Caitlin ShetterlyCríticas

Shetterly's writing is so full of being right there with this family, in part simply because we all had to find our way to live through the pandemic.! You don't escape anything this family is experiencing. It is so well written and after reading the author's notes in the end about what her own family was going through as she wrote this, it comes through in her writing of this novel. I would guess that she found herself in many of the things Alice was saying. It's a book that's hard to put down until you have reached the end....with the questions that linger there.

a/k/a "Pete and Alice Belong in Brooklyn". But in this, my first wholly covid-set novel, the main characters, a quarreling couple, flee with their two quarreling daughters to their ramshackle summer home in coastal Maine, where they are shunned as disease carriers. Alice had been a playwright until the premature birth of her younger daughter Iris, and Pete does something lucrative for a Wall St. firm. Before they leave the city, Alice discovers Pete's affair with "The Her". He's contrite, she's suspicious, but somehow the stress of the situation leads to fantastic sex, their sole remaining pleasure in each other. There's a lot about how they met, about Pete's horrible wealthy parents, and about the growing pains of both girls, and all of it makes for an enjoyable if insubstantial read, as the reader wonders if the marriage will stay intact, especially when Pete is called back into the office and into temptation. And in the "Guess Your Own Adventure" finish, you're left to figure out how it all ends.

Quote: "Iris wants her mother to have Iris's feelings and thoughts, and when she perceives her mother might be somewhere in her own locked room of thoughts and not paying close attention, Iris is uncomfortable. It's like a disappearance."

Loved this book, especially the beginning that reflected the terror we all felt during those times. How they were viewed as outsiders in Maine until they put old Maine license plates on their car; the problems in their marriage; the cat Ingmar; the beautiful descriptions of Maine and the ocean. Didn't want it to end, but the way it left us hanging was very interesting.

The author's story of her own health issues and her drive to find out what was wrong and how to keep her family safe was interesting. Not being a scientist, I think she confused a bit of the scientific parts, but she readily admitted that some of it was over her head. She found something that worked for her and her family (mainly switching to all non-GMO organic). Interesting read for anyone curious about GMOs, but I'd read up on more recent science as well to fill in the gaps in data, and just enjoy this story for what it is: a woman's search to find food that is safe for her and her family's needs.

I won this book via Goodreads Giveaways.

When I read the review of this book in Library Journal, I knew it was a book I needed to read. For several years, the author suffered from an illness that doctors were unable to diagnose, until one doctor determined that she was allergic to a protein in genetically modified corn. Once she eliminated GMO corn from her diet (which is not an easy thing to do), her symptoms disappeared. I had a similar experience several years ago. I thought my symptoms might be food-related, but I couldn't pinpoint any one food because so many seemingly unrelated things triggered my symptoms. As I began to study labels, I realized that these foods all had a common ingredient – corn. When I eliminated most of the corn from my diet, my symptoms cleared up. Shetterly and I had something in common.

Shetterly interviewed scientists, doctors, farmers, activists, and beekeepers in the United States, Europe, and Mexico, in order to learn more about the risks and benefits of GMOs. Given the author's personal experience, her tone is surprisingly objective. She is careful to look at both sides of controversial issues and to listen to both sides of a story.

The book is unexpectedly apolitical at a time when politics is becoming increasingly partisan. Republicans and Democrats may not agree on much of anything else, but both parties have strong ties to the agricultural and chemical companies that develop and produce GMO crops.

GMOs may not be on your radar if you don't work in agriculture or live in an industrial farming region. This book would be a great place to start your education on a topic that affects everyone. My only quibble is that, while Shetterly identifies her interview sources in the book, she doesn't cite sources for the facts and figures she adds from her additional research, so readers have to take her word for their accuracy. (The acknowledgments do include her fact checkers, however.)½

Modified is a book of memoirs, about researching this book. Shetterly travels the US and Europe, or has long phone conversations with various researchers on all sides of the Genetically Modified (GM or GMO) debate. While much of the rest of the world is fighting off GMOs, the United States is of course still debating, much like climate change, or evolution, or any number of other settled topics. And while it debates, it is flooding the world with the product.

