How To Sew A Button: And Other Nifty Things Your Grandmother Knew (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
In reading the author's introduction and the profiles of the grandmothers she consulted I felt excited to learn new things. However, I was soon disappointed. Many of the tips involve basic life skill that would be terrifying to contemplate people making it to adulthood without knowing, like how to make your bed or balance your checkbook. Other things that might actually be lost knowledge are given short shrift. Bried wants to commit to this cutesy format of condensing the knowledge to a series of bullet points that fit on about a page and a half along with some vintage housewife drawings and some "nifty tips". I don't feel any more capable to canning things now than I did before reading this. Bried also makes being a 1950s housewife seem like something we should aspire to. Let me assure you that I don't need to know how to tie a man's tie, fix him a drink, or shine his shoes. Rather than respecting and emphasizing the knowledge base that women like my grandmother had, Bried reduces their skills to a trite cliche. How to Hand-Wash Dishes...Really? Even a busy 20-something in NY ought to know how to do that! "Squirt some dish soap onto a rag..." Know how long your dish soap is going to last? I am a big believer in doing for oneself, it's how I was raised. I picked up the book to learn helpful home-type stuff I might not know, and sometimes it's a good book for that. Like when it teaches us how to sharpen a knife with a steel. But how to wash dishes? C'mon! Get real! How to Make Dandelion Wine is something that is useful, tastes pretty good and might be an interesting skill to have. At least when friends and family ask "What's new?" You'll have something to share.There's good in this book as long as you don't take it's tone to heart. Ignore the sarcasm long enough to read it through to find the things you don't know how to do.Ignore the crap, like how to win an argument.
What do You think about How To Sew A Button: And Other Nifty Things Your Grandmother Knew (2009)?
I knew pretty much everything in this book. I was blessed with good parents that taught me things!
—GuilloMarti
Got a couple of pointers, but nothing too spectacular.
—Nixoax
