Reviews for Eat When You Feel Sad

The average rating for Eat When You Feel Sad based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-02-16 00:00:00 Bruce Haggar final note / disclaimer: Zachary, if you ever read this, please know that I'm not trying to hurt your feelings. I mean, fuck, you're a published author, right? And I'm just a bitter bitch snarking on a book review site. And furthermore, you must know that what you're writing is going to be pretty polarizing. So um. I'm not sorry, because I mean every word of this very vitriolic review. But I'm sure you're a good dude, and obvs I'm just not your target audience. And please continue to be nice to my boyfriend, because he had nothing to do with this. Ok? OMG update: So it turns out that my boyfriend, who is a dog-walker in Midtown, freaking knows Zachary German (at least glancingly), who is also a dog-walker in Midtown. Ooooh shit. I am starting to feel guilty about this. Should I take the review down? just finished: Let there be no confusion: I hated the shit out of this stupid fucking motherfucking book. Eat When You Feel Sad is the diametric opposite of everything that is beautiful and important about literature. I know that's a serious claim, and I don't make it lightly. Honest. Before we go any further, I'd like to let Zachary German go ahead and speak for himself. Here is a random paragraph from a random page that I opened to in this book. (I swear that I'm not being unfair; this is exactly what the entire hundred-odd pages is like.) Robert plays the song "I'm Insane" by Sonic Youth. He nods his head. Robert looks at his cat. He puts on shoes. He puts on a light sweater. He looks at his apartment. He walks out of his apartment. He walks down the stairs. He walks outside. He walks to a thrift store. He looks at a children's book about time. He looks at a vintage LaCoste tennis shirt. He touches the shirt. Robert walks outside. He walks to his building. He walks upstairs. He walks into his apartment. Robert walks into his bedroom. He looks out the window. Robert closes the curtains. He lies on his bed. … … … (That was me taking a few deep breaths before spewing bile all over this fucking screen.) ARE YOU MOTHERFUCKING KIDDING ME??? THIS IS NOT LITERATURE! THIS IS NOT WRITING! THIS IS A TRAVESTY!! THIS IS WHAT IS BEING PUBLISHED TODAY? AS GROUNDBREAKING INDIE LITERATURE? BY A PIONEERING INDIE PRESS? WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH THE WORLD?!?!?! (pant, pant) Okay. Okay okay. Sorry. Okay. I'm calm. When I saw that Tao Lin endorsed this tiny little flit of a book, I should have known. I should have known. Tao Lin and now Zachary German (are there others?) have decided to take literature in a new direction, I guess, by making it utterly devoid of all emotion, meaning, subtext, heart, soul, interest, and depth. Now, I am not stupid. I realize this is a tactic. I understand that there might be room here for serious analysis, for someone to come along and debate that it is precisely by removing emotional depth that each individual reader could perhaps get even deeper by imposing their own emotions onto the scrim of the story, or that this is the post-irony, post-hip, mind-numbing-pharmaceuticals age, and that Tao and Zach are only giving all of us desensitized, zombified, emotionless hipsters the only thing we are still capable of digesting. But here's the thing: THAT IS BULLSHIT. There are lots of reasons we read. Maybe to escape our mundane lives and vicariously experience something more interesting. Maybe to gain new perspectives on the multi-dimensionality of the human psyche. Maybe to give ourselves an emotional boost. Maybe to be challenged, to confront something in ourselves, to learn something new. Maybe to search for beauty. Maybe to discover truth. Tao and Zach deprive us of all of these things. Tao and Zach write about life at its most mundane, most deadly boring, most dead. Whether the characters are smoking cigarettes, shopping at thrift stores, listening to music (exhaustively catalogued, btw, artists and albums and even lyrics, like a post-modern hipster checklist), masturbating, talking on Gchat (literally actually transposed chat conversations, which are even more vapid than the rest of the "story"), cooking, checking their email, smoking pot, or hanging out with friends, it is all described in the most insipid, most surface language, and no matter how hard you try, you cannot squeeze the tiniest smidge of interest out of any of it. Who the fuck wants to read something like that?? mid-read: Oh god holy shit I hate this book. There will be a fucking screed when I am finished, hoo boy. before reading: Ooh, just scored a proof of this for $1 at Housing Works! while contemplating reading: I am nervous about wanting to read this book, mainly because it's too obviously what I should probably want to read next. I am always distrustful of things that seem to be aimed directly at me, you know? I mean, it's unapologetically hipster-y, which of course simultaneously intrigues me and gives me hives. Then there's the endorsement from Dennis Cooper ("Zachary German's nimble, catwalking, archeological, surface dwelling, emotionally unpaved prose is a thing of total wonder and my favorite drug, language-based or otherwise"), but on the other hand is the endorsement from Tao Lin, about whom I have only bad things to say and which I refuse to quote.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-02-10 00:00:00 Jonathan Smith As a diet book author myself ("The Silicon Valley Diet," Red Hen Press, 2000), I am sent many diet books to comment upon, especially in January after all the over-indulging of the holidays. Many are worthless, but "Eat When You Feel Sad" is a common-sense diet book that will help many overweight people take off the pounds sensibly and without negative consequences to either their physical or mental health. Aimed mostly at middle-aged suburban moms and dads whose formerly trim and toned bodies have become more pear-shaped, "Eat When You Feel Sad" presents a practical plan that will help people who have a hard time enjoying the foods they like because of guilt or find themselves fixated on their weight form a better self-image and achieve better control of their eating habits. This book is filled with detailed diets and helpful words of encouragement written in a very warm, personable way. Full of Zachary German's motivating tips and tricks and his smart, sensible eating advice that really works to take weight off, "Eat When You Feel Sad" is a diet book presenting a plan you'll be able to stick to, have success on, and even enjoy. One caveat: if you suffer from major depression, this is probably not the diet book for you and it may even prove counterproductive