Section 1 is all about corn. A trip to Colorado, Nebraska and Iowa led Shetterly to meet people she had been talking to and messaging, informing her opinions on GMOs. The most startling image from that was of Iowa, where the GMO corn goes from property line to property line, she says, and there is little else. Only a couple of percent of the land is still prairie; 144 million acres are planted with GMO corn – and the pesticides they can survive. She says farmers are cancer-ridden in far higher numbers than the general population.

Section 2 is about bees and honey, and how GMO pesticides are turning up in honey, while bees literally disappear.

Section 3 is about contamination of non GMO crops and how Mexico at least is trying to stop the poisoning of its biodiverse corn heritage.

Incredibly, half way through the book, Shetterly quotes a European official saying our plants are now toxic from the roots up. And she lets it go. That should have taken the book in a whole new, deeper direction, but she just mentions it in passing. She circles back over it again in the epilog with a quote from a Harvard researcher that amounts to the same thing, but the epilog is about her family eating well, including recipes you can try at home.

This is not a hardhitting science book. You have to wade through Shetterly’s family, travel tribulations, recipes, and especially every meal she ever ordered in any restaurant, to get to the GMOs. For some, this will be a treat. For others, it will mean skipping paragraphs and pages.

The most powerful section unfortunately, is the intro, in which both Shetterly and her infant son went through endless tests with endless doctors to determine what their respective symptoms meant. Years went by. Finally, a new doctor said her condition was due to the genetic modifications and pesticides in corn. And corn is everywhere, in the gas tank, in paper products, as dextrose and other additives in too many foods to be aware of. Pursuing that environmental medicine angle might have been a blockbuster, had she only pursued it. As it stands, Modified is informative and personal.

David Wineberg

I haven't desired to not finish a book more in a long time. (I never NOT finish a book I start no matter how bad.) I really disliked the "erudite" writing then switching to overusage of the "F word" that reminded me of FEED where that was a substitute for lack of better communication. I also had a hard time with "we were so poor but finally found a place to live near a cafe where we could buy gourmet coffees and sandwhiches." I just wanted to shout "go to the grocery store for a quarter of the cost." The recession has not been kind to us either and we are in an industry still feeling its affects. But I have never felt like it was somehow American failing more or that I have any right to expect not to go through these things. Life isn't fair and you gotta deal with what comes your way the best you can.

I haven't desired to not finish a book more in a long time. (I never NOT finish a book I start no matter how bad.) I really disliked the "erudite" writing then switching to overusage of the "F word" that reminded me of FEED where that was a substitute for lack of better communication. I also had a hard time with "we were so poor but finally found a place to live near a cafe where we could buy gourmet coffees and sandwhiches." I just wanted to shout "go to the grocery store for a quarter of the cost." The recession has not been kind to us either and we are in an industry still feeling its affects. But I have never felt like it was somehow American failing more or that I have any right to expect not to go through these things. Life isn't fair and you gotta deal with what comes your way the best you can.

This is the memoir of young couple who caught up in the devestation of our economy moved west to LA in hopes of finding the "land of milk and honey" and discovered that the grass isn't always greener. Broke and desperate, they move back across the country a mere year later, and move in with family.

I thought that Caitlin Shetterly did a very good job describing the experiences and fears of so many during our current economic recession/depression. Do I think their desperation was as great as what many others have expereienced? No. Their poverty was very much a middle class brand of poverty, but I don't think that detracts at all from the story told. Many of us who are dealing with this recession are experiencing it in a very middle class way.This doesn't make their fears and concerns any less, it just means that they haven't hit rock bottom, that there is still the possibility of worse to come. It was an eye-opening read and really made me take a look at my own life.

Is that not the most gorgeous cover ever? It's spectacular, and the story that is Made for You and Me is one of the best-written and engrossing memoirs that I've read. It's the story behind the statistics of what has been, for countless people, the disappearance of their American dreams at the hands of the American recession.

It doesn't take a psychologist to figure out that the reason this one resonated so much with me is because I identify with Caitlin and Dan so much. Our story is very different, yet there's some similarities.

