promise of honest reviews, I still firmly intend to stick to that. But if a book sample is horrendously awful I won’t buy the book and I certainly won’t review it. The same for those samples that I just ‘don’t get’ cause lets face it not everyone is going to love your work… *sigh*
Anyhoo now that’s off my chest on with the review!
Review of, The Fat bag – stuck between a rock cake and a hard plaice, by Pearl Barley.
The blurb.
A humorous look at one person’s efforts to ‘get with the programme’ and lose those excess pounds. What are the stumbling blocks? Where do I acquire that elusive extra will-power? Why is my attitude to food my biggest weakness? Are there psychological undertones to my lifelong struggle…or am I just plain greedy? Losing weight and keeping it off is only marginally less stressful than divorce and moving house! Laugh along to an issue we can all relate to.
Three out of five stars.
This book was what it promised. A funny, witty look at years of yoyo dieting. It obviously caught me in the sample and also due to my mum being a chronic yoyo dieter from before I was born and still to this day.. *sigh*. So for me personally I found it a hilarious insider’s point of view of the craziness that is extreme dieting. Every golden promise of weight loss appears to have been seized and explored in this book and the ‘Bridget Jones style’ writing is quirky and enjoyable.
The reason it got three stars is due to the formatting. Now I can quite happily pass over the odd typo/format issue but this book has a constant issue.. It is fixable and I hope the author considers doing so because it is very distracting (and happens SO often). What has happened is she’s used the block style paragraphs, which is fine. But instead of allowing the text to ‘continue’ around the page she’s hit enter.
Which means you have half a sentence that then continues at the beginning of the next paragraph (or occasionally floats between paragraphs all on its lonesome). For a $4.99 priced book I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say I feel more time was needed here.
But otherwise a funny chatty read that comes across on the borderline of fiction/non-fiction. It probably would be a good read for those attempting the.. ahh.. not so sensible dieting practises? *grin*
Thanks for a very fair and honest review!! I love the book's title!! Take care
x
Oh, I wish it was cheaper. However, I love the title. I might just pick it up anyway. I will have a look at it.
Thanks for the review!
Thanks for the review. It sounds like a good read 🙂
Sounds very interesting, thanks for the review! Yes, formatting can really make a diff–it jars the reader out of a story/piece of writing.