THE GUY’S GUIDE TO SURVIVING TODDLERS, TANTRUMS, and SEPARATION ANXIETY (yours, not your kids!) by Michael Crider (2007)
This version of the Guy’s Guide is the third entry in a series of books by stay-at-home-dad Crider (including guides to the first year of your kid’s life and a guide to the first year of marriage). The Guy’s Guide covers 15 topics about fathering a toddler, with each chapter beginning with a short excerpt from a reader letter or email and with each chapter ending with a jokey fake quiz to recap “What Have We Learned Here?” This version of the Guy’s Guide runs 173 pages, but if you cut out blank pages and acknowledgements, you’re down to 160 pages. If you cut out the reader emails, you’re probably down to 140 pages or so. And these are pages in a book that runs four inches by six inches. If this is your bathroom book, it probably isn’t going to last the week*** and might be making you wonder what you spent your $12.95 for (and Canadians will be really mad; at $15.50 CAN, with a $1.02 exchange rate, that’s over $15). So for dollars spent per minute of reading enjoyment, you’re getting about as good of a deal as Eliot Spitzer did.***
A book this size isn't necessarily a problem if it were chock full of keen observations. Yet Crider all too often appears to be working on earning his master of the obvious degree.*** Crider has chapters on the phrase “Because I said so,” the fact that kids say “Why?” a lot, how kids’ birthday parties are out of control, how Crider’s parents are nicer to his kid than they were to him and how your kid will sleep in your bed and that this may harm your relationship with your wife. Anyone who watches a week full of WB sitcoms (is it CW now? Have you watched that network recently? Me neither!!!***) would have been able to write most of these chapters, and that’s one-third of the book. Many other chapters, including ones on potty-training and preschool interviews, aren’t much better. Part of the problem here is likely that Crider has only one kid and he isn’t a teacher or anything like that. So it’s kind of like reading a sex guide from a McLovin-type that’s only burrowed beaver once.***
A couple chapters are bizarre. I’m learning that 95% of stay-at-home dads feel that the discrimination levied upon them apparently makes their plight similar to blacks in South Africa under Apartheid, and they are not shy about voicing the awful state in which they find themselves in America in the Oughts. And so Crider launches an extended rant on the movie Mr. Mom and it’s unfair portrayal of stay-at-home dads. Note to Crider: Even if we cared about your whining about the situation, dude, that movie came out in 1983! Are we next going to hear about your thoughts on that fierce Lakers/Celtics rivalry? Whether John Hinckley should be declared insane or given the death penalty?
Another chapter contains a several page rant about how your kids will come before your spouse and that’s “how it should be.” Really? There is also a weird chapter on the many roles of a father ("I am the clown ... I am the doctor ... I am the punisher"). Crider may have written that one while wearing a loin cloth at a male sensitivity retreat in the woods or something.***
Crider alerts us early on that he isn’t going to let an easy joke go by. Ever. I actually tried to kind of emulate his style in this book review by creating all of the triple-starred (***) “jokes” above but just didn’t have the skill for it and couldn’t keep it up (and my wife and friends would assure you that, in fact, I am skillful at the bad joke). In an early 3-page stretch of the book, we have jokes on the following topics: Monica Lewinsky; Rosie O’Donnell’s penis; the French like to surrender; anorexia; the “number one rule of being an author: kiss your audience’s ass”; pissing on the toilet seat; and Paris Hilton. That’s pages 4 through 6. And, remember, these are not big pages. The quizzes at the end of each chapter generally follow the same kind of humor pattern or are topical and tend to restate the “jokes” within each chapter. Crider’s statement that he has the sense of humor of “a 12 year old at a slumber party” might be the truest statement in the book.
I think the "humor" is supposed to be Crider establishing himself as the type of guy that is manly enough that he could write a guy’s guide. But Crider can’t seem to even say “I love my son” without feeling the need to next talk about how he enjoys big breasts or threesomes with the babysitter in the next page or two (he even acknowledges that this is how he feels he has to “redeems [his] manhood”).
