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Women's Fiction
Good in Bed

Good in Bed

List Price: $25.00
Your Price: $15.75
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A delight!
Review: This story is for anyone (men or women) that has ever felt like she/he didnt belong, felt weird, strange, ugly, fat, unloved...(insert your prefered adjective here).
Cannie has a job she loves. Friends she can rely upon, a social life, a pot head of a boyfriend...well ex, and a lesbian mother.
Yep, she has it all.
After Cannie finds out that her now ex boyfriend has a column in an important magazine, and his first article is titled "Lovign a larger Woman" in which he publicly decides to talk about hsi relationship with Cannie and how he dealt with the fact of being in love with a larger woman. I found the article actually pretty good. He has a very valid point, but I also understand the humiliation of Cannie.
She decides to take her wight under control, but things beging to happen and soon Cannie finds out that some things in life don't happen the way we want them to. And that sometimes, most of the times, these unexpected turns are for the better.
I found the book encuraging, beautiful and sublime. It was a treat to read.
I highly reccomend it to anyone. I cried, laughed, cried again, gaped with my mouth open, got angry and then cried again, but with JOY!
Loved it!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great read in bed or anywhere
Review: I loved this book. It's funny, in-your-face, feisty, heart-breaking and heart-warming - all of the above. And being "a larger woman", I could absolutely relate to Cannie's struggles with her weight and body-image. I look forward to reading more of Jennifer Weiner's work.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great summer read
Review: I was looking for a good book to read by the pool, and this proved to be a very good choice. I really enjoyed the character and the writer's style . I could not put this book down, and I will definately look for this author's work agian when choosing a new book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Thought-Provoking
Review: This is a fantastic novel. I thought it was a great read. The author makes a great point: stop hating our bodies and move on and make good lives.

Cannie, the main character, shows the torment and shame of someone who is a loved, witty, productive member of society but who doesn't fit the mold. Who invented this mold? Why are we following it?

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Self-conscious, narcissistic, trite, boring dribble.
Review: I hated this book and probably am not qualified to write a review because I stopped reading this piece of garbage 100 pages into it. I found Cannie to be incredibly annoying, complaining about everything and taking no responsibility for her unhappiness. Any 28 year old still complaining about their childhood deserves to be alone and miserable. I knew this book was autobiographical (and then verified it on Ms. Weiner's website), which is something that I can't stand-memoir masked as fiction. I really couldn't stand this book and cannot believe it was a bestseller. I don't really read much modern fiction and tend to stick to the classics; books like this are the reason why.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good in Bed is good in bed
Review: While I wouldn't classify this as "light" I would classify it as an easy read. Weiner manages to write the character as a well rounded, likable person, with normal neuroses. There were some parts that I could have done without, especially the over dramatization at the end, but over all it was an enjoyable experience, perfect for bedtime reading.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: You must read this book!
Review: I cried, I laughed...I want to read it again!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Enjoyable but not stellar
Review: As someone who has had a weight problem I can relate really well to a lot of this book. It's got a certain realistic quality regarding overweight women that it seems is quite lacking in a lot of books.

The plot is rather all over the place, and as the book is written in a humorous and lighthearted style it is a little jarring when some of the darker parts of the story come along.

Overall it was an enjoyable read, though it's probably one of those books that I'll be able to re-read in six months because I'll have forgotten everything that happens.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: a plus-sized Bridget Jones
Review: "Good in Bed" is a coming-of-age story in the vein of Bridget Jones et al. Cannie is a smart, sassy, overweight journalist whose self-doubt stands in the way of her happiness, pegging her in a marginal career and an unhappy romantic position. Through the course of the novel she emancipates herself, taking hold of her personal and professional destinies and learning to love herself, extra pounds and all.

This book is in every way bigger than "Bridget Jones' Diary". Cannie, unlike Bridget, is actually overweight (and self-consciously, but not too aggressively). This renders the book less servile to the current cult of thinness but also somewhat conflicted; the apparent voice seems is that of a woman who has always worried over her weight but never had clear evidence of its being inappropriate - a voice that probably represents more women than Cannie's actual character.

In more important ways, too, "Good in Bed" is a bigger book. It deals with more serious issues - Cannie has real triumphs and tragedies, often unconnected to her love life, and she has the insight to realize when she is being silly about men. The book has a more complicated plot than "Bridget Jones' Diary", without losing the easy-to-read quality that makes little-black-dress fiction so much fun.

But being a big book has drawbacks. "Good in Bed" doesn't have the same narrative tidiness as "Bridget Jones' Diary" (an achievement more due to Jane Austen than Helen Fielding). The ending is satisfying, and certainly well-planned (perhaps too well-planned; some of the plotline is predictable), but it doesn't have the irrepressible neatness, the cyclic detachment, that "Bridget Jones" acheived.

"Good in Bed" is not another BJ knockoff. It's written in the same tenor as many of them, but it's more complex and more intelligent. I've couched this review in comparisons to Bridget's story not because I think that's the only way to look at "Good in Bed", but because I think it's the best way. "Good in Bed" is a shining example of all the good Bridget did for women's fiction, implemented in a more serious context. Cannie is, foremost, a modern narrator. She speaks the language of women today: the author is not afraid to date her writing by making references to politics and pop culture, and this gives the book a fresh, current feel. She captures the dilemma of an intelligent, confident woman who isn't intelligent or confident about everything, who's self-aware without being all-powerful. She's not just another protagonist modeled on Bridget Jones. She's a protagonist - the first I've seen - who has read Bridget Jones.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Couldn't put it down...
Review: I was literally reading this book at every conceivable moment - while brushing my teeth, late at night, leaning on the dryer waiting for those last few damp items to get done - and was so sad when it was over.

Anyone who thinks that Cannie's personality change was too dramatic or that she was whiny and turned into a totally different person has obviously never been in the situation in which she finds herself. Without revealing the plot, I'll say that I've been there and had friends who have been there, and Jennifer Weiner nailed it. Yes, there were some unrealistic (possibly) plot twists. It's called willing suspension of disbelief. It's how life is often stranger than fiction. But the emotions and the voice are so clear, I can hear them in my own head.

The scene in the fat clinic when she sarcastically says, "Oh, now I get it, I'm cured! If you eat less you lose weight!" had me laughing out loud. The self-doubt over the break up (and many other scenes) left me weeping.

I hate when reviewers criticize something that didn't actually happen. I guess they weren't paying attention: 1) she was not thin at the end. 2)She wasn't rescued. She found happiness within herself, alone, without even the dog. 3) She didn't hate Bruce until long after I did. 4) This isn't about being fat. It's about priorities, what really matters in life, and that, despite our society's idea that you can never be too rich or too thin, neither of those things could make Cannie (or any of us) happy. Perhaps you have to have experienced some life altering moment to get it, and I sincerely wish the people who don't get it never have to learn that lesson. But for someone who's been there, this is so affirming and inspiring that I feel like a better person just for reading it.


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