Rating: 
Summary: Laugh Out Loud Funny and Insightful
Review: I came across Stockler's humor pieces in Esquire and The National Review Online and think he's a great new humorist. I decided to buy the book for my wife and ended up reading it myself. I generally read literary fiction and history, but I found this book really gratifying. The cover makes it look like another dumb parenting book (but I guess it appeals to women), but it's really a deceptively complex memoir about life -- marriage, work, how we see ourselves as men. I found the author's take on marriage refreshingly honest -- and his observations about his children both insightful and framed in a larger context. This book isn't for everybody -- if you're looking for a Paul Reiser Dave Barry type read, this is not it. Stockler writes at a much higher level, but I don't think some people are going to "get it." A very rewarding book for the intelligent reader.
Rating:
Summary: Kudos from sleep deprived mom
Review: I didn't have triplets, but I did survive colic. I was so relieved that someone out there was more sleep deprived than I was, that I told everyone about this book. Even if you have just one baby at a time, read "I Sleep at Red Lights" for a funny, honest look at the first years of parenthood.
Rating:
Summary: All Men Are Not Created Equal
Review: I heard the author on public radio, talking about his crazy marriage and his book, and so I just bought it. It's a riot! I've never read anything by a man that's at once so funny and observant, but also so touching, emotionally revealing and meaningful. The best part is his brutal honesty--while still being funny--about how difficult marriage is. It's about being a man, being married to a man, juggling marriage and kids--and the chapters on taking his kids to the ladies' room and the supermarkets are classics. My only complaint is--no pictures! Except for the author--and the bags under his eyes tell me this is DEFINITELY a true story.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Surprising Memoir
Review: I read one of the author's Op Ed pieces, saw the title of the book, and decided to give it a try. This book was the most wonderful surprise, as fresh as a smack across the face, as funny as Jon Stewart on a roll, as honest as a Norah Jones song. The author's relationship with his wife is rendered with amazing depth and complexity, but it's his pulsating awareness of how important his children are and how blessed every day is that makes the book such a joy to read. The only negative is the cover, which makes it look like one of those ooey-gooey baby books I never read. You should definitely give it a read.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious, Tender, Insightful--A Very Special Book
Review: I really love this book. It's unique and "special" the way certain books are in your life--remember how "Zen & The Art of Motorcyle Maintenance" made you feel? Or "The World According to Garp?" This isn't as literary as "Zen," but it is extremely well-written. It also manages to be one of the most insightful and honest books I've ever read on marriage, being a parent, facing career choices and financial decisions--how all the complexities of life come together. (Ladies, it's also a rare insight into how men think. My husband's already getting aggravated hearing about it!) It's sneaky how the author makes the book seem like a comic adventue story, kind of a Please Don't Meet the Daises on speed--there's a lot going on, and the author keeps the book moving briskly, which I admire--but the moments of introspection, when he examines how is life is changing and how he is changing, are incredbly thoughtful. The book is rarely sentimental, but poignant about what matters most in life. The way he writes about his four children is so keenly observed, you don't notice he's really writing about our whole American life. What he's saying is, you don't have unlimited choices and time in life, and by learning how to shift your priorities--both in your head and outside yourself--you really grow. You can read this as a funny and smart beach book or look between the lines for the very hard-earned wisdom. I laughed and I cried--this is a book about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances rendered with really evocative and passionate power. Buy one for your parents and your best friend and your book club.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious, Tender, Insightful--A Very Special Book
Review: I really love this book. It's unique and "special" the way certain books are in your life--remember how "Zen & The Art of Motorcyle Maintenance" made you feel? Or "The World According to Garp?" This isn't as literary as "Zen," but it is extremely well-written. It also manages to be one of the most insightful and honest books I've ever read on marriage, being a parent, facing career choices and financial decisions--how all the complexities of life come together. (Ladies, it's also a rare insight into how men think. My husband's already getting aggravated hearing about it!) It's sneaky how the author makes the book seem like a comic adventue story, kind of a Please Don't Meet the Daises on speed--there's a lot going on, and the author keeps the book moving briskly, which I admire--but the moments of introspection, when he examines how is life is changing and how he is changing, are incredbly thoughtful. The book is rarely sentimental, but poignant about what matters most in life. The way he writes about his four children is so keenly observed, you don't notice he's really writing about our whole American life. What he's saying is, you don't have unlimited choices and time in life, and by learning how to shift your priorities--both in your head and outside yourself--you really grow. You can read this as a funny and smart beach book or look between the lines for the very hard-earned wisdom. I laughed and I cried--this is a book about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances rendered with really evocative and passionate power. Buy one for your parents and your best friend and your book club.
