The book: What to Expect When You’re Expecting, by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel
The edition: new and revised (4th) edition, Italian version by Sonia Sferzi, 575 pages
About the book: a step-by-step (or week-by-week) guide to pregnancy
My experience with the book & my thoughts: to start with, I need to say that I am not pregnant, so my evaluation of this book may be a little biased. I wanted to know more about pregnancy, and after a long search this was the only book I found that explained things throughly, didn’t make fun of them, and most of all didn’t treat the reader like a woman with attention-deficits who needs lots of pictures and bullet-lists and asides to go through a book.
I found it to be informative and encouraging, if nor exhaustive. I’d have appreciated more information on pre-natal exams, but I’ve seen that other people would have appreciated less information on some aspects, and I do see that, to a pregnant woman, some parts can be unnecessarily scary. I appreciated less the “All About” section at the end of each month-related chapter, because some of that information was not necessarily related to the month it was put in.
What I liked: detailed information.
What I didn’t like: I know it is a guide and that in all guidebooks there may be repetitions, because some readers may only go through a few sections; still those repetitions had me roll my eyes every time (OK, I know that smoke and alcohol are bad for the baby! Again? I know already!).
Language & translation: the major problem I had with this book, was never knowing how much had only been translated (i.e. still described the situation in the USA) and how much had been localized (and described what I may encounter in Italy).
In the author’s own words: nothing to report, really.
Links to better understand this book: oww, I don’t think you need them, it’s a guide! 🙂
Random thought: wow, there’s a whole series of WTE books!
Read this if: it is a good guide, but I am glad I read it before ever getting pregnant, because I don’t think I would have made it through during pregnancy, it’s quite the tome!
Counts as: One Two Theme Challenge – Pregnancy book #4