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Title: Sand in My Bra and Other Misadventures: Funny Women Write from the Road (Travelers' Tales) by Jennifer Leo ISBN: 1-885211-92-9 Publisher: Travelers' Tales Inc Pub. Date: March, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (3 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Very Disappointed
Comment: Out of the 28 stories in this book, I found only about 5 to be well-written and humorous. The majority of the rest consisted of stories about intimate bodily fluids and functions that just happened to occur on foreign soil, and frankly, I found them disgusting and boring. After a while, I started skipping stories entirely after reading the first paragraph or two and seeing where they were headed. I was very disappointed.
If you enjoy travel narratives, a much better compilation of women's stories can be found in "A Woman's Passion for Travel" edited by Marybeth Bond & Pamela Michael. Although that book doesn't claim to be a collection of funny stories, "Sand in my Bra" really isn't a collection of funny stories, either.
Rating: 4
Summary: funny women traveling
Comment: The title piece in this pocket-sized anthology of humorous travel pieces by women features Christine Nielsen stressing over costumes for a week at Burning Man, a festival "based on creative self-expression." Originating in San Francisco, the event has grown so big it's now held in the Nevada desert where showering is just a means to cake up with a thicker layer of dust and a major highlight is the topless bicycle parade of 4,000 women. I identified more with the sidebar piece by Jennifer L. Leo, describing her coma-stress response to a hearty call for Naked Basketball.
Other pieces focus on more mundane female conundrums like underwear with tired elastic (yikes!) menstrual surprises (even worse!), sanitary facilities, euphemisms in foreign languages, attempting to pass unnoticed in a chador in Kuwait, finding a book in a French airport with a teenager in tow, dealing with the runs, bad hair days in Hong Kong. Ellen Degeneres does a piece on fear of flying and Adair Lara packs for the fantasy person she expects to become halfway around the world. There are men, like Germaine W. Shames' eloquent Mexican lover, though not so many as you might expect in an anthology by women. There may be more pieces on squeezing excess flesh into bathing suits.
Mostly these are good-natured women finding the funny side of mishaps in places as far flung as the red-light district in Bangkok and the 50-pound sack race in small-town Nevada. There are plenty of laughs and - a side benefit - some handy warnings on what not to do when traveling.
Rating: 4
Summary: Light-hearted fun with some witty subtext
Comment: Enjoyed the book. Heard some of the authors read last night at a local travel bookstore; went home and read some more. It's light-hearted; some of the essays, inevitably, are better than others. One, by Leslie Quinn, is especially delightful. It takes place in a French airport, as she and her thirteen-year-old daughter are about to fly home. Leslie desperately wants to leave her daughter with all their luggage and dash to a bookstore to make a last-minute book purchase for the flight back to the U.S.; the daughter resists being left alone. The conflict is told in wonderful, funny and understated dialogue--but what I found especially moving was the way the mother alternately viewed her daughter as both old enough to....and then, as a child. Underneath my laugh-out-loud enjoyment, I found myself moved by this subtle portrait of a mother coping with a daughter coming of age.
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