Rating:
Summary: Reading Group on Family/Marriage 2003
Review: I Sleep At Red Lights is one of those small, wonderful books that you give to your best friend. That's why my best friend did to me. I fell in love with it and immediately gave it to my book club. We read it together with "AGAINST LOVE: A Polemic," By Laura Kipnis, and together the two books provide an amazing look inside marriage and family. Stockler's book is an unusually honest and provacative account of a role-reversal marriage in which he is the emotional backbone and his wife the provider. It's also a wonderful love poem not only to his children but from all fathers to all children. Kipnis's book is more academic but equally humorous, a scathing and profound attack on the obsolescent institution of marriage, but written from the outside. The difficulties in Stockler's marriage can be partially explained by Kipnis's analysis--both Stockler and his wife find themselves trapped in roles, even though they are reversed--and yet the humor and resiliency in Stockler's book clearly shows how one true life example can confound even the most intuitive, carefully-researched critique. Stockler's marriage shouldn't work, but it does. That doesn't detract from Kipnis's book; in fact, she would probably appreciate the quirky way the Stockler family adapts. Together, these two books make an irresistible reading group package that will keep you talking for weeks.
Rating: 
Summary: I was disappointed
Review: I was sorry I spent money on this book. It wasn't what I expected, and I wasn't entertained or enlightened. All in all, a big waste of money.
Rating:
Summary: Action Adventure Love Story
Review: I'm a single woman with no children and could not be induced to read a book on "parenting" if it were the last tome left on a scorched earth after the last book-barbecue. Luckily that's not what this is. It is a love story told at an action-adventure pace about what happens to a relationship when two strong-willed personalities are faced with a spectacularly successful IVF attempt.Does everything end happily ever after? Hell no, there's a lot of headbutting and that 's what you've got to love about this book, Stockler is disarmingly honest about marital dynamics post delivery, about his neuroses and hers. These are two very strong characters who can really duke out those issues about the expectations of what "Mommy" does and what "Daddy" does that lurk right below the covers of most marriage of this generation with kids. The kids are characters and Stockler's descriptions of their
oddyssies through supermarkets and, in one of the funniest scenes from a memoir in modern memory, when Stockler takes the triplets and their slightly older brother to the ladies
room at a mall (a chapter worth $25 on its own), but more interesting is the undlerlying relationship he has with his wife. Both are strong willed and awkwardly shuffling classic
gender roles, challenging each other without a road map as the encounter some rough road -- corporate America may give lip service to the Little League Dad, but has no tolerance for a male primary care parent who needs to
invoke the same privileges woman have been afforded, Stockler finds. This guys is hilarious, but even more rare he is emotionally honest about family life which so often is suffused with
mawkishness or self-conscious irony. Stockler is really trying to figure out how to live happily ever after. I read this book in one night!!!
Rating:
Summary: Under My Xmas Tree
Review: I'm a sucker for those old-fashioned, big-family stories like "Cheaper By The Dozen" (now a Steve Martin movie, I see) and "Please Don't Eat The Daisies." This book turns out to be a real-life version that's wonderfully funny and warm and elegantly written, but it's also a deep and illuminating look inside the serious issues of what being a parent means in relation to career, marriage, ego, friends and family, and all the other complications of life. It's great to stumble across a book that really breaks new ground and I'm giving it to my husband and my girlfriends. Great details about the craziness of day-to-day life and wonderfully-drawn characters, too. Also a great book to read out loud.
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