Review: Funny and True to Life
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 08 17, 2010
I am the perfect audience for this book - parts of it felt like it was written straight out of my life.  Turning 40 is a major milestone, now more than ever, and since that event is only 4 months behind me, I can really relate to author Stephanie Dolgoff's musings about her "Formerly Hot" life."Over the last few years, while I'd been busy working and having twins and not sleeping and getting peed on and eating and yelling at my husband and maybe not taking such good care of myself - and oh, yes, that pesky passage of time thing - I'd become a perfectly nice-looking 40-year-old working mom doing the best she can.  Which is totally not the same as a hot chick.  That in itself is not a problem.  The problem was that my self-definition had yet to catch up with the reality of what the world saw when it looked at me."I found the first third of this book hilarious and a very realistic portrayal of this time of life.  "...I needed jeans, badly.  The ones that fit were clearly out of style.  The ones that didn't (yeah, no, they hadn't gotten too loose) had a nasty habit of dialing my BlackBerry whenever I carried it in my back pocket."And when trying to arrange a night out for drinks with friends... "The day before the date, research begins in earnest as to where to go.  None of us has been out with any regularity in years so it is unclear which bars/clubs/lounges are still operational, and if people our age ever go there.  Slightly younger friends are consulted, half-remembered club names are Googled, nightlife reviews are dug out of the bathroom reading pile.  It's a project."I appreciate the sentiment of this book.  We "Formerlys" as a group know that we are fabulous (albeit in a different way than we once were) and in general, appreciate this time of life after the drama and chaos of our youth, we just need a bit of time to settle in."I began to carry my new self-definition - that of Formerly - tentatively around with me like a just-in-case sweater, and threw it over my shoulders whenever I had that chilly feeling of being an adult "tween" - i.e., too old to be young but to young to be the kind of person who asks about the availability of parking at her destination before agreeing to go."The one thing I would say about this book is that after the initial hilarity, the book gets a bit repetitive.  I have no idea if this is how the book was put together, but I know the author has a blog, and the book feels like it is an assemblage of those posts.  If one was reading a new one each day, they'd feel fresh, but read all in a row, the anecdotes lose a bit of their punch.I would recommend this book to other "Formerlys" I know...especially if they need a small but well-deserved break from their busy but fulfilling fabulous lives.