The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank

Erma Bombneck is quite funny, she is sarcastic as all get out and while you know she exagerates for effect you can see that it's based on reality. She describes life as she lived it in the suburbs in the 1940s and 1950s and while instagram/pinterest perfection wasn't a thing there was an expectancy of perfect white picket fence living that people tried to conform with that was just as draining.

Entertaining as always and an interesting look at how things haven't really changed, just the technology.

80 percent through this book and I thought I was done with Erma Bombeck. But then I noticed that I was getting less and less clueless as the chapters went by. I'm going to give this author another go, because I'm hoping her next bestseller is totally as nice as Chapters 11 and 12 here.

Something kept nagging my brain while I read. Then I realized that something was the repressed tone and dry humor. This book, published in the 70's but about events - I use the term loosely - in the 50's, reminded me of the first season of the Simpsons. When the latter were fresh and any good. This feeling crystallized by the time I read this collection of a family trying to settle in the suburbs. There are many references that I didn't get, and most of show more the narrator's point, and the jokes were like gibberish to me. But I suspect that James L Brooks was made of the same stuff as Erma Bombeck was. They were of the same generation so there's little question of who influenced whom. But the book's unlikely parentage to a spin off cartoon from the Fox network was unexpected.

The 11th chapter The Volunteer Brigade was the best one. The coach Ralph Corlis, was the most evolved soul and his decency which - maybe, but Erma doesn't say it- led to a probable fall from grace was refreshing to read about. For a book this dry, there wasn't much cynicism.

I read some lines from a few reviews of this book. Mostly female reviewers of varying scores judged this book. Those who panned it mention that it's a dated book. I cannot figure out this statement. The parables still held, the adventurousness is very much relevant. People living in the American suburbs now will definitely find this book useful. I think I'll give another Erma Bombeck book a shot. Just not immediately. show less

Erma Bombeck, the legend. I didn’t realize how old she was, either. ;) In this book she chronicles her family’s move from a cramped city apartment to the wonders of Suburbia.

mind you, this was back when Suburbia was brand-spanking new, a wild frontier. before there were post offices and schools there. they actually moved in before television became popularly available, which, when you think about it, is a huge cultural change. and fodder for some delightful parodies.

I can relate to her completely in some instances:

“Let me lay it on you, Cleavie, the high spot in my day is taking knots out of shoestrings- with my teeth- that a kid has wet on all day long.” (p. 29)

“For a moment, there was only the silence of a toilet being show more flushed consecutively, two dogs chasing one another through the living room, a horn honking in the driveway, a telephone ringing insistently, a neighbor calling to her children, the theme of “Gilligan’s Island” blaring on the TV set, a competing stereo of John Denver, one child at my feet chewing a hole in the brown-sugar bag, and a loud voice from somewhere screaming, ‘I’m telling.’” (p. 94)

oh, can I ever relate. ;)

but in other ways, I’m too atypical to relate to her. it really hit home when she was parodying/conveying her desperate loneliness to her friend, who was sitting with her in the house having coffee, and she was constantly interrupted by friends calling her on the phone and showing up on her doorstep out of the blue. and I thought, wow, that is so not my life. that is so not my life that if I dreamt something like that at night, I’d frame it and put it on the wall as it would be the most unrealistic thing I’d dreamt all year, even compared to the dancing rhinoceroses.

it’s brilliant, mind you, but you have to be close enough to her experience for the humor to really shine through. and I never realized how different my personality was from Erma Bombeck’s. (I only read her all the time when I was growing up.) I’m just such an odd duck.

Still love her, though. show less

Erma's writing didn't stand the test of time. What I thought was hilarious back in the '70's seems trite and sexist to me today. She does, however, have a knack for seeing the absurd in daily life experience.

Just as many laughs as ever. Also she takes a good look at societies ills and odd points of view, many have yet to change, and many will bring more laughs as you think of how we still skate around the same issues on a day to day basis.

fun romp thru suburbia in the start of suburban development. She and her family but a house in the suburbs when it was still the wild frontier of a sort. She covers a number of things from the building of the house and all of the options that were add ons. Being a girl scout cookie mother and trying to get the cookies delivered. Getting her husband to take over the family trickster and she got his little sporty car to replace it. Getting a dog. A family camping trip in a camper. Most of the stories were short and the whole book is just a whole lot of fun. Interesting snap shot on how life used to be. Waiting for a long time to get landline service in their new home just being one example.

This was my first Bombeck read. I read it long before I ever started a family, but even so, I loved it enough to read everything I could get my hands on by her. She made my life appear sane.