A world where being single is the worst possible arrangement
580122
Strange and bizarre but also hilarious. A world where being single is the worst possible arrangement.
2165551
I'm 52. My man friend of just over a year, broke up w/ me 3 weeks ago. I had not dated for over a decade and he was the love of my ilfe. We'll be together forever, and all that jazz. Well, i had no warning and wham, breakup text (yea, a 54 yr old man does it via text. Nice eh?)  I was and still am, beside myself w/ loss, fear, anger, grief, sadness, etc etc.  I know all the right things I should be doing; doing them is another matter. I am trying.

Maybe it's because I bought this on Amazon based on Greg's other book (He's not that into you) which I liked quite a bit, but I missed it that this was supposedly (?) written for the 20-something crowd. Uh, yea, I wish I had noticed that, I never would have bought it.  As another reviewer said, it's very "sex in the city".  A show I do not watch, but we all know what we mean by that.

So if you aren't a young, hip urban girl with lots of cool friends to have brunch w/ and sit around bad mouthing your ex bf, skip this.  As I said I'm middle aged, I live in the country, don't have a network of girlfriends to hang w/, and I"m NOT a "superfox" with my whole life ahead of me to find a better guy.

Some of us, sadly and quite frankly, are beyond that stage and just want to be w/ the man of our dreams and settle down.  A breakup at this stage in life (or beyond) is in some ways much more devastating than for a young person who still has a lot of hope and chances to find their true love simply because they have many more years left on this planet.

I read about 1/3 of this overly hyped up trendy annoying b.s. before I gave up, way more depressed than I was when I started.

Oh and another thing.  This book implies that reconciliation w/ an ex is NEVER going to happen.  No matter what you do.  As another reviewer said better than I can, that simply isn't true.  That reviewer said men almost always come back if you leave them alone for a while.  When and if my man comes back, you can bet that this 52 year old is going for it.  Because some things are worth working for and waiting for, and trying again, no matter what some silly breakup manual says.
1114255
This is a SUPERB BOOK... if you want to live under a rock for the rest of your life. This book is a horribly paranoid vision of humanity from one person's horrible relationship experiences. If you enjoy making a suspect out of the person you love then this is for you.
4673425
This book paints a very bleak picture of a girls' world in 21st century America. No doubt things aren't great (and worse) for many girls today, but reading this book you'd think that nearly every girl or young woman in this country is about to have her life ruined through drugs, prostitution/sexual abuse, and/or violence. I don't see evidence to justify that sort of alarmism.

That doesn't mean, of course, that the topics in this book aren't good matter for thought: They are, and several of the many sources referenced in this book are certainly interesting, and worthy of consideration to adjust some of my habits in raising our daughters.

However, over and over again, the book makes the mistake of presenting abductive reasoning as if it had the strength of deductive reasoning. I.e., the author introduces an issue X in girls' lives, usually with some statistics indicating that it's a significant issue, then tells a horrible story of that issue resulting in the worst possible outcome, then posits a possible reason R for X, and then goes on to treat the eradication of R as *the main* solution for issue X.  Typically, evidence of R being a significant contributor to issue X is left out, or some unconvincing statistics (and worse graphs) are presented to justify an alarmist position toward various products and practices (plastic bottles, gymnastics, coed classes, atheism, etc.).

Part of the problem here is what is known as "Simpson's Paradox" or the "Yule-Simpson effect": Statistics about subgroups of the population seem to indicate one conclusion, but if you look at the complete statistics, the opposite can be true. It very unintuitive, but it's definitely worth reading up on that effect, because it results in all kinds of publications to mislead (accidentally or not) their readers about the causes of various issues of our age.

So, overall, I wouldn't recommend this book other than perhaps as a list of topics (short) and references. It's "easy reading" in a sense, but I found it to be a lot of work to separate what's right with what appears to be simple superstition (despite being used to reviewing papers for publications in peer-reviewed journals; admittedly for a different field altogether).
2327524
This book is a series of the author's feminist and romantic fantasies.

Many papers from well respected academic journals. show that women choose to marry-up, or never marry.

Many studies confirm that marriages between equals are less stable and less happy, and relationships are less likely to lead to marriage at all.

 - New York Times journalist Maureen Dowd reported on a study by psychology researchers at the University of Michigan that suggested "men going for long-term relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors."

 -  marrying these women is asking for trouble. If they quit their jobs and stay home with the kids, they will be unhappy (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2003).

 - They will be unhappy if they make more money than you do (Social Forces, 2006).

 - You will be unhappy if they make more money than you do (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2001).

 - You will be more likely to fall ill (American Journal of Sociology). Even your house will be dirtier (Institute for Social Research)."

This book is one female writer's fantisises that this has changed - one women's fantasy beats research!

