Review of The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy by Vicki Iovine

I loved this book.  I found it to be both funny and informative.  It was an easy and engaging read - I even found myself reading it on a plane ride during my European vacation.  It is one of the first books I recommend to girlfriends when I learn that they are pregnant.  Sometimes I even send them a copy as a gift.

There were times when this book was laugh-out-loud funny.  There were times, especially during my first trimester, when parts of the book were scary.  One section even made me a little woozy.  But as time passed I found myself becoming more desensitized to certain ideas (epidural, anyone?) and in need of answers.  Thankfully, the information Iovine provides is straight-forward and easy to understand.  And exactly what I needed.

It's been a while since I read this book, I admit, so I can't be too specific on the content (see my first post about the reality of this blog), but I clearly remember the humor of the various top-10 lists and the helpfulness of the what-to-take-to-the-hospital-and-what-not-to-take section.

The whole book is just like a conversation with a girlfriend.  A really good girlfriend who has already been through it and isn't afraid to tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly.  It made me feel more prepared for both pregnancy and the hospital stay, and it entertained me while doing so.  What more could a girl ask for?

Final Rating: Buy
(or borrow on long-term loan - you'll want it have it around for all 9 months)

A note about this blog (yes, another one)

Because my daughter was born in December 2009, I have a whole year's worth of books already under my belt.  I'll be reviewing most of those as soon as I can, so you can expect blog updates fairly regularly (once a week, perhaps) until I catch up with my current reading.  After that, I'll probably have to slow the pace a bit.  But since my list of books to be reviewed is already over 20 titles long, I think we have some time before we come to that.  We'll see what happens.

I also plan to give each title a final rating of "buy", "borrow", or "skip".  This will let you know if I think it's worth adding to your library, reading but not owning, or just not worth your time.  I'm sure there will be lots of caveats along the way, but hopefully the system will work pretty well overall.

That's all.  Now here come the book reviews.

What this blog was meant to be . . . and what it actually is

I initially had grand plans for this blog.  It was going to be a very thorough and professional blog with lots of serious and well-written book reviews.  It would be a destination for parents, who could search on a topic and find the info they needed, so that they didn't have to spend hours reading and researching.  I had this idea almost a year ago, and I started brainstorming the books I'd read and researching the best blogging platforms.

And then life happened.

I discovered that I didn't have quiet as much time as I'd hoped.  I discovered that writing a proper book review takes a bit longer, and is rather difficult when you read the book several months ago.  I even discovered that my daughter wasn't going to nap for 1.5hrs every 3 hours, as some of the books suggested she would!  The whole blog idea fell by the wayside and I set my sights on other things.

And yet, I kept reading.  And I kept recommending books to my fellow new parents.  And I kept thinking about this blog.

So here I am.  This will still be a blog about parenting books.  I will still do mini-reviews in an informal way.  And I still hope you will find them helpful.

With blogs, with parenthood, and with life, things don't always go as expected.  But that doesn't mean they don't go well.  Sometimes they even go better.  Perhaps that will be the case here, too.