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Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood |  | Author: Lewis, Michael
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Category: eBooks
This item is no longer available
Rating:  58 reviews
Sales Rank: 8374
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Edition: 1
Pages: 192
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.8742092
ASIN: B00261OOWQ
Publication Date: April 8, 2009
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Product Description
When Michael Lewis became a father, he decided to keep a written record of what actually happened immediately after the birth of each of his three children. This book is that record. But it is also something else: maybe the funniest, most unsparing account of ordinary daily household life ever recorded, from the point of view of the man inside. The remarkable thing about this story isn-t that Lewis is so unusual. It-s that he is so typical. The only wonder is that his wife has allowed him to publish it.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 58
Even you have no experience with kids July 20, 2010
Xiangnan Shi (Hong Kong)
Michael Lewis is a good story teller. He makes exaggeration sound believable and sarcasms natural. It is actually the same old story: a you little bastard who tortures me, exploit me and never pay back or even say thank you but I still love you kind of story. The problems for him are nothing new, even for a 22 year college student who probably won't have anything to do with babies in 10 years and have never had a younger sibling or any babysitting experience. Yes, the baby cries; the baby swears; the baby gets sick. Don't they all do? Well, you took your kid gambling, big deal? My parents got me drunk when I was three and they found it joke. My dad put me on backseat of his bike when he was drunk and even better, he was riding on road with ice and snow. How does that sound? Vasectomy is not that a big deal either. He sounds like he never masturbates before. But the idea of doing that in a parking lot ever coming to his mind is quite astonishing. At the part, I think he tried to hard to be funny. Well, to conclude, nothing much new about the new parents' story, told in a humorous way, but trying to hard sometimes. But if you are parents, you probably will not find out. You all exaggerate, right?
YOU MEAN IT DOESN'T ALL COME NATURALLY? June 26, 2010
David Keymer (Modesto CA)
"The thing that most surprised me about fatherhood the first time around was how long it took before I felt about my child what I was expected to feel. Clutching Quinn after she exited the womb, I was able to generate tenderness and a bit of theoretical affection, but after that, for a good six weeks, the best I could manage was detached amusement. The worst was hatred." Now that's funny! -- hyperbolic, overstated perhaps, but really quite funny. Because in ways it is not polite to emphasize, it's right on the mark about how much at sea --and how harrassed at momemtns-- a new father can feel. It just isn't easy being a new father. The role isn't as defined (and it's nowhere as central as the mother's, and babies don't understand how much change they have brought to their parents' lives --they cry, need food, poop, need diapers changed, or need to be burped, or have colic or some unexplainable but absolutely terrifying ailment that goes away just about the time you get them to the doctor's. No parenting manual prepares one for parenthood. The poor father doesn't even have hormonal help to tide him over the hard first months.
Three-time new father Michael Lewis wrote this book inbetween his other books, the ones, as he writes, that paid the bills. Disregard the subtitle: this is not a guide for anything. Rather, it's a loose collection of occasional humorous essays written on the fly while distracted from his other writing (the bill-paying writing, mind you) by the demands of parenting. The essays originally appeared in Slate magazine and are collected under the headings, "Quinn", "Dixie" and "Walker," the names of his three children. Lewis's more outrageous comments may enrage the literal-minded reader, especially if she is a mother, but they're not false observations, just hyperbolically expressed.
Nor do they all deal with the newest born: Quinn and then Dixie have an interesting take on how to drive their parents nuts after the newborn arrives. Thus, Dixie (the middle child), anticipating Walker's birth: "Hardly a day has passed in months without melodramatic suffering. One afternoon I collected Dixie from her preschool ... and learned that she'd moped around the playground until a teacher finally asked her what was troubling her. 'When the baby comes, my parents won't love me as much,' she'd said. Asked where she'd gotten that idea from, she said, 'My big sister told me.'" Writes Lewis comment: "I've sometimes felt that we're using the wrong manual to fix an appliance--that say, we're trying to repair a washing machine with the instructions for the lawnmower.... A family is like a stereo system: A stereo system is only as good as its weakest component, and a family is onlys happy as its unhappiest member. Occasionally that is me; more often it is someone else; and so I must remain vigilant, lest the pleasure of my own life be dampened by their unhappiness."
This is a funny, not very deep book that will strike a chord in many fathers breasts, though they will strive manli(ly) to deny it.
 A good read for any parent, not just dads June 11, 2010
Paul Flanigan (West Sacramento, CA USA)
The reviews stating "quick read" and "if you're a father you should read this" ring true. It is a quick read, and being a father, the relation is evident. I saw myself in Lewis's shoes several times and laughed out loud, something I rarely do when reading.
It will be a challenge for fans of Michael Lewis to put this up on the same pedestal as his other works, but it should also be clear that he wasn't trying to do that. You won't find any research or reference except in a few passages where he does what all fathers do, compare themselves to their own dad.
If you're not a father, you'll still get a kick out of reading how Lewis navigates the often murky waters between doing what's right for his children and trying to be a great partner to his wife. My sister-in-law actually gave me the book to read, saying it was laugh-out-loud funny and right up my alley. She was right on both accounts.
You get the feeling that this book is not just about his experiences of fatherhood, but an ode to his children. He writes about his experiences with being a dad, and a husband, and how life changes for him each time one of his children comes into the world.
To confirm, it's a quick read. If you're a father you'll relate and enjoy it.
Good but not Lewis's best June 6, 2010
Evan Taylor (Connecticut)
Michael Lewis is my favorite author. This is not great by Lewis's standards... but still a great and surprisingly funny book.
 Review from an expectant father April 29, 2010
W. Amores (Denver, CO)
Most (if not all) of the reviews here are from fathers and/or mothers. And they all recommend this book. I am not a father yet but soon to be. We are expecting our first child in mid-September. Ultrasound showed we will have a boy! :) I found this book very fun to read. So much fun I want more! Michael Lewis is really a great storyteller. I get drawn into his world as a dad while reading this book.
The book is mainly broken into 3 parts. One for each of his kids. The stories are not step-by-step chronological accounts of his experiences but descriptions of his fatherhood moments. These "moments" are probably typical (I wouldn't know yet) in a family setting but the way he wrote them is just plain funny! More than half the time I find myself laughing out loud like I'm in a stand up comedy show.
This book is not really a guide to fatherhood or even lessons for fathers and fathers-to-be. He's not lecturing, not even giving pointers. This is an account of his experiences as a father; but as we all know we learn from experiences, some from our own some from others. As I said earlier, I am a first time expectant father and by no means I can say this book got me prepared for what is to come. But I do know this, now I have a little better idea of what it's going to be like.
By the way, I bought this book through Kindle and read it between my iPhone and the iPad. The texts were rendered cleanly and Whispersync was flawless. There were no pics or diagrams in this Kindle version of the book.
**Spoiler Alert: He talked about vasectomy in the book. I really did not like that (as you can probably understand with my situation). It was a pretty detailed account that I honestly skimmed and skipped over. Sorry, it's not for me right now and maybe ever.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 58
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