Lisa's profile

535 ratings | 144 reviews
avg rating: 3.79
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Lisa's bookshelves

read (192)
currently-reading (8)
to-read (86)
history-memoir-biography (80)

diet-work-womens-life-culture-self- (49)
horror-and-sci-fi-phase (41)
sports-true-crime-misc-non-fiction- (38)
husbands-shelf (31)

hated-overrated-unfinished-abandone (30)
childhood-and-comedy (29)
all-things-hollywood (27)
chick-lit-guilty-pleasures (18)

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Lisa is currently reading

	10/10 Lisa is currently reading: Too Close to the Falls (Paperback) by Catherine Gildiner bookshelves: currently-reading	my rating:
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	10/10 Lisa is currently reading: Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power and Lies (Hardcover) by Ginger Strand bookshelves: currently-reading	my rating:
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	10/07 Lisa is currently reading: Housekeeping (Paperback) by Marilynne Robinson bookshelves: currently-reading	my rating:
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Lisa's recent updates (rss)

October 11

Lisa gave

to:
Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding My Self (Paperback)
by Frances Kuffel
bookshelves: diet-work-womens-life-culture-self-

my rating:

read in January, 2008

Lisa said: "I would not describe this nasty manifesto as "darkly comic". This woman is one bitter fritter. The book reminded me of an incident that happened to me in 1999. I know the year because I was in a department store shopping for a bathing suit ...more I would not describe this nasty manifesto as "darkly comic". This woman is one bitter fritter. The book reminded me of an incident that happened to me in 1999. I know the year because I was in a department store shopping for a bathing suit for a Caribbean vacation. I was very lean at that time, from sheer hard work and sacrifice. There was a woman, about forty years old and fifty pounds overweight, rummaging through bathing suits on the other side of the same rack I was looking through. She had a miserable ten year old girl with her, who would not shut up and stop fussing. The two bickered back and forth. Suddenly, with absolutely no prior words exchanged between us, the woman looks at me and says "Oh, you're so thin. What problems could you possibly have?" WTF? I said nothing. Ms. Kuffel, like many fat women, blanketly assumes thinner women have no problems, and lead mystical lives in tune with their perfect bodies. Yet she never bothers to ask them. She makes judgments about her own acquaintances instead of finding out their true feelings. Several times throughout I wondered if she was a complete sociopath. She also bears a frightening resemblance to a personal fat acquaintance I'll call "E". "E" was the type of person who, when making a brief stop on a long road trip, would order an appetizer and full dinner while everyone else split an order of fries. I could go on and on about personal choice and its consequences. I also, as a New Yorker, wasn't crazy about the way she coldly inserts her problems into the backdrop of 9/11. But the worst thing about this book by far was the corny, hackneyed, eye-rolling prose. And her strange (anti?) gay agenda. For instance: "And I was sober, with nothing to prove except everything. The last time I'd been out dancing I'd weighed three-hundred-some pounds, had been drunk, and had a roomful of gay boys join me in the weird ritual rondo of fags and hags. I had been thrilled by my sip of popularity, while the fags were thrilled to be queer but, by association and comparison to me, not freaks."
And this one: "I was startled when I overheard her talking about a boyfriend. I'd assumed she was a biker dyke and that someday she would order me up in front of the Lesbian Tribunal for Failure to Be Gay." Draw your own conclusions from those two outbursts. Kuffel herself admits that she doesn't know a lot about joining "The Planet of Girls". I'll say. This is how Kuffel defines the epitome of cool chic rebelliousness in another woman: "Jennifer wore sunglasses at night." Wow. She also goes on and freaking on about her loose leftover skin. For Christ's sake get some plastic surgery already. And I know this will probably get me into hell that much quicker, but 170 pounds is a lot to lose in one year. That coupled with her mysterious emergency stomach surgery makes me wonder if it isn't just possible she actually has had gastric bypass. While still going to Weight Watchers of course. Which is a wonderful organization. Not like gastric bypass in which about 3 out of 10 people will gain it back. Richard Simmons claims it's more like half.
...less "

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Lisa gave

to:
Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing. (Paperback)
by Robert Paul Smith
bookshelves: history-memoir-biography

my rating:

recommended for: American adults over 40
read in September, 2008

Lisa said: "Hard to believe this was written in 1957. The author was already lamenting the fact that kids no longer just hung around and did nothing. This is such a great little book. Americans, especially those over 50 that grew up here in the U.S. will be sick...more "

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October 09

Lisa marked as to-read:
Imitation of Life (Mass Market Paperback)
by Fannie Hurst
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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October 07

Lisa marked as to-read:
A Drinking Life: A Memoir (Paperback)
by Pete Hamill
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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Lisa marked as to-read:
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD: Moviemaking, Con Games, and Murder in Glitter City (Hardcover)
by Rod Lurie
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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Lisa is currently reading:
Housekeeping (Paperback)
by Marilynne Robinson
bookshelves: currently-reading

my rating:

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October 04

Lisa marked as to-read:
American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century (Hardcover)
by Howard Blum
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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Lisa marked as to-read:
The Westies (Mass Market Paperback)
by T.J. English
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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October 03

Lisa gave

to:
Dancing On My Grave (Paperback)
by Gelsey Kirkland
bookshelves: history-memoir-biography

my rating:

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October 02

New comment on Lisa's review of Fat Girl: A True Story

Lisa wrote: "His mommy? This is a syndrome no one seems to want to acknowledge with morbidly obese people who can...more "

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see all 192 of Lisa's books »

Lisa's favorite quotes

"I love mankind, it's people I can't stand."
— Charles M. Schulz

tags: humor, mankind, people

782 people liked it

"The covers of this book are too far apart."
— Ambrose Bierce

tags: books, criticism, humor, wit

116 people liked it

"What fresh hell is this?"
— Dorothy Parker (The Portable Dorothy Parker (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition))

48 people liked it

"Words. The fancier they come, the awesomer they are."
— Edgar Allen Poe

41 people liked it

"So, you're the man who can't spell 'fuck.' "
~Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer...publishers had convinced Mailer to replace the word with a euphemism, "fug," in his 1948 book, "The Naked and the Dead."
— Dorothy Parker

15 people liked it

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Lisa's groups (recent posts)

the Raucous Mortuary — 3 members — last activity 04/14/2008 11:21AM
For those who prefer a more lively, eclectic, pseudo-intellectual horse's rear end of a mortuary. Must read along the entire spectrum of available wor...more

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Lisa's friends (9)

	kkurtz 521 books 255 friends
	David 1038 books 45 friends
	Mary 292 books 3 friends
	Rachel 309 books 91 friends
	Kate 133 books 15 friends
	Regina 27 books 5 friends
	Marnie 9 books 4 friends
	Peggy 16 books 4 friends
	Lisa 0 books 1 friend

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best streak:	12
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