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25th out of 83 books
—
401 voters
She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana (Zippy #2)
by
Haven Kimmel
In this sequel to the top-selling A Girl Named Zippy, the woman rising heroically from the couch is Zippy's mother, Delonda. After years of languorous existence, this oversized couch potato emerged from the den to pursue a higher education. Delonda was well read but in other ways seemed ill suited for college: This middle-aged, 260-pound coed had a husband who disapproved...more
Paperback, 336 pages
Published
February 13th 2007
by Free Press
(first published December 27th 2005)
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Apr 20, 2008
Nicole
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Anyone with a sense of humor, interest in the women's movement, or appreciation of recent history
Recommended to Nicole by:
My mom
Shelves:
non-fiction
A surprising feminist masterpiece, funny and honest. It's like The Awakening, if The Awakening had sensitivity and heart.
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
I read "A Girl Named Zippy" a few years ago and remember enjoying it, so when I saw this at the bookstore, I couldn't pass it up. I really liked this book, I think even more than the first one. The author knows how to turn a phrase in an amusing and clever way that makes me laugh out loud. I am enthralled with her childhood and equally curious how she manages to remember some of the minute details that I know I certainly couldn't, but I guess that's just good storytelling. She describes people a...more
Zippy is just as charming as she was in the first book, although she loses some of her innocence, as she experiences major changes in her family. I loved reading about her mother who got up off the couch and followed her dreams. I also loved learning about more people from the town, who obviously loved Zippy, and would wash and feed her. It definitely took a village to raise this child!
It’s fun to see Zippy’s dysfunctional family and small-town life, through her unique and amusing perspective. (...more
It’s fun to see Zippy’s dysfunctional family and small-town life, through her unique and amusing perspective. (...more
3 likes · like · see review
For the first third of the book, I wasn't sure what I was reading. Really, this is a memoir? The title character was barely present, but those early chapters that appeared to be tenuously related essays were hilarious. Was I reading Erma Bombeck or what?
Then things started to come together. Delonda Jarvis (mother of the author and nearly invisible in the first part of the book), did indeed get up off the couch, go to college where she performed stunningly well, lose 120 pounds, buy a decrepit V...more
Then things started to come together. Delonda Jarvis (mother of the author and nearly invisible in the first part of the book), did indeed get up off the couch, go to college where she performed stunningly well, lose 120 pounds, buy a decrepit V...more
Haven Kimmel, I have YOU to thank for keeping ME on the couch this entire morning finishing "She Got Up Off the Couch: and Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana." But maybe it wasn't such a bad day to finish a book, and especially this one; a sub-zero Minnesota morning didn't exactly make many other activities (ok, work would have been good) that attractive.
Having previously indulged in "A Girl Named Zippy" by the same author, I was tempted to read the follow-up. Kimmel's account of life (mo...more
Having previously indulged in "A Girl Named Zippy" by the same author, I was tempted to read the follow-up. Kimmel's account of life (mo...more
Jan 30, 2011
Michael
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
all-time-favorites,
memoir-biography
This is a far darker book than Kimmel's first memoir, A Girl Named Zippy, and I loved it for that darkness, because while I'd sensed it simmering under the surface of that first book, it never quite broke through—Kimmel hewed closely to portraying her world as she felt it was when she was a young girl. And she was too young and too bright-eyed to quite put things together. So even though there were occasional questionable events, they never added up to an in-depth portrait. Kept Zippy frothy and...more
I finished it, albeit with some skimming, so it can't have been too bad, but overall less enjoyable than I expected from the premise/title and blurbs. Her mom's going back to college, becoming active, and losing a ton of weight is actually a minor focus. There are many other vignettes from her growing up in Indiana, some poignant (chapters on her estranged brother and distant father), some kind of cute, but most fairly boring and generically unfunny (to me).
I tried to analyze a little more why I...more
I tried to analyze a little more why I...more
This summer I seem to be stuck on reading memoirs of growing up in the Midwest in the 1970's. This is another good one. She Got Up Off the Couch is actually a follow-up to the author's earlier memoir, A Girl Named Zippy. I think I liked this one even better. Kimmel covers a lot of territory related to growing up in small-town Mooreland, Indiana, and she does so hilariously.
