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    Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
    Unavailable
    Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
    Unavailable
    Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
    Audiobook6 hours

    Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year

    Written by Anne Lamott

    Narrated by Rebecca Lowman

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    With the same brilliant combination of humor and warmth she brought to best seller Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott gives us a smart, funny, and comforting chronicle of single motherhood.

    It’s not like she’s the only woman to ever have a baby. At 35. On her own. But Anne Lamott makes it all fresh in her now-classic account of how she and her son and numerous friends and neighbors and some strangers survived and thrived in that all-important first year.

    From finding out her baby is a boy (and getting used to the idea) to finding out her best friend and greatest supporter, Pam, will die of cancer (and not getting used to that idea), with a generous amount of wit and faith (but very little piousness), Lamott narrates the great and small events that make up a woman’s life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 8, 2019
    ISBN9781984833853
    Unavailable
    Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
    Author

    Anne Lamott

    Anne Lamott is the author of seven novels and nine works of nonfiction, and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. She has been a book reviewer for Mademoiselle, a restaurant critic for California magazine, and a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and Salon. Anne Lamott lives in northern California.

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    Reviews for Operating Instructions

    4/5

    453 ratings19 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Anne Lamott is the most honest, funny, sincere, spontaneous, vulnerable, strong, serious, spiritual writer I can think of. In this book, she chronicles her pregnancy, her son's birth, and the first year of his life. During that same year her best friend is diagnosed with incurable breast cancer. In taking you along for the ride, you will experience transcendent ups, crushing downs, and will laugh out loud at both ends of the extremes. Highly recommended for anyone who is human.
    • 3/5
      I fell in love with Anne Lamott after reading Bird by Bird. I also heard rave reviews about this book so decided to read it next. I did not like it as much as Bird by Bird. But it was a good read. Her struggles with her friend's cancer and being a single parent with shaky finances really hit home. Her emotional issues and her mood swings, as well as her stories about her past relationships and past behavior, while very REAL, were a little exhausting for me to read about. I commend her for pulling me into her emotional world however.
    • 5/5
      What can I say? If you're about to, have just or have long ago had a baby and remember the bitter-sweet memories of becoming a mother, there is no other book I know of that will make you smile and even laugh as this book can.
    • 5/5
      The authenticity of Anne Lamott is evident and engaging in Operating Instructions. She isn't afraid to explore all sides of her first year as a Mother - and she keeps us laughing and crying all the while. I wish someone would write a book like this about infertility.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this humorous, honest chronicling of Anne Lamott's first year of parenthood. It was very interesting to me to read this book out of sequence, to look back at the love and frustration of a new, single parent with the knowledge of how she struggled to deal with the teen years. I came to know Sam as a complex, almost grown young man and then got to know him as a beautiful baby learning to smile and make his hands obey his will. I was most surprised by how deeply Pam's death affected me, since I knew the how and when of her loss from later books. What a tremendous loss for everyone in this touching journal of Sam's first year.
    • 5/5
      If you're looking for emotional, this is it for you! This book will resonate with new mother's especially. This is a very candid look of life and it taught me many things.
    • 5/5
      A fantastic, brutally honest, poignant account of the author's first year of motherhood. Lamott says the things that many, if not most, of us won't even admit to thinking. Her wit, sense of humor, depth of emotion, and self-awareness flavor every word she writes. As the mother of a child who had a difficult first year, I finished this book feeling relief that I wasn't alone/insane/incapable, that there was at least one other woman out there who understood and had the courage to speak honestly about the hardest and most rewarding job there is.
    • 3/5
      I readily admit that I am not in the target audience for this book. I found some of it to be a bit too blunt, and Lamott to definitely be an opinionated woman. Yet, there is something intriguing in looking through another person's eyes as they experience the first year of motherhood, and everything that goes along with it. This is the kind of book that some people will really love, while others might find it questionable as to its value. Personally, I think it is probably a good choice for anyone who is expecting, and might want a small idea of what is to come.
    • 3/5
