I like Carol Lay's Story Minute comic, and I've picked up a couple of her collections and enjoyed those as well. So when I heard this was coming out, I figured I'd read it even though the subject matter (weight loss) didn't sound all that interesting.

It wasn't. At times smug and self-righteous, Lay talks about what worked for her (scrupulous calorie-counting and exercise) and the kinds of meals she eats regularly. This is every bit as repetitive as you'd expect, and she'll sometimes repeat information from previous chapters as well. She claims that the rigorous calorie-counting makes her not think about food much, but the kind of attention-to-detail required to eat a bite of anything seems more obsessive than freeing to me.

It's possible this isn't the kind of plan that would work for me, but really, the whole book didn't work for me. Congratulations to Lay, who managed to lose a bunch of weight and keep it off, but this book is far less interesting and insightful than I'd have expected of her. It's nice to look at, though. ( )

This is a book worth reading, but it's also one that is annoying at times. The author seems to go overboard at times with counting calories and understanding the difference between a normal weight and truly overweight.

However, the advice she gives to those wanting to have an eating lifestyle that will result in weight loss then weight maintenance is sound. This advice basically boils down to count calories, stay fairly low in calories, and exercise. But the important part is to stick with it and understand that for overweight people, this is probably a lifestyle change, not something temporary.

It's nice to have a weight-loss book disguised as a graphic novel, but the content can get repetitive and the last portion of the book consists of calorie counts for various foods. I've read elsewhere that the author is 5'9" tall, and her ideal weight is 125. That is quite a low weight for someone of that height, so it's important to not get carried away like the author apparently is. But, if you read the book for an understanding of her main ideas, it can serve you well. ( )

The Big Skinny might initially look like a memoir. I mean, it *does* say memoir on the cover, people. But it's a lie. A small lie. But a lie nonetheless. The Big Skinny's only memoir-ish contribution is maybe the first twenty or so pages where Lay briefly talks about her weight issue (and I say briefly because she's fifty and how can you not be brief if you're writing about your overweigh existence for fifty years in twenty pages or so).

http://annotatedreading.blogspot.com/2010/02/big-skinny.html ( )

OMG. I'm a Carol Lay fan from way back, and this effort is like a treatise about how living in Los Angeles can warp a person's mind into thinking that seeing a woman's ribs between her collarbones and her breasts is sexy. This is one of those horrible books where more than half the content is naught but tedious recipes and pages of calorie charts.

Now, one of the reasons I like Carol's art is the roundness of her characters: everybody has beady little eyes and a sideways grimace and a sweeping sense of motion beautifully delineated in a flowing black and white comic style with little shading. Her depictions of her dieted self seem at odds with her style, since she really seems to like drawing how Skinny Carol's waist goes straight down into her square, boney jutting hips. It's as unnatural as trout pout and bronzer and people who can't blink any more since they've had so much plastic surgery.

I thought the story about the woman whose secret sin was lying in bed eating crackers read like we were supposed to think it was as horrible as those sensationalistic dark noir tales of madness, addiction and murder. I thought her fat parents looked like normal people. And I thought that I will remember this book as "How I Obsessed Over Every Calorie And Lost Not Only My Weight, But The Sense of Humor Katie Previously Enjoyed."

I did get a laugh about the slamming-the-door on George Clooney's face, though. Try "Joy Ride" instead, okay?

A helpful and mildly humorous lark describing her attempts at losing weight, cartoonist Carol Lay gives copious amounts of information in this slim tome. Though it has more nutritional guides than narrative, the graphic novel speeds along briskly. The advice within is honest and direct, but it is nothing new. This is directed more towards an audience who has never tried to lose weight, and doesn't appeal much to anyone else. It is essentially a beginner's guide to calorie counting, more so than a memoir or health book - indeed, it treads a fine line between the two. Amusing, yes, but Lay doesn't cover ground in a way that is outstandingly unique...many have done this topic before her, and many with a more deft hand. The illustration format is a bit quirky and makes the reading light, but otherwise, this is hard to recommend outside of a specific demographic. ( )