2.5/5 Stars
What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding was the first book that I read knowing I was going to be reviewing it. That’s because I received the book free from Bloggingforbooks.com in exchange for a review on this site. I’d been dying to read the book ever since I saw the blurbs on the back cover from comedy giants like Rachel Dratch, Will Forte, DiabloCody, and Jane Lynch (I’m a huge comedy nerd and watch SNL religiously). Also, as someone who was editor-in-chief of her high school newspaper, I’m a little obsessed with typography, and let me tell you they picked a killer retro-looking font and cover design. Case in point ——>
The book promised everything that I love: romance, travel, adventure, and single girl empowerment. I struggled with how to rate this book, because there were moments of clarity while reading, and I’ll discuss those too, but ultimately I was disappointed. The book earned a 2.5/5 rating for me. On Goodreads I rounded up to a 3, because I felt it was closer to a 3 than a 2, but since this is my website and I can do what I want I’m going to enact half points.
What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding is about thirty-something sitcom writer Kristin Newman’s travels around the world while she tries to prove she’s having more fun than her procreating friends, avoid thinking about why she can’t commit to guys, and maybe even find love herself. Some of her travels include Russia, New Zealand, Iceland, Brazil, Australia, and her self-proclaimed favorite Argentina.
I was looking forward to this book coming in the mail for weeks, because I love travel romances. I think there’s a bond people form while traveling, spending 24/7 together, that creates interesting relationships. On the travel side of things, I thought that Newman’s writing really did transport me to the places she was talking about, especially her salvaged trip in Patagonia. All the characters she encountered on that trip felt real, and as someone who also travels a lot, I understood the travel misfortunes she had. I think everyone can relate to getting lost or losing their baggage or getting food poisoning.
My favorite part of the book was how she described a good traveler, and how good travelers will roll with these punches. Some of her other “holy grail” rules were: Be open and say yes to whatever comes your way, Be easy-going about sleeping/eating/comfort issues, Be aware of cultural differences, etc. For the most part, I thought she lived up to her own rules, and in that way dodged being seen as a false authority on traveling. She did put her money where her mouth was.
These were the things I liked about the book and earned it its stars…but for every aspect I liked I found 3 that I didn’t like. Most of these I think stem from the fact that I didn’t like Kristin Newman as a character. I’m sure she’s a lovely person off the page, but I suspect that in an effort to self-deprecate she made herself unlikeable by going too far in the other direction. Most of my struggles with her boil down to three things: her ungratefulness for her obviously blessed life, her bragging, and her attitude towards her friends with children and husbands.
To address the first issue, I felt that this book read like Eat, Pray, Love. Confession, I didn’t actually read the book. I saw/struggled with the movie, but my mom said that she had a similar problem with Elizabeth Gilbert. Here is this woman who has an amazing job (sitcom writer—basically my dream job), tons of great guys going after her (literally she cycles through 3 guys in two chapters), and money to travel the world. Yet she complained about something things that I think her readers very much would want, mostly a serious relationship. Her constant complaints of devoted boyfriends could be annoyingly thickheaded. What’s crazy is that at one point she also compares herself to Gilbert, makes the same observation, and continues to complain about her life:
“I read ‘Eat Pray Love,’ which caused me intense stress due to how much I both hated the narrator for her self-involved, self-inflicted misery in the middle of a pretty amazing life, and deeply related to her, due to my tendency to be self-involved and inflict misery on myself in the middle of a pretty amazing life.”
My other problem with the book, which is honestly my biggest problem, is that the whole book felt like one giant brag. Sometimes she would just describe a certain scene or awesome excursion, and there would be no point to it except to, I can imagine, make everyone who has kids jealous that they couldn’t do what she was doing, which I think helped justify her own choices to her. She never seemed secure in her choice to remain relationship and child-free. Even the title of the book sounds slightly passive aggressive in the way that she needs to use the word “breeding” to make the alternative to her promiscuous travels sound even worse.
I could be wrong about my judgments of her motives, but it felt that every time she overly described a tryst with a hot Brazilian guy or a crazy party like she was trying to say Hey, I’m happier than you are! And at the end of the book, I just didn’t know what I was supposed to get from it. Was I supposed to learn to not be afraid to be single? To not be afraid to settle down? I think I didn’t have these answers because Newman didn’t have these answers herself. I don’t think she was far enough removed from the more recent events of the book to write about them with much insight. All her musings just seemed to dance along the superficial.
Her attitude towards these friends with children and husbands was uncomfortable to me. On her second trip to Argentina when she leaves her friend who is sick and dealing with the struggles of a drug-addict husband to go to a bar and ensure that her trip is a fun-packed as possible, I cringed. I think most readers will cringe, and I know that Newman recognizes as narrator that she shouldn’t have done that, but it still makes me wonder how much I can learn from this story.
Sure, Newman is funny with one-liners like “We held each other tightly. I sang him ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane,’ and didn’t feel embarrassed like I absolutely should have.” But I kept wondering what I was supposed to learn. Because having an interesting life isn’t reason enough in my opinion to write a memoir, it must have insight. She did have a little towards the end with the death of her stepmother and with her travel advice. The one thing that really stuck once I put the book down was the idea of expanding your comfort zone in the name of adventure.
“Finally on one vacation, my mom asked me if I’d rather have a vacation with no friends, or one scary moment […]one scary moment became something I was always willing to have in exchange.”
However, I wish she had waited longer to write her memoir, because I think she would have had more to say about her travels in the way of personal growth.
Overall, though, it kept me interested enough to read it in a few days. It did open my mind to places I’ve never been, so for that I think it’s worthy of a 2.5/5 rating. It was like cotton candy. Fun, sweet, quirky, but at the end of the day unfulfilling. Before you commit to reading the whole thing, if you’re not sure if you’d like it you can read the first chapter here. To read more about Kristin Newman read her bio, or stalk her twitter. I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.