In November 2007, we moved to a different state and into a large beautiful house that represented everything we had worked for during the past two decades. Yeah, in hindsight we didn't need to buy The American Dream, but isn't that what we're taught to do, to aspire to, to believe in? We're conditioned to believe in the possibility of new beginnings, to chase our dreams and to take a risk and a chance. So we started what we believed to be a new chapter - but then one person and then another and then another beat us down. The housing market plummeted, the economy crashed into a recession, the writing was beginning to be written on the wall in a Sharpie marker. We decided that we could either wait for the inevitable or get out of that state - mentally and physically - while we could. The Husband took a new job six hours away, I got fired, we sold the dream house at a huge loss and wiped out everything we'd saved to cover the loss and try to preserve our credit and keep our family intact. (Both of which we did. Thankfully.)

W're luckier than most and fortunate to have what we have (and had), but like many Americans and in the words of John Lennon, we're starting over. The logistics - finding an apartment and our way around a new city, finding new jobs and schools - have all come together (and kind of nicely, really). What's been harder is shaking the feeling, as Caitlin Shetterly writes in Made for You and Me (I AM getting to this review, really!) of "feeling essentially flattened," of feeling that we can no longer afford to dream.

Caitlin and her husband Dan were like many young married couples when "the recession came home" to them in December 2007. Dan's full-time job as a photographer was reduced to part-time, downsizing his salary by more than a third. A second job as a bouncer didn't help cover the rent on their apartment (Caitlin worked as a freelancer and with a theater company she'd founded). Knowing that their lives would be changing dramatically, they decided to move from Maine to Los Angeles in hopes of new opportunities.

Caitlin writes of their journey west in poignant passages like these reflections upon driving through Washington, D.C. at night: "Even in the dark, the majesty of our white buildings and gray stone structures, shining with a post-rain sheen, belied the pain of a country embroiled in two endless wars, beginning a devastating recession, with many of its values and laws so desperately challenged that the people were morally lost and defeated. The alabaster monuments stood, powerfully silent. Dan said, 'I hope I never get this close to George Bush again,' and we both halfheartedly chuckled, because the purpose of our journey west and the place we found ourselves in as a nation really were sobering facts." (pg. 49)

"As we got farther and farther away from home, America seemed so big and bruised and foreign that our sense of who we were felt complicated by each mile we traversed. And it was this complication, possibly, that made the journey worth it. As we went, we were becoming citizens of America, really, not just of one place, one state, one town. We were witnessing our selves and our hopes, dreams and goals against the backdrop of places and people we didn't know or even, maybe, relate to. This rootlessness kept us wonderfully open to seeing and experiencing everything around us with the freshness of babies." (pg. 53-54)

Caitlin and Dan's dream turned out to be ... well, the stuff that John Lennon was talking about when he said that life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

Finding work (and enough of it) to sustain themselves proved to be more of a challenge in California now that the country was in a recession. Safe and affordable housing became an issue. And then Caitlin became pregnant, with life-threatening complications during the entire nine months. A beloved pet died. The bottom was quickly dropping out of their world, taking with it the hopes and dreams of the new life they had planned for themselves.

"Still, for us, in our young marriage, in our story of of our lives falling apart while we tried to do whatever it took to take care of our son, our dog and ourselves, we felt, essentially, flattened. Actually, it was worse than that: What we felt was that we could no longer dream. That was, possibly, the most dangerous aspect of what had happened to us." (pg. 3)

Made for You and Me has its roots in Caitlin's emails to friends and family as she chronicled her and Dan's journey west. The emails turned into a blog, which turned into a feature on NPR. Being so open with her story has made others see themselves in her story (as I certainly did), but it has also brought out the snarks who consider Caitlin to be whiny (I did not find that to be the case at all; you would know it if I did). There are the cynics who espouse a "woulda-shoulda-coulda" attitude. They shouldn't have moved. If they would only get out of this dream world of being freelancers and get a real job, things would be fine. They shouldn't have had a baby.

Isn't it funny how everyone becomes an expert on life when it's not their own?

The thing is, we all make choices and decisions based on our circumstances and on what we feel are the best options at that time. Some work out, some don't - and when it's the latter, it's hard enough beating yourself up without having other people lining up to do it for you. It doesn't mean you don't appreciate what you have. It's that sometimes when you've lost so much and are hanging by a thread, you're too scared of losing what little you have because then where will you be?

