Customer Reviews

The Sound of One Thigh Clapping: Haiku for a Thinner You

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the most clever send-up of our obsession with weight and beauty to come along in a long, long time -- and she misses not a single diet, food item, or weight loss method! It's laugh-out-loud hilarious! Weight Watchers, Scarsdale Diet, Grapefruits, Diet Pills, Gastric Bypass -- they're all in there. What makes it even more brilliant? The haikus were actually written in the tradition of Basho. These are real haikus, not knock-knock jokes broken down into a 5-7-5 meter. And the cleverness of measurement of verse is especially cool considering the theme of the book -- counting points, counting calories, counting pounds. All in all, a perfectly executed piece of writing, and a perfect gift for anyone and everyone.

Author Meredith Clair tried every fad diet and failed. Then she joined the Weight Watchers class run by Ertha, who ran the class like a Zen master and provided "thinspirations" that seemed to work. According to Ertha, dieting is about suffering and sacrifice, and the four enemies of diet success are temptation, sloth, jealousy, and weakness. So Clair decided to distill this diet wisdom, along with a lifetime of dieting experience, into haiku verse.

I would categorize this book as a humor book rather than a diet book since there is not a lot of advice on dieting how-to. The haiku itself does not flow very well compared to "Honku: the Zen Antidote to Road Rage" or other similar titles. That is why I did not give the book more stars than I did. However, it does touch upon every fad diet and frustration the typical dieter encounters, and it is quite funny. Here are some examples:

On temptation: Chocolate passes/too quickly over the tongue/preferring the hips.
On sloth: Training wheels, training/bras, and personal trainers./The Cycle of Life.
On weakness: Tasty pink grapefruit - /significantly less so/after the eighth day.
On jealousy: Consider Helen/whose face launched all that trouble./Better to be plain.
On resignation: We shall overcome./If we don't, there are always/elastic waistbands.

If you have ever struggled with losing weight, you will find lots of laughs here.

Why would anyone interpret this book as a how-to, when it is so clearly a humor book? Oy vey! This is the funniest book I've read in a long time. It's about time someone sent up dieting culture. If I read one more how-to diet book, I'm gonna barf!

This is so funny you'll want to keep flipping through to find more quips. It's a must have stocking stuffer. whether you're "stuffed" or not.

This is a fun little book. If you've ever been on the weight-loss rollercoaster you'll be able to relate to alot of the funny haikus.