You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl: Observations on Life from the Shallow End of the Pool [Paperback]

Celia Rivenbark (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 16, 2011

From the bestselling, award-winning author of You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start In The Morning, comes another collection of hilarious observations that will resonate with women, mothers, and girlfriends everywhere  

In her newest wickedly irreverent humor collection, Celia Rivenbark cracks up while getting her downward facing dog on, pines for a world in which every mom gets to behave like Betty Draper and wonders why everybody's so excited about the Science Fair when there aren't even any rides. In it you’ll find essays on such topics as:

• Menopause Spurs Thoughts of Death and Turkey
• I Dreamed a Dream That My Lashes Were Long
• Twitter Woes: I’ve Got Plenty of Characters, Just No Character
• Movie To-Do List: Cook Like Julia, Adopt Really Big Kid
• Charlie Bit Your Finger? Good!  And other thoughts on the virus that is YouTube

And much more!  For any woman who longs for the good old days when Jane Fonda in legwarmers was the only one who saw you exercise, YOU DON’T SWEAT MUCH FOR A FAT GIRL is comfort food in book form. 

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[Rivenbark]'s as rebellious, irreverent, and comical as ever."

--Publishers Weekly

 

"...a rip-roaring read.... What makes Rivenbark’s writing so entertaining is that it’s a lot like seeing a stand-up comedy act: she does an uncanny job of keeping the flow of comedy fresh."

--Book Reporter

About the Author

Celia Rivenbark is the author of the award-winning bestsellers Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank; Bless Your Heart, Tramp; Belle Weather; and You Can’t Drink All Day If You Don’t Start in the Morning. We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier won a Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Book Award for nonfiction and was a finalist for the James Thurber Prize for American Humor. Born and raised in Duplin County, North Carolina, Rivenbark grew up in a small house “with a red barn out back that was populated by a couple of dozen lanky and unvaccinated cats.” She started out writing for her hometown paper. She writes a weekly, nationally syndicated humor column for the Myrtle Beach Sun News. She lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; Original edition (August 16, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312614209
• ISBN-13: 978-0312614201
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #267,686 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Celia Rivenbark was born and raised in Duplin County, NC, which had the distinction of being the nation's number 1 producer of hogs and turkeys during a brief, magical moment in the early 1980s.

Celia grew up in a small house in the country with a red barn out back that was populated by a couple of dozen lanky and unvaccinated cats. Her grandparents' house, just across the ditch, had the first indoor plumbing in Teachey, NC and family lore swears that people came from miles around just to watch the toilet flush.

Despite this proud plumbing tradition, Celia grew up without a washer and dryer. On every Sunday afternoon of her childhood, while her mama rested up from preparing a fried chicken and sweet potato casserole lunch, she, her sister and her daddy rode to the laundromat two miles away to do the weekly wash.

It was at this laundromat, where a carefully lettered sign reminded customers that management was "NOT RESONSIBLE" for lost items, that Celia shirked "resonsibility" her own self and snuck away to read the big, fat Sunday News & Observer out of Raleigh, NC. By age 7, she'd decided to be a newspaper reporter.

Late nights, she'd listen to the feed trucks rattle by on the highway and she'd go to sleep wondering what exotic cities those noisy trucks would be in by morning (Richmond? Atlanta? Charlotte?) Their headlights crawling across the walls of her little pink bedroom at the edge of a soybean field were like constellations pointing the way to a bigger life, a better place, a place where there wasn't so much turkey shit everywhere.

After a couple of years of college, Celia went to work for her hometown paper, the Wallace, NC Enterprise. The locals loved to say, as they renewed their "perscriptions," that "you can eat a pot of rice and read the Enterprise and go to bed with nothing on your stomach and nothing on your mind."

Mebbe. But Celia loved the Enterprise. Where else could you cover a dead body being hauled out of the river (alcohol was once again a contributing factor) in the morning and then write up weddings in the afternoon?

After eight years, however, taking front-page photos of the publisher shaking hands with other fez-wearing Shriners and tomatoes shaped like male "ginny-talia" was losing its appeal.

