Cannonball!

Overdrive has a ton of book recommendations for Women’s History Month, which is awesome. I’m also really pleased that I’ve already read a ton of them, mostly thanks to you guys. I flipped through some of the options and picked Andie Mitchell’s It Was Me All Along because it said that she was a food blogger and I thought that might be interesting to read about. These memoirs focus mostly on her childhood issues with her weight, which actually makes the third or fourth book that I’ve read like this lately. Not sure how that keeps happening, although they were all downloaded off of Overdrive so I suspect an algorithm may be involved…

“Can you do it today? The notion of just trying to take each day as it came. The commitment to the present moment, and only the present moment, without worrying about the big and daunting picture of all the days that followed.”

While I didn’t greatly enjoy this one, it wasn’t a bad read either. It was mostly just…sad. Mitchell learned from a very early age that she could really only find comfort in food, since her mother worked 3 or 4 jobs at a time in order to support her family, while her father sat on the couch drinking, eating, and occasionally flying into a rage. Andi continued to struggle with depression and binging well into college, before making some changes and finally losing the weight.

It’s a very sad book but, and I hate reviewing people’s personal histories for this exact reason because it’s their own personal story, it just wasn’t that interesting. I think a lot of it was the writing. She writes it like a recipe: this happened and then this happened and then this happened. The only really good, descriptive writing comes when she talks about certain foods — like the opening chapter discussing birthday cake. She definitely gives some insight into how eating made her feel, and then how the resulting weight made her feel, but I just felt like it wasn’t as personal as I expected. It’s also all about her weight. Whitney Thorpe’s autobiography had so much other interesting content, like her friendships and her obsession with dance and her career. Mitchell’s job as a food blogger is only mentioned briefly, and towards the end. It’s definitely not a bad book and I feel like she’s very courageous for writing it, but it also didn’t come close to blowing me away.