Rating: 
Summary: Down-to-Earth and Hilarious
Review: This book was given to me as a gift. My first-born (daughter) was about 2 years old at the time. I absolutely LOVED it!Anne's honesty is refreshing. She also has a warmth and sense of humour that leaps off every page. While reading the book, I almost felt like I was talking to an old friend. It gave me a comforting feeling to hear what was going on each day in her life. I couldn't wait to find out what her son, Sam, was up to. I wish she would write a follow-up to this book, so I could know what Sam is doing these days! I read this book 12 years later when my second born (son) was born. I enjoyed it even more the second time around!
Rating:
Summary: Dirty Little Secret
Review: As the mother of two young children, I found this book hilarious, refreshing and made me feel "normal". My firstborn son had colic and rarely slept. I found out that the true amount of hard work and sleep you get when you have a baby like this is astonishing. It seems like it was women's greatest secret and they don't let you in on it until you are actually a mother. It was so comforting to read about someone going through the same feelings of "I can't do this" as I was at the time. More comforting was that she obviously lived to tell the tale. This book isn't for everyone, if you don't have a great sense of humor and can't laugh at yourself and the curves life throw you, you'd probably best stick with the "What to Expect" series. I found this book a must read!
Rating: 
Summary: Great book, but...
Review: This is a quick and easy read, and if you have an infant or young child, that is the only kind of book you can read!! Anne Lamott has a great sense of humor and is able to vocalize the feelings that a great deal of new parents have but are too ashamed to talk about. The only problem with this book is that there is a tremendous amount of talk about Jesus and tons of Republican-bashing, which can get irritating if you are not a Christian liberal, as Anne Lamott so clearly is! If these things don't bother you, then you will love this book.
Rating:
Summary: An entertaining little read
Review: It goes by quickly. Some entries are little more than a couple of sentences, some are soul-searching, ponderous essays. LaMott's writing is amusing, serious, sad, and insightful. She's lucky to have a close-knit group of supportive friends who often bring her food and watch her baby.
Rating:
Summary: There is no book I've given as a gift more often than this.
Review: I was skimming the reviews here on www.Amazon.com and want to add another voice to the stream. I first read this as the divorced father of a young son. I reread it this year with a new daughter and a wonderful wife in my life. It moved me in both circumstances. I have given this to mothers - married and single, straight and gay - and to fathers. It is a marvelous book about babies (Sam is one very interesting baby, but aren't they all), parenting, friends, joy, sorrow, gifts and losses. One thing that struck me reading the reviews is the occasional chiding of Lamott for not writing the book the reviewer wanted her to write. She wrote the book she wanted to write and many of us are thankful for her voice, her perspective, and her "truth."
Rating:
Summary: beautiful, perfect
Review: I will keep this short. I think I bought every book related to motherhood thats out there whilst on my six months of bedrest carrying twins. You can take the twins, but you can't not ever take this book away from me. It is beatiful, perfect. Off beat, funny, heartbreaking, so bloody true! I'm an atheist who likes her wine, but Anne might change me even on that.
Rating: 
Summary: Single Motherhood, No Chaser
Review: There have been few books, I'm sure, that I can remember mustering more anticipation for as Anne Lamott's 'Operating Instructions.' I adored her advice-to-the-writer tome 'Bird By Bird' (...) and could barely conceal my glee upon learning that this woman had written "a journal of my son's first year." Should be hilarious, poignant, ... bringing all that sagacity betrayed in writing advice to the emotionally-wrenching task of being a new parent. Well, no. A fine writer she certainly is--but when it comes to writing about her own parenthood at least, Ms. Lamott betrays no small amount of vitriol. Anger and bitterness at (take your pick)--the unmarrying deadbeat father, God, wealthy strangers who ask impertinent questions ("who's the father?"), Republicans--flood these pages. I found all this anger around the subject of a newborn more than a little unnerving. ("I'm teaching Sam to hate George Bush.") All this emotional poison is pitiful, since--when she stays focused on the kid--Lamott remains hilarious. Whether enduring the trials of breast feeding ("He was extremely hungry earlier, lunging for my breast like Ray Milland"), diaper-changing ("Steve watched Sam pee, then put his hands on his hips and said rather fiercely 'You should make him drink it!'"), or just hanging out ("It used to be I overate when I was bored, now I get to overfeed the baby") she writes with an honesty and humor that's all her own. But unfortunately Ms. Lamott doesn't write enough about her son. The series of (admittedly funny) he-did-this-today stories hardly disguise that the main focus here is on her. This navel-gazing isn't all bad--the book claims to be a journal, after all, not a baby book--but some of the tributaries (political rants, friend's sicknesses) seem scarcely related to child-raising. By the end of the book her son seems a bit of an afterthought. Ultimately, Ms. Lamott betrays her writing-and journaling-strength in details. This skill works to her advantage describing everyday life with a baby--and when she sticks to that, I'm entertained if not enthralled. But when writing about herself--even relative to her son--the author veers out into (to me) frightening generalities. She clearly loves her child and wants the best for him. But based on this book (written some 15 years ago), I'd hope she has subsequently dealt with her hate and anger--especially around being a single mother. Or at least not felt inclined to share it with the rest of us in such an unexamined fashion.