This version of the Guy’s Guide is the third entry in a series of books by stay-at-home-dad Crider (including guides to the first year of your kid’s life and a guide to the first year of marriage). The Guy’s Guide covers 15 topics about fathering a toddler, with each chapter beginning with a short excerpt from a reader letter or email and with each chapter ending with a jokey fake quiz to recap “What Have We Learned Here?” This version of the Guy’s Guide runs 173 pages, but if you cut out blank pages and acknowledgements, you’re down to 160 pages. If you cut out the reader emails, you’re probably down to 140 pages or so. And these are pages in a book that runs four inches by six inches. If this is your bathroom book, it probably isn’t going to last the week*** and might be making you wonder what you spent your $12.95 for (and Canadians will be really mad; at $15.50 CAN, with a $1.02 exchange rate, that’s over $15). So for dollars spent per minute of reading enjoyment, you’re getting about as good of a deal as Eliot Spitzer did.***
A book this size isn't necessarily a problem if it were chock full of keen observations. Yet Crider all too often appears to be working on earning his master of the obvious degree.*** Crider has chapters on the phrase “Because I said so,” the fact that kids say “Why?” a lot, how kids’ birthday parties are out of control, how Crider’s parents are nicer to his kid than they were to him and how your kid will sleep in your bed and that this may harm your relationship with your wife. Anyone who watches a week full of WB sitcoms (is it CW now? Have you watched that network recently? Me neither!!!***) would have been able to write most of these chapters, and that’s one-third of the book. Many other chapters, including ones on potty-training and preschool interviews, aren’t much better. Part of the problem here is likely that Crider has only one kid and he isn’t a teacher or anything like that. So it’s kind of like reading a sex guide from a McLovin-type that’s only burrowed beaver once.***
A couple chapters are bizarre. I’m learning that 95% of stay-at-home dads feel that the discrimination levied upon them apparently makes their plight similar to blacks in South Africa under Apartheid, and they are not shy about voicing the awful state in which they find themselves in America in the Oughts. And so Crider launches an extended rant on the movie Mr. Mom and it’s unfair portrayal of stay-at-home dads. Note to Crider: Even if we cared about your whining about the situation, dude, that movie came out in 1983! Are we next going to hear about your thoughts on that fierce Lakers/Celtics rivalry? Whether John Hinckley should be declared insane or given the death penalty?
Another chapter contains a several page rant about how your kids will come before your spouse and that’s “how it should be.” Really? There is also a weird chapter on the many roles of a father ("I am the clown ... I am the doctor ... I am the punisher"). Crider may have written that one while wearing a loin cloth at a male sensitivity retreat in the woods or something.***
Crider alerts us early on that he isn’t going to let an easy joke go by. Ever. I actually tried to kind of emulate his style in this book review by creating all of the triple-starred (***) “jokes” above but just didn’t have the skill for it and couldn’t keep it up (and my wife and friends would assure you that, in fact, I am skillful at the bad joke). In an early 3-page stretch of the book, we have jokes on the following topics: Monica Lewinsky; Rosie O’Donnell’s penis; the French like to surrender; anorexia; the “number one rule of being an author: kiss your audience’s ass”; pissing on the toilet seat; and Paris Hilton. That’s pages 4 through 6. And, remember, these are not big pages. The quizzes at the end of each chapter generally follow the same kind of humor pattern or are topical and tend to restate the “jokes” within each chapter. Crider’s statement that he has the sense of humor of “a 12 year old at a slumber party” might be the truest statement in the book.
I think the "humor" is supposed to be Crider establishing himself as the type of guy that is manly enough that he could write a guy’s guide. But Crider can’t seem to even say “I love my son” without feeling the need to next talk about how he enjoys big breasts or threesomes with the babysitter in the next page or two (he even acknowledges that this is how he feels he has to “redeems [his] manhood”).
Which isn’t to say that there’s nothing here. A chapter on Christmas is inspired work (including on how a kid’s first Christmas just sucks and how even if you weren’t previously “into” Christmas that you’ll get into it if you have kids). The kid’s party chapter, while obvious at times, has some funny stuff (do the kids at these parties even know who the parties are for?). A chapter on how other people’s kids suck: that observation is sheer genius! Noting that when your kid swears, you can figure out whether the mother or father has the potty mouth based upon what swear words the kid uses. That's good stuff. The chapter on sex has some funny moments too (although his idea that you might have to teach your toddler about sex is a little crazy).
This book might be the perfect book to buy for your boorish brother-in-law if your sister is pregnant. Crider’s style is a tad obvious, jock-ish and Republican (not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you), but is also friendly and laid back and far from intimidating. Crider’s the type of guy who, if he lived down the block from you, would invite you over to look at his grill and have a beer or two with you and you’d have a good enough time shooting the shit.
But you’d decline beer three.
3 Stars (out of 7)
UPDATE: Amazon apparently read this and agrees with me on the pricing. It’s now on sale for $2.59!!!!
1 comment:
SAHD Bias = Racial Discrimination. Mr. Mom! Thanks for saving me the time and money. I love your review style, and I can definitely relate to your assessment of people trying to hard to be something that they think others want them to be. My BS meter usually goes off by the end of the first beer, so if you stay for the second you're a better man than I am. Although, free beer...nah!!!
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