Sorry ladies, the truth is more realistic than fantasies.

But what this book does see is that fashion is changing. After a generation of sky-high divorce rates, the children of this divorce epidemic are saying 'we want marriage' and the rates of marriage are going up, and professional people are leading this social change.

The author thinks it is that more professional women are marrying because professional woman are now attractive. Bunk! Professional men are now more likely to marry, and some are marrying professional women.

The other fact is that with uni graduations rates are around 60% female, there just aren't enough professional men for all the professional women!
So it is not surprising that some women are forced to marry down, simply because there aren't enough professional men.
2610981
The title to this book is both about the doldrums encountered by the protagonist and the vacuous resignation to the degradation which it brings to those in his world.

Under Chinese Law, Lin Kong's attempts to divorce his arranged spouse cannot occur without her consent until 18 years of dispassion have passed - effectively making the last act of consummation to have occurred prior tot he separation.  The net effect is the two-parent household for the vast majority of the children, and great anguish to the husbands who cannot obtain their wife's acquiescence to divorce.

Lin's wife Shuyu refuses to accept the divorce for neither monetary nor spiteful reasons - she just is a simple woman his simplicity is best characterized by her bound feet, something the women a generation older than she had ended as cultural norm in China.

During the 18-year separation, Lin has passionate feelings for Manna - a young pretty woman who catches the attention of many men younger than Lin.  But, she opts for Lin's hand and they commence the waiting, knowing after a decade that Shuyu's refusal to divorce will require the statutory.

Contrasting Chinese concepts to American norm makes the revelations of this book alarming.  Men and women cannot be seen in public with one another without a third person.  Holding hands illegal. Thinking about sex, let alone having sex, is beyond societal allowance.  Only high-ranking military personnel and politicians can deviate from these incredibly constraining laws.

When reflecting upon the 18-year sexless courtship of Manna while waiting for the right to divorce Shuyu, Lin concludes, ""All those years you waited torpidly, like a sleepwalker, pulled and pushed about by others' opinions, by external pressure, by your illusions, by the official rules you internalized. . . . Fool, eighteen years you waited not knowing for what! Eighteen years, the grime of your life, gone, wasted, and they led you to this damn marriage [second to Manna]."

Once when reviewing a collection of Manna's Mao buttons, Lin pondered, "He realized that someday these trinkets might become valuable indeed, as reminders of the mad times and the wasted lives in the revolution. "

China ultimately prevails in making their lives respectively miserable and seemingly worthless. Although Lin is a doctor, he cannot even diagnose his wife's illness, her having a pregnancy of twins, or many other physiological items which doctors would ordinarily observe more completely by noticing the little details.  He is blinded and dulled.  China's waiting game atrophies his mind, and perhaps his soul.  Government triumphs over personal character - even those who ask for just a little of personal character.  Like the suffocating governments portrayed by J.M. Coetzee or George Orwell, Jin shows us how the firm soul of the protagonist can melt beneath the horrid sunny hot oppression of the Chinese bureaucracy which makes arbitrary and unnatural rules about permissible societal behavior.

The end of this novel is not what I would have expected, but is what makes perfect sense. For many, it may be a surprise.
4440921
The message of this book is not only unhealthy, it's downright harmful. No man is perfect. (No woman is perfect either.)  But the partnership of marriage is profound and shouldn't be entered into simply because someone--anyone--pressures you. If Lori Gottlieb thinks women don't already feel crippling amounts of strain, or that they don't already compromise and tolerate quite enough, she's from another planet.

Gottlieb's number one priority is to sell her book and make money. Not to help women have better lives and better marriages.  If so, she wouldn't act as if her pedestrian observations are somehow insightful and revolutionary. And she certainly wouldn't act as if she's telling women anything they don't already know. Women should have realistic expectations. REALLY!? WHO KNEW!?

Take a look around. My bet is that you can easily pick out the women who got married simply because they were in a hurry to have kids. Or because they needed help paying the bills. Or because they lacked self-confidence and did, in fact, settle for Mr. Right Now. Sorry ladies, but Mr. Right Now is Tiger Woods. Make no mistake about it.

This book has caused a stir, yes. But people are calling it controversial, which it isn't. Unless that excruciating speech your mom gives you after one of your friends gets married before you is controversial. "You know, Darlene, you aren't getting any younger." Now imagine paying $18 for that speech. Hole in the head, right?

I'm stunned that people are wasting their time and money with this. Don't waste yours. If you truly need a guide, I recommend If The Buddha Dated by Charlotte Kasl. Kasl is compassionate, smart, and supportive. She is a Ph. D and a practicing therapist. Her book is empowering, not insulting.
4203257
This book is nothing but body shaming on a level I haven't seen in a while.

