Burb Appeal: A Collection of Humorous Essays [Kindle Edition]

Tina Traster (Author)

Book Description

Burb Appeal is a humorous collection of essays based on Tina Traster's newspaper columns about moving from the city to the suburbs. In these brief stories, Traster uses keen detail, humor and pathos to tell how she has embraced and navigated life in a rural suburb north of Manhattan. In these stories we meet nutty neighbors, bumbling town officials, new friends, a plethora of domestic and wild animals, and of course, her family.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Tina Traster is a New York Post columnist, Huffington Post blogger and essaying. Her work has appeared in magazines, newspapers, literary journals, online literary sites and on NPR. Traster lives with her husband, daughter, five cats, and six chickens in an old farmhouse in New York's Hudson Valley

Product Details

• File Size: 110 KB
• Print Length: 176 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1456310844
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Tina Traster (September 8, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0042G0SZA
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #710,943 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Both Hilarious and Insightful October 4, 2010

By DavidKope

Format:Kindle Edition

Tina Traster's perspective on life in the rural suburbs is both hilarious and insightful. Whether she's fighting town hall or teaching her daughter to raise chickens, Traster brings her city spirit to suburbia, and these essays are both a highly enjoyable user's guide for those who have left the city or are thinking about making the same transition.

One of the terrific things about these essays is that Traster doesn't present an idealized version of suburban bliss or a romanticized recollection of Manhattan life. Leaving behind the inconveniences of city living, Traster discovered that life in the burbs had its own travails with sometimes stubborn local bureaucrats, McMansion-loving neighbors and the seemingly endless snowstorms that require frequent plowing. But she also discovers the joys of a serene new life, far from the daily affronts of city living.

Traster doesn't so much shed her city skin, but rather adapts to a new one. She hasn't morphed into an unabashed lover of suburbia, she sees the beauty and the flaws. She's a writer whose sharp wit, controlled frustration and more than occasional joyfulness, gives an original perspective on a remarkable city to suburb transformation.

5.0 out of 5 stars An Original Voice September 30, 2010

By L. Carter

Format:Kindle Edition

So glad Tina has finally collected her NY Post columns in one place. Her thoughtfully crafted essays are smart, entertaining, occasionally snarky, and always insightful. Brava! -LC

5.0 out of 5 stars A Little Bit Country September 20, 2010

By Rosemary Swann

Format:Kindle Edition

Whether she's raising chickens or raising hell, Tina brings to life suburbia's disconnected denizens. The cast includes corrupt contractors, surly neighbors, and clueless bureaucrats. Even the town she lives in and the land she inhabits come to life as characters in an intricate web of personal adjustment and growth. Tina believes she is a city girl, but she finds peace and happiness in the suburbs -- not the "urban" suburbs around New York, but on a quiet, meandering mountain road 40 minutes from Manhattan.

This is the kind of book makes you sad when it ends because you want to keep reading. Fortunately, Tina's life continues in the pages of the New York Post, most Thursdays. Read all about it.

More About the Author

For twenty-five years, I wrote stories about other people and their lives. After I left my beloved city life in Manhattan and moved to a Hudson River town, my most interesting subject became me. Thus Burb Appeal - a little column about a hard-core urbanite embracing/navigating suburban life - was born in The New York Post. For five years, that column and other essays about my life have been my bread and butter. Burb Appeal, the collection, pulls this work together in one book.

My work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, literary journals, on NPR, The Huffington Post, House Magazine, Mamazina, The Nervous Breakdown, the Mom Egg and more. An essay about bonding with my adopted daughter is anthologized in two collections: Living Lessons from Whispering Angel Books and Mammas and Pappas from City Works Press.

When I'm not taking my temperature to see if a "column or essay" is coming on I can be found hiking, swimming, gardening, feeding my chickens or snapping photos.