How I Learned To Dislike Caps and Exclamation Points
I was so disappointed in this book. It could have been really great. I know this because I remember reading Heather Armstrong's blog and thinking how great of an author she would make. Instead of this book being amazing it's a perfect example of how not to translate a blog into a book. It made me want to go :"Never again. No one should ever attempt this again".
The problem with this book is not the story that's being told. The story is what kept me reading. Heather Armstrong suffers from chronic depression and when she was ready to have a baby she made a tough decision to go off of her medication. This is a decision that a lot of women who take medications for mental illneses have to face/make when they decide to have a baby. It's one that I'll have to make myself one day. You possibly have to be unmedicated for however long it takes to conceive, the nine months that you carry the baby, and if you decide to breastfeed then you go even longer with no meds, depending on how strong your medications are.
Armstrong's book is the first time I've read an account of what that experience is like, and she's very honest about the fact that it was hard and she pretty much hated being pregnant. And then there was the aftermath. She loves her husband and their new daughter, Leta, but everything else is bad news and she's going off the deep end fast and furious. The honesty with which she talks about this time in her life is refreshing and makes her very relateable. That's what kept me reading the book.
Why the two and a half stars? Because the writing style was atrocious. I felt as if her blog posts were taken straight from computer screen to page with no editing. There is a big difference between sitting and reading a blog post or two and reading a whole book. For the few minutes it takes to read a blog daily, the reader can forgive a lot of things. Excessive use of all caps, excessive use of exclamation points, so many italics, things like that. I felt as if Armstrong was constantly screaming at me from the pages. Instead of using the experiences and word choices to bring across what she thought needed emphasis, Armstrong uses capital letters. A lot of capital letters, and exclamation points. It's lazy writing and it got old really quickly. It wasn't a smooth reading experience at all and that's a pretty important thing when reading a book. Too bad because the story is one I think women should read.
