Title Pending Until I Have More Energy

Another book review, since I did decide to call my blog "Books and Dirt" and all that. 

In Search of Cleo: How I Found My Pussy and Lost My Mind by Gina Gershon

2.5 Stars

My best friend got me this book for Christmas, with a card that said, “I have no idea what this is going to be about or how good it will be, but I know you like cats and thought the title was hilarious.”

I read this book in one afternoon since it’s very short, and I have to say I was not so impressed. I think this had at least a little more potential than what it actually lived up to, but it felt like a mess for most of it.

But here are my highlights:

My favorite line: “ ‘To be a meat eater, you have to be able to look at a cow or a chicken or even a fish for that matter. You have to be able to look them straight in the eye and be able to say ‘I just ate your daddy.’ If you can do that with a clear conscience, then you will have no problem defending your carnivorous ways. I’m just not that guy.’” ~Hell’s Angel (p. 65) This sums up my feelings about vegetarianism very well.

What I did like:

There were some really funny anecdotes. They were spread out, but there were parts that were laugh out loud funny. (My favorite was the Player Ball, which had nothing to do with the cat).

The ending was really sweet when she finally gets Cleo back (I feel like this is not a spoiler since she’s pictured with him on the cover and the title includes her saying she found him.).

You can tell that Gina Gershon genuinely loves animals, from her childhood pets to the cat she is currently looking for.

A portion of the proceeds from the sales of the book go to animal rescues. I think this made up for a  lot.

What I didn’t like:

There were several errors that should have been caught by an editor. Examples were sentences with subject verb disagreement and changing tense in the middle of a story, or even in the middle of a sentence. This was very distracting.

The first half jumped around to so much that was completely irrelevant to the book. As I mentioned before, some of these stories were funny, but they could have been put in order so that at least if they were irrelevant, they’d make sense.

Speaking of not making sense… I was aware that there was supposed to be a psychic and other strange ideas to find a cat in this book. Some points in the book make you question if she was drugged and her cat was there the entire time.

All in all, I don’t think I could recommend this book to anyone. I really wanted to like it and while I was able to finish it, and I was satisfied by the ending, it just wasn’t something I’d tell someone else to read.