The title refers to her mother, who at age 40 got up off the couch and escaped "twenty four years of poverty and terror and...more
The title refers to her mother, who at age 40 got up off the couch and escaped "twenty four years of poverty and terror and...more
I read Kimmel's first memoir, A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana during one of my annual girls' trips to Mexico a couple years back. While taking in the sun, tasty margaritas and enjoying the simple things, I was enamored with this quirky small-town girl and her cleverly down-home way with words. She made childhood in a town of just 300 (THAT'S small!) a bit romantic. Living where everyone knows your name (forget that they all know your business, too) and where life seems...more
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1 like · like · see review
Haven Kimmel has done it again. I loved A Girl Named Zippy and this book, I think, is even better. Written in the same voice as the previous book, Zippy continues her adventures growing up in tiny Moreland, Indiana where everyone knows your name and, unfortunately, your business. Much of this book, however, is a tribute to her mother who, in the last book, was spending the majority of her time sitting on the end of the couch reading, watching television, and talking on the telephone to members o...more
1 like · like · see review
This book is the sequel to "A Girl Named Zippy". It is autobiographical. Though it says on the back of the book that it is about her mother, it is more about Zippy as a kid. But during the time, her mother who had previously sat on the couch, ate junk food and read science fiction all day got the courage to "get up off the couch", eventually get a college diploma and teach English. It is story of abject small town poverty, both family love and disfunction, and of the Midwest in the '60s and '70s...more
Mar 22, 2010
Linda
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Shelves:
humor,
nonfiction,
memoir,
women,
2010,
essays,
family-relationships,
coming-of-age,
small-town
One of my favorite books a few years ago was A Girl Named Zippy, the prequel to this book, Haven “Zippy” Kimmel’s follow up memoir. I am delighted to say that this book is equally as funny and touching, but also a little deeper in its examination of the some of the fallout of a mother struggling to find herself in the women’s movement of the early 70’s.
When last we left Delonda Kimmel she was riding a bicycle, her first step off the couch where she had spent the last twenty years of her life, r...more
When last we left Delonda Kimmel she was riding a bicycle, her first step off the couch where she had spent the last twenty years of her life, r...more
I love memoirs! This is the sequel to a girl named zippy, a book i vaguely remember reading years ago, but not the specifics. I rated it 4 stars, but that was before i started writing reviews. this was a likewise great book, taking her from ages 8 to 13 or so I believe. Zippy (nickname for Haven) lived in a small town, so small there were only a few hundred people in it, in Indiana, in a house that often had no running water or heat, but really it did have heat, because they had a woodstove, and...more
A follow-up memoir to one of my top 10 favorite books ever. We start up where we left off with Zip, a little older but still fairly enveloped in the warm nostalgic embrace of childhood. But in this book, its less romantic remembrances of family and more the strange and terrifying truths that start to emerge when one is forced as we all are, to grow up. The momentous occansion that inspired the book...the impulse that drove Zip's mother after years of hiding, to literally GET UP OFF THE COUCH...i...more
Another interesting read. This one was much darker than A Girl Named Zippy, and that casts something of a shadow on both books for me. But that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. But Zippy was so lighthearted and this one felt a little more like The Glass Castle, as though Kimmel realized as she was writing that she grew up in really dire (not to mention incredibly white trash) circumstances. As before, I still wanted to know more: what was the big fight at her parents' 25th anniversary party that...more
For fans of "A Girl Named Zippy," this is Haven Kimmel's follow-up memoir. It starts off essentially where Zippy left off...her mother seeking a "sign" to enroll in college classes. The stories in this collection have the same warmth and humor of the first, but as Zippy is growing up in the story, she becomes more aware of the troubles in her family life. You could sense in "Zippy" there was some underlying dysfunction, and more light is shed on the issue in this second collection. This is my fa...more
I would give this book closer to 3.5 stars, but ultimately rounded down. Kimmel's novel was filled with quirky characters and funny tales, but the pervading sadness of the memoir stuck in my head. Being alone in a family of searching souls, the dirty home, mothers of her friends being the only ones that realized she hadn't eaten all day, a mother focused on finding herself late in life but forgetting that there was still a daughter who needed something more, a father who finally gives into all h...more
It was fun reading this book, set in a small Indiana town, while I was visiting Indiana. A lot of this book was the same as A Girl Named Zippy, which read like a Reader's Digest "Laughter, the Best Medicine." But where the first book stayed surface level, portraying only the humorous aspects of life in this dysfunctional family, this sequel got gritty. The depths were still humor-sparkled, but still, I couldn't help but feel sorrow for the little, dirty girl in the over-sized clothes, growing up...more
I'm kind of bereft because there's no more Zippy to be had.
At first I was not so sure about She Got Up Off the Couch. It seemed like outtakes from the first book, and the aw shucks introduction justifying a sequel worried me. ("I didn't expect much from that little book. I was an remain surprised that some people bought and liked it." C'mon!)
She Got Up does take a couple chapters to get going, as if you can feel Kimmel getting back on the bike and finding the pedals. But once she does...like Fa...more
At first I was not so sure about She Got Up Off the Couch. It seemed like outtakes from the first book, and the aw shucks introduction justifying a sequel worried me. ("I didn't expect much from that little book. I was an remain surprised that some people bought and liked it." C'mon!)