Celia went to work for the Wilmington, NC Morning Star after a savvy features editor was charmed by a lead paragraph in an Enterprise story about the rare birth of a mule: "Her mother was a nag and her father was a jackass."

The Morning Star was no News and Observer but it came out every day and Celia got to write weddings for 55,000 readers instead of 3,500, plus she got a paycheck every two weeks with that nifty New York Times logo on it.

After an unfortunate stint as a copy editor--her a*s expanded to a good six ax handles across--Celia started writing a weekly humor column that fulfilled her lifelong dream of being paid to be a smart a*s. Along the way, she won a bunch of press awards, including a national health journalism award--hilarious when you consider she's never met a steamed vegetable she could keep down.

Having met and married a cute guy in sports, Celia found herself happily knocked up at age 40 and, after 21 years, she quit newspapering to stay home with her new baby girl.

After a year or so, she started using Sophie's two-hour naps to write a humor column from the mommie front lines for the Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The column continues to run weekly and is syndicated by the McClatchy-Tribune News Services.

In 2000, Coastal Carolina Press published a collection of Celia's columns. A Southeast Book Sellers Association best-seller, Bless Your Heart, Tramp was nominated for the James Thurber Prize in 2001. David Sedaris won. He wins everything.

Her second book, We're Just Like You, Only Prettier, published by St. Martin's Press, was the winner of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Nonfiction Book of the Year and was a finalist for the James Thurber Prize for American Humor. Jon Stewart won. He and David Sedaris probably went out drinking afterwards. I'm sorry, did that sound bitter?

Celia lives in Wilmington, NC, with her husband, Scott, Director of Government Relations for New Hanover Health Network and author of the true-crime bestseller, Innocent Victims. Their daughter, Sophie, attends elementary school where she grudgingly wears a very uncool uniform. When she isn't writing books, magazine articles or speeches, Celia enjoys watching old episodes of "The Gilmore Girls" while eating anything from Taco Bell.

She reports that the proudest day of her life was the one in which the Sears truck showed up to deliver a matching washer and dryer and neither one of 'em had to go on the front porch.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars More Southern Sass from Celia August 5, 2011

By Sharon E. Cathcart VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

This is the fourth of Celia Rivenbark's books that I have read; suffice it to say that I'm a fan.

Rivenbark takes no prisoners with her witty essays on topics ranging from Twitter to elementary school science fairs and the cultures associated with them. She pokes fun at Southern culture, sexual addiction and politics as well. Some of the essays are laugh-out-loud funny, some of them are snarky and some of them are thought-provoking. Many of them are all three. She even takes on her family, with adventures featuring Duh-Hubby and Princess-Daughter. (And yes, she shares family secret recipes. Really.)

If you like columnists in the vein of Dave Barry, Rivenbark's work is for you.

(Review based on uncorrected advance proof.)

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Just so-so August 22, 2011

By J. Kollasch VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

This is the first book I've read by Celia Rivenbark and while I really wanted to like it the humor just fell a bit short for me. Not having a husband or children and not being from the South may have been part of the reason why, but overall I just didn't have any of the moments of laughing out loud that other readers did. After reading the multitude of great reviews I thought that I would be unable to put this book down but that wasn't the case. It just came off as one long rant about fiber, Snuggies, Twitter etc. After awhile I just got sick of it, I can only assume this is written for a more settled, older audience, because I just didn't find it funny at all. I'll maybe try one of her earlier books but if you're a twenty something you might want to look at something else like Laurie Notaro's Idiot Girls Action Adventure Club.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Hmmmm.... August 21, 2011

By janjanmom VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Okay, first I have to tell you that I love snark and sarcasm. Also, while I don't use bad words very often, I do think there are times when they punctuate a story like no other word can. So with those two things said, I cannot like this book. I can tell what the author is going for, I just think it is a fail. The poor word choices combined with bad snarky supposed-to-be-funny-but-instead-falls-flat humor makes for a book I have had to suffer through slowly one chapter at a time. I did not want to read more than a chapter even once. I suppose there is an audience for this book...perhaps if one uses foul language all the time, this book would just be unfunny and hard to read...which might appeal to someone, maybe?? However, the title did make me laugh out loud...so I guess the author is capable of being a bit funny every once in a while, yes?