I really liked Made for You and Me because there are very few of us who have not been affected by this prolonged recession, and stories like Caitlin and Dan's remind us that we're not alone. I think that is so very important in these times, to know that there are others who are struggling to make our way, to pick up the pieces of what remains. There's some comfort in that, in knowing that there are others who are also very scared about what our personal and collective futures hold and that, just like this land was made for you and me, it's going to take all of us, together, to try and get there.

Caitlin Shetterly took the title for her book [Made for You and Me] from the Woody Guthrie song, "This Land is Your Land." This is not a coincidence. Shetterly, like Guthrie, is claiming citizenship in a land that doesn't seem to belong to everyone anymore. It's the story of 10 percent of our out-of-work population today.

Shetterly grew up in Maine, a privileged child from an educated family. She spent a year studying at the Sorbonne. This is not a person we would expect to end up broke and unemployed. Yet, as an adult, she and her husband Dan ended up broke, out of work and alone in Los Angeles, their dreams broken. This memoir is an honest record of their struggles. Shetterly doesn't sugarcoat her reality. As she says at the first hint of trouble: "One of my most charming qualities is that when shit starts to hit the fan I get hysterical. I panic. I get angry. I say things I shouldn't." Such a personal story requires a balancing act and courage, something that Shetterly and her husband do have a lot of. Shetterly blogged and did a radio diary for NPR, recounting their struggles. She made her story the story of many struggling Americans.

This isn't a story of unrelenting misery. Shetterly finds that, in the end, she gains from this experience. Recommended.½

No matter what the news pundits and financial experts say, the state of the economy is best understood from the inside, from a personal perspective. How is your individual family weathering the economic mess? How are your friends? How are the businesses in your community doing? Do you too have to cut up your beloved Borders discount card because it is no longer viable? Caitlin Shetterly set out to personalize the financial crisis facing so many people, sharing her own family's slow, painful descent into debt and the lifestyle change and lessons learned as a result.

Shetterly and her husband were young and newly married when they packed up all of their belongings and their pets and headed to the west coast to follow their dreams and escape life already teetering on the edge of financial struggle in Maine. But one year out in California and the reality of the dream is inescapable and unfortunately untenable. And so the couple, beyond broke, having unexpectedly welcomed a baby into their family and lost a beloved pet, starts off on the long road home to the only safety net they know, to move in with Caitlin's mother. Having already chronicled their journey and the revelations that it inspires for NPR's Weekend Edition, Shetterly expands on that experience here in her book.

In some ways it feels unkind to say that I didn't much like Shetterly since she is not a fictional character in a book but instead a real flesh and blood person. But she has chosen a particular way to represent herself here in this memoir and I found it hard to like this representation. The story is repetitive and Shetterly seems unduly whiny, especially for someone who has quite a few more resources than the average joe who really is losing his or her shirt in this recession. Her losses, and they are many and potentially crushing, do grant her some perspective on our culture of excess and the need for connection among family and community but rather than count the blessings that she can still see, she bemoans everything that the country has done and is doing wrong and that led to her small family's failure. I found myself irritated more than moved by Shetterly's narrative. Perhaps the lack of personal accountability on the pages fueled my reaction more than the story itself. According to reviews elsewhere, most people disagree with me and find this moving and heartfelt. I had more of a visceral reaction to the scene in 1997's movie My Fellow Americans with the former presidents and the homeless family who had invited them into their station wagon. Obviously this was just not the book for me.½

Caitlyn Shetterly and her new husband decide to leave Maine and head to California to pursue new opportunites. Shortly after their arrival, an unexpected pregnancy with complications combines with the economic downturn. Caitlyn is physically unable to work and Dan is unable to find work. They decide that they must shelve their dreams and return to Maine to live with Caitlyn's mother.

This book was so much more than that short description to me. Really, it's the story of how the ideal of the American Dream has remained beyond the grasp of so many of us who grew up to expect that we would achieve it. Caitlyn does not attempt to pretty up her reactions to this disappointment and the tone of the book reflects her honest evaluation of her life and choices. I also greatly enjoyed the role that pets played in Caitlyn's life and story. I loved this book and hope for more writing from this author.

