Love, Mom: Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages from Home [Hardcover]

Doree Shafrir (Author), Jessica Grose (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 24, 2009

MY MOTHER SENDS ME EMAILS IN ALL CAPS SO IT ALWAYS SEEMS LIKE SHE IS YELLING. SO IN HER STYLE I WILL SAY, I LOVE THIS BOOK!!!!!
-Margaret Cho

Love, Mom is a hilarious look at what happens when interfering, maddening, kvetching, querying, and loving moms push the `send' button. This is a great book for anyone who ever looked at her email inbox and said, `Oh, no--it's from my mom.'
-Amy Dickinson, author of The Mighty Queens of Freeville, "Ask Amy" syndicated advice columnist, and NPR contributor

This book is hilarious and smart--a wittily organized collection that proves, without a doubt, that our moms are humankind's most natural comedians.
-Mike Albo, author of Hornito and The Underminer

I'm much older than my computer--are you suggesting that the older something is, the more uselss it becomes Because that's what I'm hearing (although I'm not hearing it very well.....)
Love,
your old mom

Yes, I am a pest, but I just looked at Iowa weather and it will be 5 below Tuesday night. Hope you have a hat with ears. Love you, Mom

Sweet, funny, endearing, slightly technologically inept, and always just a little nagging, emails from mothers to their adult children are much more fun to read when it's somebody else's mother. PostcardsFromYoMomma.com is proof of that--when it launched, this repository of reader-submitted missives from Mom received more than 100,000 unique visitors in just the first two weeks. In Love, Mom, editors Doree Shafrir and Jessica Grose have assembled more than two hundred of the best never-before-seen submissions.

From school, sex, technology, and appearance to health, work, holidays, and food--and complete with a selection of celebrity emails (including Oscar-winner Diablo Cody's mom on her daughter's "blob"), and sidebars throughout--Love, Mom is ultimately a reflection on how our moms are always our moms . . . no matter how the message is sent.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion (March 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401323421
• ISBN-13: 978-1401323424
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,047,928 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Doree Shafrir is a writer for the New York Observer and a former editor at Gawker. Jessica Grose

is Managing Editor for Double X, Slate's site for women and was formerly an editor at Jezebel.com. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times and Salon.com, among other places.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion (March 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401323421
• ISBN-13: 978-1401323424
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,047,928 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a writer and editor. My essays and reported features have appeared in the New York Times, New York, Bloomberg Businessweek, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Slate and many other publications. I was formerly a senior editor at Slate and an editor at Jezebel. I live in Brooklyn with my husband and daughter and my permanent fascinations include true crime, powerful ladies, and bears.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious! May 4, 2009

By NiteOOwl

Format:Hardcover

This was a gift from one of my grown daughters, and how appropriate! Emails have become the primary form of communication today for a lot of us since most people have become so busy with family, career, and are always on the go; there's not always time for a catching-up telephone call. Some of these are sweet, some make absolutely no sense, some give advice or note the goings-on of the day, and others are just, well, emails.

Be sure to buy the hardcover instead of the Kindle edition. The quality of the paper, 6" x 7" size, and different fonts make it a very special eye-catching book, suitable for a coffee or end table for just picking up and browsing.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Sweet, Funny, and Universal Notes from All Kinds of Moms March 30, 2009

By Rachel Kramer Bussel VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Reading these emails is somewhat like taking a tour through "cyberspace," circa the 1990's. In many of these notes, moms make goofy allusions to various forms of technology. In others, they find new and invasive ways of keeping up with their children. Some are very short and sweet, and others reveal things that moms might not be able to share with their adult kids in any other form. It's a perfect gift for a mom (or grandmother, even), but what's genius about it is that even the most tech-savvy blogger type will also get a chuckle or five out of these motherly mash notes. You're very likely to recognize your own mom in these emails...or be grateful you were spared some of these probing "I've been reading your blog" type notes.

Fans of Postcards from Yo Mamma and new readers will enjoy this; seeing all the entries together is a reminder that checking up on one's kids is pretty universal, as is mothers not letting propriety or anything else stop them from having their say.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Moms love it June 26, 2009

By Heather Lefebvre

Format:Hardcover

I bought this book as a Mother's Day present. My mom had never heard of it -- like many of the mothers in this book, she is not too hip to the Internet (outside of YouTube and checking her email that is) -- but she loves it now. I can tell because she keeps laughing aloud as she reads and saying, "See, it's not just me!" She thinks it's hysterical, but at the same time the nature of the book, that it looks into other people's relationships with their mother, gives her a new advantage whenever we argue. She can point to the book and say, "I'm not that bad!"

The gist: if you have a mother, or mother figure, buy this book. Unless you're quite argumentative and don't want to lose, that is.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved "Love, Mom." June 8, 2009

By Russell S. Moore

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I loved this little collection of email exchanges between mothers and their kids (mostly daughters). They're funny, poignant, or sometimes even harsh, never contrived but always an honest expression of their relationships.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Meh. June 3, 2009

By kirabug

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

There's nothing negative about the book, just... well... it's not all that good either.

This book reminds me of a "blockbuster" movie. You know those movies you go to see where they put all the good parts in the ads, and then the rest of it feels like filler? That's a good description for this book. Most of the funniest bits are quoted verbatim in the introduction for each chapter, and then restated later in the chapter. The rest is sweet but unfulfilling, like too much diet soda.

Need to shut your brain off totally? This will do. Want to belly laugh? It might happen once. The rest of the book would make a good addition to your dentist's waiting room.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Poinant and Brilliant,no. Goofy and Universal,Yes May 18, 2010

By Reading in Boston

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I actually gave this book to my two early forties offspring, one male and one female, on Mother's Day as I thought it would be enjoyable for them to reflect upon the universality of its content. They LOVED it! As for myself as a much older parent than what seems to be the ages of most who were "quoted", I could have done without some of the verbiage. Would I recommend it? Most definitly. It is a fun read and rings quite true for the most part.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I AM my mother! July 4, 2009

By J. Terstriep

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Oh my gosh! It's been a long time since I laughed so hard at a book I was reading! This brought tears to my eyes. These ALL could have been written by my mother and I'm just glad to know I'm normal!

Any daughter has GOT to read this one. Pass it along to your friends. Give it to a mother for Mother's Day! Give it to your best friend whose daughter is leaving for college.....

Very, very funny!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny and relatable May 8, 2009

By N. Dykstra

Format:Hardcover

I bought this for my mom for Mother's Day and couldn't help myself - I read it before mailing it to her. I'm a longtime fan of Postcards, but I knew the best way to share the hilarity with my technically-impaired mom was to get her the book.

It's a sweet, funny, wholesome book that gently and playfully celebrates mothers of adults and shares their motherly wisdom through developing technology. More than once, while reading it, I thought to myself, 'that's my mom!' I laughed through the whole thing and can't wait for my mom to read it, too.