The bitch in the house

Like many anthologies, this one is hit and miss so far. There is enough here to recommend, but I'd definitely by used or borrow it and then go on to buy stuff from the authors one enjoys...

I enjoyed most of the essays while I was reading them but they didn't really stick with me. I appreciate hearing women's stories from the women themselves.

Right off the bat I realized my mistake. I picked the audiobook (because it was available right away) instead of the actual book. There are just some people who are not cut out to read out loud and this book had a lot of them. Some were so bad even my husband who only heard a couple of minutes of one essay said ‘What are you listening to? That is the worst thing I've ever heard!' because it was. I wanted to scream.

It didn't help that I couldn't relate to these women. These working women. These working women with flexible schedules. I didn't understand this anger towards their husband. This fighting and rage. My husband and I bicker, of course, but to fight? To be angry and resentful towards him? I don't have that and these women do.

I felt guilty for thinking of them as whiny, but all I thought about when I was listening to them reading was ‘oh my god the whining.' Which I suppose is something I should feel guilty about, the unsupportiveness of those of my gender who ‘want it all', but these women don't ‘want it all'. They want perfection and they want it their way, without sacrifice or compromise. They want it all, but they want someone to give it to them. Sure they want to work for their reputations in their chosen careers, but everything else, they want those people to just give it to them and that's just annoying.

There were a couple of essays that I did enjoy, hence the 2 stars instead of just one, but pressed at this moment I couldn't tell you what those ones were about or why I liked them and that kind of says something too.