The recession of recent years has been shown over and over in the media -- articles in magazines, stories on the news, photos of evictions in the paper. But as someone who has been largely unaffected by the recession (yes, I am embarassed to admit that), I had not grasped the magnitude of the despair that an inability to find employment could bring into a family's life.

Shetterly's memoir broke thru my ignorance and naivity, showing me a world where hundreds of job applications could lead to nothing, where men are chided for "not working hard enough" to find employment doesn't exist.

I will admit to being perplexed at Shetterly's struggles to feed her family on $100/week. But other than that, the story was easy to relate to and worth the read.½

This book tells the story of a newly-wed couple who decided to move from Maine to California to seek their fortunes. The husband was a talented photographer while the wife did a variety of free-lance jobs including work for NPR. The first part of the book chronicles their trip across the country in a small car with a large dog and a cat. As someone who frequently travels with a dog, my first thought was what expensive hotels they sometimes stayed in, like a Doubletree. Upon arriving in California, they had apartment problems, having rented the first one on the recommendation from a friend. They ended up negotiating a "deal" on an apartment in Venice for $2000/month. Next, the wife unexpectedly became pregnant. She had such severe nausea for almost the entire course of her pregnancy that she was unable to work. Then, the bottom fell out of the photography business as the recession hit the country. Plus, the baby was born, and they ended up with some large medical bills for what insurance did not cover. They eventually had to pack up and head for home, moving in with her mother until things started to turn around for them. These were educated people who rode the economic boom while it lasted and apparently thought it would never end. The book is well-written and enjoyable except for that generation's fascination with the "f-word". I wish them the best but think they brought a part of their difficulties on themselves. Hopefully they learned some valuable lessons from their experiences with the wild west.

I got this book thru Librarything Early Reviewers.
As I read this book I thought I could hear Caitlin on NPR and imagining their travels. I loved her wit and warmth, as they piece together their life fromthe craziness it has become. The story is so much what many went through during these years from the good year to 9/11, the bust, recession and on. It was good to hear it from someone who made the trip so well. Her family struggles were so down to earth. But her cooking, I want to eat in her kitchen! I found myself planning a garden around her dinner descriptions.

Shetterly’s debut is a personal memoir of her family’s trials and survival in this recession. Caitlin Shetterly and her husband Dan Davis, are a young couple from Maine seeking better job opportunities and new horizons in L.A. Along the way they got sideswiped with the poor economic conditions. This book is the beautiful result of her blog journaling their lives from Maine to LA and back again.

Originally planning on moving to CA and saving enough money to purchase a home in Maine, the couple ended up in a cramped apartment in LA not living the life they imagined. After a year of too many job interviews, depressed, broke, and with Caitlin sick and pregnant, the pair decided to throw in the towel and drive back to Maine.

Their journey was compromised of ups and downs, of happiness, sadness, loss, anger, regret, loss, and feelings of failure faced with the poor economy. Shetterly paints a remarkable picture of their emotional trip with new beginnings starting with their trip to LA, as well as pain and sadness as they faced the unknown future on their return trip home.

Their travels were broadcast on NPR’s Weekend Edition from Caitlin’s blog. Many, many people responded, some unfavorable, most encouraging. Some offered lodging, support, and comfort along their path home. All of us are struggling through his economy and Caitlin found that many reached out to help and offer them what they did have. These encouraging words inspired Dan and Caitlin to keep on driving back to Maine.

‘Made for You and Me’ is an example of how this economy effected one couple in this country and effects each and every one of us every day. Kudos to Shetterly for putting her families’ lives on the line for our viewing.½

Caitlin Shetterly and Dan Davis got married and decided to move to Los Angeles to find jobs and make money. Things went wrong from the start, however, and nothing turned out as they planned. A surprise pregnancy left Caitlin so sick that she was unable to work and then the recession hit and Dan found it impossible to find work. They found it necessary to pack up all of their things, including their infant son, and return home.
I really enjoyed this book and liked the author very much. I especially liked the fact that she shared everything about herself including her flaws. It would be very easy for an author of a book such as this to portray themselves as calm, cool and collected through crisis after crisis, but Caitlin chose the honest route. This aspect of the book makes both of them very relatable to the reader and also makes you route for them throughout the book.
I must admit that I did not hear this story on NPR so it was entirely new to me. I look forward to more from this author.

