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| Are We There Yet | 
 enlarge | Author: Scott Haas
Publisher: Plume
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $0.01
You Save: $13.99 (100%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (19 reviews)
Sales Rank: 2030522
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.7
ISBN: 0452285135
Dewey Decimal Number: 814.6
EAN: 9780452285132
ASIN: 0452285135
Publication Date: February 24, 2004
Release Date: February 24, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Scott Haas thought that whisking his wife and eight-week-old daughter off to Europe was a wonderful idea. After all, wasn't great food, enriching travel, and a cultured, foreign locale the perfect recipe for family bonding? But after just one week in Switzerland, in a house with a leaky roof, an indoor beehive, and in-laws who wanted to be roommates, any illusions of an idyllic family sojourn fell to pieces. And this was just the beginning.
With heartfelt honesty, Are We There Yet? chronicles the Haas family's trials, triumphs, exhaustion and elation as they travel-and eat-their way through vacations in Europe and America. Anyone who's ever taken the family anywhere will relate to these wonderful stories that illustrate the changes we go through when we travel, and the humor and possibility that exist in every journey.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 Better than Barbie August 18, 2005
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I tend to like books about Barbie dolls, dress kits for these dolls, and 19th century English novels with a cunning romantic, regressed nature that speak to my essential loneliness. I am so lonely! Books make me feel real. But then when I'm done reading them, those voices start. That is when I am have unspeakable fantasies about sheep here in Australia. Or is it New Zealand? But I daresay this ironic book, written in the satirical style of Orwell and Waugh, tickled my fancy.
 Disappointing, I found the author not really that funny although he thought he was August 16, 2005
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
I don't usually review books I don't like - it seems a bit mean, after all someone does like these books and it doesn't seem right to be condemning something simply because I just didn't like it. But I have just been reading a whole lot of travel stuff by Bill Bryson, Peter Mayle etc, and this book was stuck in the pile by a friend who wondered what I would think of it.
I really didn't find it funny at all, I found the author to be almost arrogant, both in his ignorance and in his judgements. I also found that he didn't compare well to travel authors who I find genuinely funny (Bill Bryson, Peter Mayle, Tim Cahill for instance).
There were some things I found seemed like set up jokes - his belief that he and his wife had delivered a cone headed baby - a freak....I'm sorry but I just don't think there is anyone in this world who could possibly have been having a baby and not known or understood the process....it just didn't ring true.
And there were instances in it which I found just horrible, rude and unnecessary - leaving a pizza place without paying because the place was busy and their food hadn't arrived - then writing about it as though it was some kind of triumph to not pay. It just didn't seem right to me.
I think my problem is he didn't go through the landscape poking gentle fun at things and being self-deprecating. He just seemed to be brash - and that made him seem a rather ugly traveller to me.
I wouldn't recommend this book as a good read to anyone - it just didn't appeal at all. And I have to admit I gave up on it p166.
Laughter is the Best Medicine December 10, 2004
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
In a time when emotion contaminates observation and ideology diminishes humor, it is a pleasure to come across a book with both observation and humor that are paramount. I work as a volunteer in a library in St. Paul and recommend this book to all my readers hoping they will discover laughter. Certainly a few unhappy, bored, curmudgeonly housewives have returned the book to me saying, "No thinks," (in St. Paul accent), but most with more than pea brains get the jokes.
 Obnoxiously whiny book about conspicious consumption... December 6, 2004
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Thank goodness I only borrowed this book from the library, or I'd be mad at myself for throwing away $14! You would think this would be a very useful book right now, given as I'm about to go on vacation with my family of 5 for a week; if not at least useful, I was hoping for funny. NOT! Talk about poor taste. Unless you like reading re-creations of entire conversations where the rest of the authors obnoxious family is whining about the very idea of going to Switzerland (again!), skip this book and spend the time looking over travel websites with your family instead! :/
The Funniest Book I Read This Year July 27, 2004
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I live on the Emerald Coast of Florida where books are used primarily for propping up sagging tables, but when my friend Zirondelle recommended this book to me I couldn't resist. Zirondelle is a failed writer and the angriest man I know (since his wife left him it's been worse), but, boy, does he know a good book when he sees one! ARE WE THERE YET? is an extremely satirical, ironic book written in the style of Evelyn Waugh. It compels readers to wonder about U.S. imperialism, the importance of family, how we accept sexuality with wives and husbands while children are in the house, and the nature of travel. It embraces contradictions and its honesty is refreshing. As soon as Zirondelle gets out of rehab., I bet he rereads it!
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