It's about a heavy guy that gets dumped by his bf cus his bf is a shallow little child, so what's he do? he goes and finds another shallow child, and ends up being a shallow child himself who only wants the perfect twink.

it's pathetic, it reeks of self-loathing, and fat-hate.

i really wish the gay community would accept the fact that we in this country are 70% overweight.

the only people freaking out are skinny people who are bigots who care about other people's weight.
4693114
Materialistic, shallow,  sleeping with someone who is a stranger you just met before any marriage commitment ruins people.
2101475
I've been looking at this book to read for the past year or so and each time I went to buy it something kept holding me back.  So when I finally found it at my local library, I took the chance on getting it knowing that I wouldn't be out anything if it was horribly bad.  And horribly bad it was.  Both Andrew and Miranda drove me up a wall.  Each was whiney and selfish and their constant lack of consideration for other people was enough to make me want to scream.  Andy ends up abandoning her whole life and throughout the book complains that she doesn't have a life.  If you hate your job that much then please just quit and get it over with.  Miranda, on the other hand, seems to find herself so high and mighty that she hires personal "slaves" to take care of her every whim.  The whole story line tends to grow very old, very quickly.

Furthmore, the people of the magazine industry should take a look at this book and see just how shallow they are.  If I ever had to work with people who felt that if I didn't dress a certain way, with certain brand then I should be fired, I would gladly see my way out.  Additionally, this book illustrates just why anorexia and bullimia are so popular among the younger generation of America.  If these are the younger generations role models, our country has a lot to work on.

All in all, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone, not even for a beach read.  The only reason I gave it a two was because I liked the cover and thought Andrea's boyfriend sounded cute.
1142152
You know you are in a completely different world when you hear a character, Francesca, tell another character, Isabel, why she cant marry the man she loves, a fellow just made a senior vice president at a large bank. Sure, theres the issue of his low-ranking family. Even more to the point, Francesca and the other young women agree that he simply earns too little, and that poor Isabel will live life as a pauper, a shunned one at that. His income? As Francesca puts it,  a measly eight hundred thousand a year.

Its a world familiar to none of us, assuming you readers are not in the top one percent. And then there are the cultural differences, very well highlighted and explained by Kevin Kwan, who grew up well-off in Singapore, the setting for most of the novel.&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Crazy-Rich-Asians/dp/0345803787/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Crazy Rich Asians</a>&nbsp;reads like any of the Housewives shows on the most potent steroid imaginable. Its possibly one of the most gossipy novels youll read. And its being turned into a movie, and what an eye-popping dazzler it will be if it translates even a quarter of the novels settings and fashions on to film.

The overarching story is simple. Rachel Chu, an accomplished woman living in New York, has been in love and living with the equally accomplished and super handsome Nick Young. When Nick becomes his best friends groom, Colin Khoo, he decides its time to take Rachel to meet the folks in Singapore. Rachel, however, has no idea who Nick and his family are (just the most powerful, influential, and richest of the rich) and the rough ride shes in for. She meets literally an operas worth of people who variously regard her as a rival, a gold digger, and an invader. And they subject her to torments throughout the novel, most petty, mean spirited, and a couple soul crushing. Its&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Mean-Girls-2004/dp/B00AEFYM2S/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Mean Girls (2004)</a>, though, again, on powerful steroids.

Kwans writing is serviceable to the task. But what he excels at, and what makes the novel a really delight to read, is how he immerses you in Singapore, from the wealth, to the sights, to the food, and to the customs. Where necessary, he uses footnotes to expand upon concepts and to translate the local lingo. So, what you get is a diversion and something of an education, too. We can only hope the movie is a good as the book.
1161085
Some other people keep talking about parallel universes, time travels, simulated worlds, etc etc. Here is a naive book about all. How every single decision in one's life forks the path in front and how everything, in the end, is just a single one thing!
Such a book would be a feelingless creature if no love is put in. So be it! A full of love story, on the other hand!
594655
Oh, where to begin with this heap of libelous garbage?

I'll be reviewing the first edition of the book because it was the one I snatched up as a teenager after finding it in the free section of a used bookstore.  As an asexual young person eager to learn about the obsession that the other ninety-nine percent of the human population harbored, I thought that Reuben's well-known bestseller would serve its promised purpose.  The introduction asserted that no one could "live up to his human potential" without having an active, healthy sex life, which should have been my first hint that the author was writing with an agenda in mind.  I don't know what the more recent edition says about transsexuals, and, for personal reasons, I don't want to know.)

