Book Review: You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl

Sigh. Yes, I read a book titled You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl. Not only did I read it, but I picked it for book club! Just to clarify, I submitted a long list of what I thought were excellent choices, and I stuck this one at the end of the list. The other books were all intense (Room, for example), and I thought this one might bring some levity. So all the other books were rejected ("too depressing"), and this one made the cut.

I loved Celia Rivenbark's Stop Dressing Your Six Your Old Like a Skank and We're Just Like You Only Prettier. I laughed and laughed and laughed! But this book? This one was actually horrible. I apologized profusely to my book club for having it on my list. There was absolutely nothing funny about it. It was embarrassing, actually.

The problem? Rivenbark tries much, much too hard in this "humor" book, to be funny. In her other books, I thought I would like her as a person. In this book, I knew for sure I would run the other way. She is waaaayy too snarky. She swears way too much. She sounds like a 10-year-old just finding out that some words are "naughty." It's embarrassing. I mean, I was embarrassed for her as an author. I just wanted to call her and say, "Please stop."

I think only one person besides me finished the book for book club. A few people read some and called it quits. As one member said midway through, "When is this going to get funny?" It doesn't.

And so that is all the time I am devoting to Rivenbark. I'm not even going to take the time to put a picture of the book in my post. I will probably never read another one of her books. The end.