Rating:
Summary: The Wonderful Madness of Motherhood
Review: I have long been a fan of Anne Lamott's work and I have been a mom even longer than that... and so I opened the cover of this book pregnant with expectations. Lamott came through again. My own brood has flown the nest by now, that first incredible year is but a memory... but oh, forever a vivid and undiminished one. I found mirror pieces throughout her account as I recalled those nights of unutterable exhaustion, those days smeared with baby food spatterings, charged with squeals and squalls, and my own speech turned to a weird kind of baby babble. More, I remembered searingly those moments of holding my own, holding them so that no whirlwind or storm might have torn them from my arms, breathing in the sweet fragrance of their baby skin, knowing for the first time in my previously self-centered life... I would die for these little beings. Gladly. Lamott captures uniquely all of these motherly emotions and experiences, the good and the uproariously less saner ones. She nails down perfectly the doubts and the frustrations and the madness and the sheer amazement of it all. "It's mind-boggling that my body knows how to churn out this milk that he is growing on. The thought of what my body would produce if my mind had anything to do with it gives me the chill. It's just too horrible to think about. It might be something frogs could spawn in, but it wouldn't be good for anything else. I've had the secret fear of all mothers that my milk is not good enough, that it is nothing more than sock water, water that socks have been soaking in, but Sam seems to be thriving even though he's a pretty skinny little guy. I'm going to have an awards banquet for my body when all of this is over." Lamott's talent is to take the everyday and wrap it in a self-effacing humor that is refreshingly real. Mostly, I enjoyed this, if indeed didn't laugh out loud at it. But there were also a few reading moments... when I didn't care for the distraction of hearing about her boyfriend woes, or when her past substance abuse unnerved me... or that I didn't particularly want to read a treatise on politics (even if often I found myself in agreement with hers). Perhaps even the account of her best friend's battle with cancer seemed to belong in a book of its own and not necessarily in this one. I suppose it can be argued, however, that life is rarely, if ever, so neat. Messes coincide. Mothers are also women with boyfriends. And politics affect us all. This is not my favorite Lamott book, but it is trademark Lamott nonetheless. Not to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: Just what I needed!
Review: My son had colic and had it badly. There were days I would just sit and cry along with him. A fellow mom and friend of mine loaned me this book to read. I LOVED this book. Anne Lamott's writing style was wonderful and refreshing to me. I cried and I laughed at the same time. It felt like many times exactly what I'd been feeling and thinking was said in a courageously honest format. Thank you Ms. Lamott for giving such a gift. It was a cleansing experience for me to read your book in a difficult time. I highly recommend this book for any mom going through a rough time with a colicky baby. I needed an understanding heart and not a " how to" manual at this time in my life and I found it in the pages of this book.
Rating:
Summary: painfully honest
Review: This book tells it like it is: the joys and the sorrows of a woman's struggle to raise a baby on her own, all the while dealing with her own problems, like staying sober and fighting down pangs of loneliness. It's easy to be moved to tears as she chronicles a father denying paternity, a close friend's death, and the frustrations of a colicky baby. But she never loses her sense of humor and her keen observations are a welcome respite from so many memoirs which are all sweetness and light.
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