Rating: 
Summary: A Gimmick by any other name...
Review: This is a fascinating concept, and a marketable one as well, in light of America's current infatuation with the Edifice Complex. Considering the author's scholarly credentials, SEX AND REAL ESTATE should have been a absorbing book. "Should have" is the pivotal phrase here. No question that Garber's body of knowledge is vast--she hops all over the map with only the most tenuous connection to her thesis. Maybe she merely was showing off how much smarter she is than the average reader. While I have no doubt but that this fact is true, the book still quickly descends into boring psychobabble. Anyone seeking enlightenment is bound to be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Presumptuous theories
Review: This series of connected essays purports to support a thesis, that for middleaged baby boomer (American, of a certain income level - let's face it) folks - the "We" of the title - real estate, specifically the house, is now in the place once reserved for sex. All the passion "we" brought to sex and love, now "we" bring to the desire for the right house. It's a glib and silly assertion, made all the more so by the annoying "We." Speak for yourself! I kept wanting to shriek.Dr. Garber is an able writer, her eyes and ears are peeled for symbols and signs, and she can discuss her various themes wonderfully coherently, even elegantly. But she is not making sense when she attempts to pathologize (for example) communities' attempts to standardize exterior paint colors. For heaven's sakes, it's been done in Scandinavian and European countries (now democracies) for generations, with no measurable loss of the citizenry's psychic well-being. She indulges in generalization which grate. Dr. Garber asserts that today's glossy,over-the-top shelter magazines such as Architectural Digest are today's pornography. She lists wording that anthropomorphizes real estate, as supporting evidence. This high-minded thought is evidently unknown to pornographers, who would appear to be doing a good business despite their continuing exclusion of real estate from their products. Again, one wishes that she could have personalized her assertions. I think that a more honest subtitle for this book would have "Why I Love Houses." Were Dr. Garber to have simply written of her own passionate flights of fancy and considerable obsessions and attachments, rather than attempting to universalize them, I think she would have had a better treatise.
Rating:
Summary: Presumptuous theories
Review: This series of connected essays purports to support a thesis, that for middleaged baby boomer (American, of a certain income level - let's face it) folks - the "We" of the title - real estate, specifically the house, is now in the place once reserved for sex. All the passion "we" brought to sex and love, now "we" bring to the desire for the right house. It's a glib and silly assertion, made all the more so by the annoying "We." Speak for yourself! I kept wanting to shriek. Dr. Garber is an able writer, her eyes and ears are peeled for symbols and signs, and she can discuss her various themes wonderfully coherently, even elegantly. But she is not making sense when she attempts to pathologize (for example) communities' attempts to standardize exterior paint colors. For heaven's sakes, it's been done in Scandinavian and European countries (now democracies) for generations, with no measurable loss of the citizenry's psychic well-being. She indulges in generalization which grate. Dr. Garber asserts that today's glossy,over-the-top shelter magazines such as Architectural Digest are today's pornography. She lists wording that anthropomorphizes real estate, as supporting evidence. This high-minded thought is evidently unknown to pornographers, who would appear to be doing a good business despite their continuing exclusion of real estate from their products. Again, one wishes that she could have personalized her assertions. I think that a more honest subtitle for this book would have "Why I Love Houses." Were Dr. Garber to have simply written of her own passionate flights of fancy and considerable obsessions and attachments, rather than attempting to universalize them, I think she would have had a better treatise.
Rating: 
Summary: pretty good analysis -- fun to read
Review: This was a thought-provoking book to read on the commute to work. It's not really about sex, despite the title --- it's more about what houses have come to mean in 21st century America. How a bathroom is more like a spa, how the parlor came to be, the connection between trophy wives and trophy homes... Most of all, it's one of the few books out there on what home ownership has come to mean!!
Rating:
Summary: pretty good analysis -- fun to read
Review: This was a thought-provoking book to read on the commute to work. It's not really about sex, despite the title --- it's more about what houses have come to mean in 21st century America. How a bathroom is more like a spa, how the parlor came to be, the connection between trophy wives and trophy homes... Most of all, it's one of the few books out there on what home ownership has come to mean!!
Rating:
Summary: Frivolous but fun
Review: While I sympathise with the earnest souls who criticised Garber for failing to look at homelessness, disability and the spread of AIDS in this book, I also wonder if their senses of humour have died. Yes, the book is frothy, but it's funny, too - the stories are hilarious even if they do deal with the baser, greedier side of middle-class and middle-aged aspirations. And in chronicling those ugly yearnings to excel, Garber shows us - without labouring it - where the greed that generates a refusal to spend tax dollars on the poor has its home. Meanwhile, the humourless get what they deserve with earnest but boneheaded stuff like Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human.
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