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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/764641.Urban_Tribes_A_Generation_Redefines_Friendship_Family_and_Commitment?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Urban Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, Family, and Commitment" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178151715m/764641.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/764641.Urban_Tribes_A_Generation_Redefines_Friendship_Family_and_Commitment?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Urban Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, Family, and Commitment</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/88432.Ethan_Watters">Ethan Watters</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/21969227?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>In short: This book made me feel like I'm not the only one without a plan, merrily skipping along like I have been ever since college, and starting to be surprised as friends begin to get married in droves. I suppose it helps that the author is in his early 30's, lives in SF, and appears to lead a lifestyle very similar to mine; it probably also helps that, after a book's worth of analyzing the current young urban collective social scene from every possible angle he could get a hook into, he ends up married and writing a happy epilogue from his honeymoon in Hawaii. However, these aren't big deterrents for me, since (a) my perspective is based in SF in a similar scene; and (b) I'm a crazy optimist, and don't often really feel like I missed the boat. <br/> <br/>A friend recommended this book to me after I posted a series of apparently-confusing Facebook status updates, implying to some that I was getting married (I was not), and then clarifying. I picked it up on spec, intending to skim a chapter at best, and ended up relishing the whole non-fiction several hundred pages of it (note: I don't usually finish non-fiction). <br/> <br/>The first section is the voice from Gen X responding to the 90's condemnation of them, Bowling Alone. General thrust: We have different social structures that are no less valid than our grandparents', thank you very much, so please fuck off now. The second deals with why we even need to analyze these -- namely, the large delay between college and marriage that didn't exist 60 years ago. That meanders a bit more, the section entitled "Men & The Marriage Delay: My hunt for a good excuse" reading like a bit of spot-on stand-up comedy, but not really illuminating much beyond reinforcing my working life thesis that boys are dumb and should have rocks thrown at them. <br/> <br/>Still, though, it gets 5 stars for looking at the type of life that I -- and, I imagine, most of my friends -- think is a bit of an aberration: that of the just-cruising 20- and early-30something, without marriage or kids specifically in mind. It provides a framework from which to think about this period, and, importantly, reminds us that we're not alone in this. (I know that that should be trivial and beyond dispute, but it was nonetheless really, really comforting to read about this in a book. Maybe I'm just an academic at heart.) <br/> <br/>Especially because I read this right before attending a wedding in New Jersey full of skinny, married Jersey girls who had all taken their husbands' last names, this was extra-helpful in this phase of Life Justification And Consideration. I now have better terms for thinking about my place in life, and will have even more of a buffer for feeling annoyed that other lives are proceeding down a more traditional path even as I continue to enjoy one that, apparently, many others in my demographic are, too. <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/65467?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>