She Got Up does take a couple chapters to get going, as if you can feel Kimmel getting back on the bike and finding the pedals. But once she does...like Fa...more
If Haven Kimmel was ever to write a sequel to her first memoir, A Girl Named Zippy, she knew She Got Up Off the Couch would be the title, and she knew it would be about her mother's transformation. Well, she nailed one of those things. This is an oddly titled book considering her mom's story only accounts for about 15% of the book. The other 85% is very loosely related memories of herself and her classmates. Often I got to the end of a story and wondered, now how did I get there again? Her vague...more
What I loved best about this book (in addition to the laugh-out-loud funny parts) is that we get to draw our own conclusions about her mother's actual parenting - or lack of, and how it was all viewed from Haven's perspective as a child. Really made me reevaluate how I interact with the kids in my life who have neglectful parents - Haven's neighbor was so very kind and matter of fact in her care giving...
NOTE: My reviews here are short and not very deep - I'm writing them mostly to remind myself...more
NOTE: My reviews here are short and not very deep - I'm writing them mostly to remind myself...more
The "she" referred to in the title is the author's mother, Delonda. Delonda, raised in a well-to-do family, married at seventeen to man she thought was a successful 26 year-old business man. Instead he turned out to be an 18 year-old gambler. While he never lacked for anything like clothes or cars, Delonda and their three children lived in poverty. Delonda sunk into her couch as into dispair. Then one day "She got up off the couch", took the CLEP test, and started college.
That was the turning po...more
That was the turning po...more
(Three and a half stars). Somewhat of a sequel to Kimmel’s A Girl Named Zippy, this is the story of her mother who, with the help of her women church friends, got herself “up off the couch” (and out of a deep depression) and got herself through college, then slowly, eventually out of a long but unhealthy marriage. I enjoyed Zippy when I read it a couple of years ago, and even tried to read this immediately afterward, but found I couldn’t deal with more of her style so soon. Maybe too much of a ....more
Jul 01, 2009
Alissa
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Linda, Kay (but I think she's already read it), Meghan, Lisa, Marci, Diana, Natalie,
I never thought I'd like Haven Kimmel's two nonfiction books all that much. I pictured them as an "aw, shucks" kind of storytelling--Garrison Keillor as woman and growing up in Indiana.
They're not. They're dryly funny and extremely insightful. Deceptively simplistic in their storytelling, they're good stories with many layers about her family falling apart, but it's never told with weight and heaviness. They're told, instead, from the point of view of a child who has an idea her parents aren't...more
They're not. They're dryly funny and extremely insightful. Deceptively simplistic in their storytelling, they're good stories with many layers about her family falling apart, but it's never told with weight and heaviness. They're told, instead, from the point of view of a child who has an idea her parents aren't...more
Part two of Haven Kimmel's memoir of growing up in small town Indiana. I thought the book would focus on Kimmel's mother throughout, but, like her first book, A Girl Named Zippy, there are plenty of random chapters about Kimmel's day-to-day life, this time between the ages of 9-13. The book does begin and end with a lens pointed at the mother's return to college, but I wanted more. Save for the last two chapters, the "mother" chapters were my favorite. This book is darker than the first; there i...more
Feb 19, 2012
Sarah
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
audio-book,
non-fiction-memoir
This sequel gave a far more sobering picture of Zippy's home life; a more accurate window into her parent's world, especially her mother's. I enjoyed it as much as the first memoir of Haven Kimmel but in a different way. After my last reading of "Zippy" I was more intrigued to know what had happened to her and her family. And I found out. Haven gave more details of her home life and the conditions of her poverty. She talked our her parents and the amazing changes her mom made in her situation. S...more
I didn't read A Girl Named Zippy before reading this, but I kinda wish that I had. I'm sure I will someday. Even so, I got a riotous kick out of this and read the whole thing in one go. My favourite bit was when George, the non-hitchhiker, was staying at the house (yard, actually). Zippy showed him the "office" she had in the corner of the living room, complete with a handwritten excerpt from a Trixie Belden story hanging on the wall. (It's a goofy excerpt. Like, nothing happens and it's really...more
I really liked this one, too. Yes, it is darker, which makes sense. As Zippy gets older, all those things that lingered fuzzily around the edges in the first book come into focus. She becomes more aware of the danger and troubles that have been there all along. I love her relationship with her sister, probably because I have sisters of my own and can relate. I highly respect her mother for overcoming her depression and reaching her dreams. I am a huge fan of Kimmel's style -- humor intertwined w...more
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Haven Kimmel was born in New Castle, Indiana, and was raised in Mooreland, Indiana, the focus of her bestselling memoir, A Girl Named Zippy: Growing up Small in Mooreland, Indiana .
Kimmel earned her undergraduate degree in English and creative writing from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana and a graduate degree from North Carolina State University, where she studied with novelist Lee Smith....more
More about Haven Kimmel...
Kimmel earned her undergraduate degree in English and creative writing from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana and a graduate degree from North Carolina State University, where she studied with novelist Lee Smith....more
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Feb 17, 2013 03:21pm