Well, it's been over forty years, and EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX: BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK has become more and more risible as more time passes.  From start to finish, EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX is a transparent attempt to convince the reader to practice vanilla-flavored marital intercourse to the exclusion of all other forms of sex.  The descriptions of the male and female sexual organs, as simple anatomy lessons, are exempt.  The chapter titled "Male Homosexuality" is particularly notorious for insisting that gay men are prone to anonymous hookups in public bathrooms, cannot live together lovingly ("The bitterest argument between husband and wife is a passionate love sonnet compared to the average conversation between a butch and his queen"), can be "cured" of their homosexuality by visiting psychiatrists, and, most bizarrely, get pleasure from penetrating themselves with foreign objects such as fruit and shot glasses.  The "Prostitution" chapter is similarly defamatory--it is the only section of the book that discusses female homosexuality, and asserts that the lesbians who become prostitutes do it to take the money of the men they despise and infect them with diseases.  Reuben bestows his blessing upon oral sex between a man and a woman but cautions them that they may have "emotional problems" if they prefer it to intercourse.  "The ideal sex act" adds procreation to pleasure and an emotional connection, according to him.  Yes, he actually uses the phrase "ideal sex act."  Plato may or may not be proud.  Modern readers will also note that the book is totally innocent of the concepts of fisting, lesbian sadomasochism, and heterosexual anal sex.

EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX does offer some entertainment value: the "interviews" from medical clients who are obviously the author's inventions provide most of the laughs.  A prostitute visited in the daytime by a stingy john apparently dealt with him by saying, "What do you think this, the kiddie matinee?  You can come over here for half price but you only get half a screw!"  If you wish that your sex manuals of choice had the tone of judgmental sitcoms, this book may be to your liking.  Just put "Reproduction" from GREASE 2 on repeat, and you'll be all set for an evening of stern lectures against almost every conceivable sex act.  Otherwise, stay very, very far away from this thinly disguised propaganda.
141610
It is too hard to read a story of such a pathetic woman. There is no way you can attract someone when you don't find yourself worthy. Such a hard read. Made me cringe a lot.
242664
For the ladies can you imagine a world in which you have no career options except that of being a wife, a world in which everything depends upon how much money you have, and if you're at a loss for lucre, then you'd better marry into some moolah! You don't do anything except go to dances, mooch off richer relatives, and hope you marry somebody before you become a spinster! If you're a man, it's pretty much the same thing, except your career path is more open. You can do a lot if you have money, but like most of the male characters in Sense and Sensibility, why bother?! You got a rich relative to pay your way through life! Just spend your time hunting, whether it be game or a woman, especially a rich woman, if you're a debauched ex-noble who's lost his fortune in disreputable consumerism. All these examples pretty much sum up the world of Jane Austen as portrayed in Sense and Sensibility.

Three sisters, Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret...Well, let's forget about Margaret, since she's basically a non-character in the book....Well, 2 sisters, Elinor and Marianne are on the prowl for a husband, a well-off husband, since their father has died and left control of his estate to their half-brother, who happens to be married to an uppity and greedy wench of a woman who cuts them out of most of their dead father's money and land. So the sisters and their mother are "banished" to a charming cottage in the English countryside. Oh, the horror of it, while a lot of England working class and poor were just lucky to find something to eat for dinner in that time period. Elinor is the common sense sister and hopes that Edward loves her, but she can never figure out what his feelings for her are. But she's not going to do anything rash to find out. Just keep a cool head Elinor. Marianne is the exact opposite, youthful, idealistic, passionate, and brash, and falls for the first guy that satisfies her sense of the dashing Byronic hero, even if he might be a cad!

I don't know, something about this book rubbed me wrong, even though I thought it was pretty good. All of the characters just seem like parasitic bums, even if they are psuedo-aristocrats. They're lazy, judgemental, and obssessed with appearances, even though they hardly ever have the courage to look under those appearances to see the truth. They really have no activity in their brains. Like animals they are only seeking comfort and security, nothing beyond the most basic of human needs. There is no aspiration to anything. Well, except aquiring money. At some points in the book you wish all of these people had been in France during the Reign of Terror. Then they would have found out their real priorities. I guess, while I could understand the problems of the girls, I didn't sympathize with them. While the spoon they were born with was not silver, at least they had A spoon. It was left to Dickens and Balzac to see how the other half lived. To me, the book's only redeeming value besides Austen's excellent and entertaining style, was to show just how far women have come in the past 200 years, and how lucky they are for being born in the 21st century instead of the 18th!
3376065
The author is amazing I wish I could meet her!!  I learned so much  about how our society really do not allow people to CHOOSE the lifestyle that is best for them without marketing always being a couple.

The prejudice is very covert in nature and in so many ways un realistic to expect everyone should want to be part of a couple.

Couple work is hard work and until you are happy with yourself as a single you cant give to any other relationship!  BRAVO!!  I would recommend this book also to women who are newly divorced since society expect women to want to rush into a relationship.
2989916
if you're single, lonely and on vacation, this is better than finding the best restaurant!