Rating: 
Summary: Thoroughly Enjoyable
Review: This isn't a book you need to invest your heart and intellect in -- just enjoy it. It's well written, funny, and moving in parts. I know many, many 30-something women (including myself) who can relate to Jane's trials and tribulations -- relationships, career, family, etc. This is an entertaining quick read -- not a cure for cancer.
Rating: 
Summary: Not exactly a novel
Review: The front cover calls The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing a "novel". However "fresh" this collection of short stories is, a novel it isn't. Thinking it was a novel, I was confused when no greater storyline emerged. By the time I read the fifth "chapter" I realized that all I could hope for was a series of short stories.Not a bad thing, but don't call it a novel if it isn't one. I enjoyed Melissa Bank's humor, and some of her creations (namely Jane) had depth of character. I LOVED the last story -- it actually elicited an emotional response from me, unlike most of the stories, which turned out to be merely interesting but not engaging. I thought the ending was quite abrupt, though. I thought Bank owed us more than such a sudden ending. After all, we read all her stories and we deserve to know "what happens next?" Read this book, but just remember it is a collection of short stories, and be emotionally prepared for the fact that they don't tie together in a more meaningful way.
Rating:
Summary: It's Incredible!
Review: I bought this book one day because I had nothing else to do for the day....I had it finished in two days. I raced home from work the second day just to finish it. I loved it. Every woman can relaate to it in one way or another. I didn't want it to end and I can't wait for another book by Melissa Bank.
Rating:
Summary: I loved it!
Review: This was a really enjoyable read and all the stories had something, if not everything, I could relate to. My life is different in many ways from the narrator's but all her observations rang true and had me feeling good about my own mis-steps and comical (from a distance) entanglements. I read pretty much the entire volume in one sitting, save for the last story which I consciously saved for later. I really didn't want the stories to end.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely not worth reading
Review: I bought this book for my vacation, and I am glad I finished it before I even left (it would have just ruined the lovely vacation I am expecting). The characters in the book are not that great. There is an attemp at humor, but I found it to be only an attemp. The storiline is pretty bad - it is a story about an unhappy girl with a suger daddy who is an alcoholic, whose father dies, then this guys she is dating doesn't work out because he just doesn't get it, then she gets cancer and nobody loves her, so she decided to follow a "guide to fishing and hunting" which screems - games from high school - to find out the boy she wants to "catch" likes her the way she is, without hints from the guide. Come on! If this is intended for women in their late 20s, early 30s I hope most of them are over "game" plays. We don't really need to be told not to play them in order to get to true love. All in all, one of the worst books I've read - the only reason I finished is because I couldn't sleep, and it was an easy read for 3am. And don't be fulled by the begining - it gets worse and worse with every chapter.
Rating: 
Summary: The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing
Review: I thought it was one of the funniest books I've read in a long time. Although I'm no longer single, I could really identify with the stories about dating experiences and the challenge of trying to be yourself. The main character, Jane, was quick with the one-liners. I really enjoyed it! You just can't take it too literally.
Rating: 
Summary: Why all the hype?
Review: To be honest, I cared so little about this book and its characters that I didn't actually finish it, so maybe something amazingly wonderful happened at the end that I've missed. But I doubt that. Though not badly written, the wandering, boring story is certainly not worth buying. Why praise was heaped on this book, I don't know, but it seems lately, any whiny novel about relationships written by a woman is deemed "Fabulous" by the media. There are plenty of good writers, both female and male, but this genre has been exhausted.
Rating:
Summary: Buy the tape or the paperback - both are great
Review: I really liked this book. Its humor made me laugh out loud, but I quickly realized the humor was of the self-deprecating kind, and there was no cruelty in any of it. In fact, the main character's amazing gentleness with people she interacts with was one of the reasons I liked it so much. I listened to it on tape, and Melissa Bank's Sela-Ward-meets-Elaine-May voice was perfect - in fact, so perfect, I wondered as I finshed the tape yesterday if I would have enjoyed it so much if I had just read it. Well, last night, I met up with a friend and recommended the book to her. It turns out she was already reading it - in paperback - and we had a very amiable, but heated, book vs. tape discussion, each feeling her medium was best. Obviously, we both "got" the book, because as we went through the rest of the evening, things would remind us of the book and we'd quote lines to each other. A lovely book.
Rating:
Summary: Girls Guide
Review: Why does everyone keep comparing this book to Bridget Jones, its not at all like Bridget Jones, granted their both about thirty somethings looking for love but while Bridget is zany,ridicolous, and sidesplittingly funny, The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing is more realistic, more wistful, more sad. It was a very engaging book but more like a collection of short stories than a novel. The two unrelated stories didn't bother me too much, my favorite story out of the whole bunch was the one about the woman and the breast cancer although I thought it was kind of selfish of her to leave him after he had stuck by her. This was a very interesting book but maybe not as meaningful as it tried to be and not as much fun as Bridget Jones. Still, the stories are worth a read and I recommend this book to anyone with time on their hands. Just don't expect Bridget Jones.I did like the main character Jane though. She was much more realistic than Bridget and I liked her sense of humour.I just didn't find her to be terribly interesting. The first story was probably the best. Never having heard of The Rules before I didn't care too much for the last story.
Rating:
Summary: Very witty and moving book by young author
Review: This book was so much BETTER than Bridget Jones, I cannot even believe the reviews on this page! I returned Bridget Jones to the store after four pages...YUCK, drivel...maybe if you are in EXACTLY the same situation as she is, but many of us are NOT and still read, and for those of you who can manage enough imagination to want to read about a life different than your own, GIRLS' GUIDE is far superior. Some of the less smooth aspects of the book keep me unsure if it's really a 3 star rating rather than a 4 star rating (Anna Karenina is a 5 star rating, but there's so much grade inflation on these writeups that I didn't want the book to look like a loser.) It's a quick, relatively light read, with a little more weight than I expected when I picked it up, and I thought it offered a fresh perspective on the relationships between and among friends, lovers, siblings, and parents.
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