      Please I implore you not to read this if you are planning to be pregnant, are pregnant, or have small children. I read this thinking it would be a pleasant read while I waited out my pregnancy. What a downer! The author fixates on every unpleasant aspect of infancy and motherhood, until you find youself in a deep depression with her. It's been 4 years since I've read this book and my daughter was born, and I still don't understand it. My daughter was a very difficult baby and I had many of the same emotions, but I never find myself wanting to mull over them again and again. Don't get me wrong, I had many of the same feelings as Miss Lamott, but who wants to be reminded that they, for a split second, considered pitching their infant out the window.
    • 4/5
      Reading this after some of her newer material is quite interesting. The progress of her outlook on life over the years is quite apparent after reading this. It seems like she's come to more answers over the years, but it is wonderful to see where she's been and the quite honest sentiments she felt during this time of her life. I love that she pretty much just says whatever is on her mind. Thank you Anne.
    • 4/5
      A refreshing and true look at motherhood and it's ups and downs. Anne LaMott does not become instantly saintly as soon as she squirts out her son. She is still selfish, humorous, and struggling with issues that most of us struggle with (excluding addiction, maybe we don't ALL struggle with that). A wonderful read that flies by.
    • 4/5
      Charming and heartbreaking story of Anne and her son during his first year. The ups and downs of unexpected motherhood, the triumphs and tribulations of a new baby are chronicled in this wonderful read.
    • 1/5
      I found the writing style uninspiring. "I woke up with a start at 4:00 am one morning and realized that I was very, very pregnant. Since I had conceived six months earlier, one might have thought that the news would of sunk in before then." Those are the opening lines. If you find this amusing, maybe you will enjoy the book.
    • 4/5
      Anne Lamott is one of my favorite writers. She writes with an unflinching honesty and a self-depreciating sense of humor that makes her an incredibly accessible writer. She is probably best known for her books on writing (Bird by Bird) and faith (Traveling Mercies, Grace Eventually), but it is only natural that she penned this book describing her first year of motherhood. A single mother who is woefully unprepared both financially, spiritually and physically (she has some addiction problems), Lamott nevertheless decides to keep the baby when she discovers she has become pregnant. Her journey is both laugh-out-loud funny and incredibly sad as well. A must for any fan of Lamott and anyone interested in good writing about the experience of motherhood.
    • 5/5
      Unexpectedly moving. My favorite quote: "Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past."
    • 4/5
      Shees! I've been reading this book a little bit at a time over lunch and I walk back to the office everyday teary-eyed.Just like other stuff I've read by Lamott, this is irreverent (that may be an understatement), but for folks who appreciate a particular kind of honesty about having a baby, this book will give that in spades.
    • 5/5
      You never fail, Annie. This time I was determined to give you a 4 or 41/2 stars, but no. You had to step it up in your usual dazzling way until 5 stars just isn't enough. Too many sticky bookmarks in this library book. Can't possibly copy all the great bits. Off to Amazon. Anne Lamott - wavering in her self-confidence sends us all her consequential gifts. (Read the book about your grandson first :) Love ya.
    • 3/5
      I was not so impressed by this “must-read” journal of Lamott’s trials and tribulations as she deals with her newborn. Maybe when it was published, it was taboo for a mother to casually remark that she’d like to throw her colicky baby out the window or confess that she let her infant fall off the futon (twice!), but in this age of mom-blogging, such confessions are almost trite. The journal reads exactly like a, well, journal, not my favorite type of reading material (I don’t even like to read my own journals). I guess my expectations were a little higher.
    • 5/5
      I’m not a parent. I’ve been a step-parent twice over. Still no matter whether it’s biological or vis marriage, nothing, and I mean nothing, can prepare you for parenthood.Such was the harsh reality novelist Anne Lamott. She found herself pregnant and alone (ie: without a husband or reliable partner). However, Anne is not alone. She has a bevy of friends and neighbors with a speckling of strangers thrown to help her. Anne was absolutely sure that she would have a girl. If she was going to do this, God would give her a girl, another female in the house. She was a girl; she could raise a girl. But when she learned that the blossoming bud inside was a boy, well, she could hardly comprehend it. She never fully accepted her fate until her son, Sam, was born. This is not the journey of pregnancy; it’s the journal of that first year, in all its glory and its horror.Some of the journal entries are short, some a bit longer, and some last almost two pages. It’s isn’t a day-by-day account. Who has time for that when there is a colicky baby screaming at the top of his lungs?The entries are equally poignant and humorous. I laughed so hard at times that I woke hubby, who was asleep in another room. Anne’s entries also have a cadence to them. From I love him so much, he’s the best baby ever to he’s trying to kill, I hate him, I laughed and cried.My favorite account occurs not to long after Sam and Anne are home. She has to take his temperature. When she learns that anal, not oral, is how this is done on babies, it’s laugh at loud hilarious, especially when she describes how his tiny rear-end erupted like a full-scale volcano, spewing feces everywhere.I recommend Operating Instructions to everyone. It’s short and easy to read and leaves the reader, or at least this one, with a new-found respect for new mothers. Therefore, Operating Instructions receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.