Before reading this book I did hear one installment of Caitlin Shetterly's Audio Journal on NPR. From my memory of it - it may have been her last one. I enjoyed listening to her at the time but I remember thinking to myself that I didn't agree with some of the choices she and her husband made in light of their very difficult financial situation.

It made a favorable enough impression on me though I guess because I was happy to see her book in the Early reviewers selections.

Having read her book - I can say that no - I don't think I would have done some of the things that she and her husband did - but despite those differences I found her voice - and her writing to be really fluid and on top of that - she comes across as just a likable person doing her best under really stressful conditions.

I have to mention *******possible spoiler alert***********
that the passage that she wrote about the death of her beloved cat was one of the most moving I have read in the past few years. She articulated feelings and emotions that made me feel that she was a very kindred spirit indeed.

I am so happy that just by the fact that I was reading her published book I knew that their fortunes had turned somewhat. I think she is a gifted writer and someone who by the end of the book I was really rooting for to find a way out of their dire straits.

I finished reading Caitlin Shetterly's memoir this morning and haven't been able to stop thinking about it all day. When I chose the book one I might win for early reviewers, I had no idea of the parallels between Caitlin's life and my own (I was one year ahead of Caitlin at Brown and moved back and forth across the US in almost the same time period). The author writes a beautiful memoir about a difficult period of her life that she and her husband faced with such grace, determination and love. I can only hope that when her son is old enough to read Made For You and Me, he is able to understand the lengths to which his parents stretched.

This is a story of both loss and gain that everyone can relate to in one way or another. Shetterly leaves her comfortable life in Maine with her new husband and pets to live in California with the hope for better job opportunities. Extremely homesick and eventually pregnant, life in California is not turning out as planned thanks to the financial crisis. So, Shetterly and her husband make the difficult decision to return to Maine to live with her mother until their financial situation changes. I appreciated her honest documentation of her journey back and forth across the United States as well as the various problems she and her husband faced. I also loved how she related much of it to the Little House On The Prarie books. What happened to Shetterly's family has happened to so many others and I definitely recommend reading this book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

I received a copy of this book as part of the LibraryThing Early reviewers. Even though I hadn't heard Shetterly's NPR reports I really felt that I got to know her in this book.
It was a humbling read; anyone who is making it through the recession relatively unscathed by unemployment or foreclosure should feel obligated to take the time to read this book and through Shetterly's detailed account feel a little of what real people have been experiencing. It is a well written, easy read, and while I accept people's criticism that it was too self focused with not enough anchoring details of what the rest of the country was experiencing, I liked how deeply personal it was. The reader is left with no doubt that this family will ultimately succeed and we wish them much luck.

The author exposes herself to the judging world in this book. She writes about her, and her family's, experience during the recent economic recession and touches on issues that many people were going through, and therefore, had emotions about. While I can't say that I agreed with some of her choices, I also understood that it wasn't my life to llive, but hers. No one can deny that she fought hard to make it work. I think many people had issues with that; they felt she should have fought harder. The difference lies in caring for just yourself and caring for a newborn.
As a piece of literature, the book read as if she was in conversation with the reader, as if she were speaking to you. I expected this, given her NPR background, and actually liked it. Some people do not execute the "talking book" well, but she did.

While I did enjoy the book, it was not what I expected based upon the synopsis provided on the back of the book.

This book chronicals the author's and her husband journey across the United States to make a better life in California. There are ups and downs and when the recession hits the two of the them hard, they make the tough decision to move back home to Maine.

I guess I misunderstood the book description because I thought that Caitlin, her husband, Dan, and baby Matty are taken in by listeners to her NPR "Weekend Edition" show as they make their way back across the country. This was not the case.

However, this book did resound with me because my husband and I are at a turning point in my our own lives and I could relate to how scared Caitin was to just up and move across country without family and friends to be right around the corner to support them.