The Rest of Us: Dispatches from the Mother Ship

I love the title of this book, a collection of Jacqueline Mitchard's newspaper columns, which are published every Sunday in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She has had quite a life: adopted a child, then was able to have three children of her own. Her husband died, quite young and very quickly, of cancer. She then adopted another child, the story of which was very moving. She then re-married and adopted yet again. In addition to writing a weekly column, she has also written several best-selling novels.I think her columns are very well done and usually strike a note that is familiar to my life or the life of someone I know. I actually like them more than her fiction. The columns are alternately nostalgic, funny, wry, sad, bittersweet. She is a very clever observer of family life and the things in our world which affect families.Here are the titles of some of her columns/articles in this book:*Loneliness of the Long-Distance Talker*Dare to say "Underwear" - about ordering from Victoria's Secret catalog when a male order-taker answers the phone*My Son the Warrior*When You're Out with the In Crowd*The Mother of My Child*Tragedy in a Bottle*My Best Buds, the Brontes*The Citadel:Disgrace Under Pressure*Home Cooking in the Drive-thru Lane*Tupperware is Life*The Great Green Garage SaleI think almost anyone would enjoy reading these columns and highly recommend it.

I've never read Jacquelyn Mitchard's columns in newspapers, what I did read was her brilliant first novel "The Deep End of the Ocean". Then I opened this book, read "Better Scared Than Scarred" & I couldn't put it down. Jacqelyn Mitchard is a kindred spirit, someone with an ineffably wry, dry, poignant sense of humor. Who sees an outrage & decides to humor it; who has life catch at her throat & writes like her life depended on it, which it does. A must read for anyone who thinks their own life is drab! For my full review please go to: ( )

I am reading "The Rest of Us" now and can relate to so many of Ms. Mitchard's essays. She has a gift for immortalizing the precious little moments of motherhood that we tend to forget in the busyiness of our daily lives. She is the "Every Mother" of the '90's and I wish our newspaper carried her column. Some days I could really use her clear vision and wry humor.

I found "The Rest of Us" interesting and very easy to get through; even though this book is in fact a compilation of her Sunday columns (for which this book is named) rather than a novel, reading it was not a laborious essay-after-essay task. Mitchard's essays often hold quite a bit of truth, humor, and wisdom in them, as well as emotional power. She also did manage to convince me that she's just an ordinary woman like "the rest of us" despite the fact that she, extraordinarly, was a widow and active journalist--with five children, no less!--when she wrote many of these pieces. The only problem I encountered while reading was that her sentences sometimes seemed a bit convoluted and difficult to follow; her overall points were usually clear, however. I plan to buy this book for my mom, as I have found that Mitchard is, above all, a mother--her maternal side shines through in many of her pieces and could prove to be helpful for any mother.