Great read. Gets you hooked from the start. Would highly recommend!!

W. Bruce Cameron, who wrote some great books about dogs and daughters – no he wasn’t comparing them, has returned with his trademarked insightful wit to provide the world with his views on what it means to be a dad. If you are familiar with his work then you’ll love this and if you’ve never read one of his books or columns consider this a great introduction to an amazing writer.

This book doesn’t read like one story but instead a collection of moments that shaped his view on parenthood, being a man and how to be a better human being in general. Reading about his time with John Ritter was especially eloquent and it was nice to find out that Ritter was as great in private as he seemed to be in his acting career. 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, which was based on one of Cameron’s works, was a fantastic show that never quite recovered after Ritter’s death.

With Father’s Day coming up shortly I thought this would make a great gift for my dad and husband and after finishing it I know it’s something I will have to get for them. He has great advice and insight for fathers of kids of all ages and how to guide them when they get to an age they feel like they don’t need their ‘dad’ anymore. The writing is as humorous as you’d expect but most importantly it allows you to take a break from seeing life as such a stressful and difficult job to accomplish; instead you get to take a few moments to see it with different eyes.

Some of the chapters/columns may seem out of touch because he’s writing about things that aren’t around anymore like the early days of the internet and email but there’s this nostalgic quality to his writing that makes them seem priceless instead of outdated.

3.5 Stars

”A Dad’s Purpose” isn’t at all what I expected it to be, but my expectations were only based on four of his other books, so perhaps that’s not quite fair, since the main theme in those are dogs. What they also do not have in common is that they are each stories. What I learned was that he began his career as a humor columnist at Denver Rocky Mountain News. That is relevant to this book, since this read – to me – like a collection of columns. Not necessarily a negative, in and of itself, but it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting

Primarily I had wanted to read this thinking it would potentially make a nice gift for Father’s Day, and while it does contain some chapters that are about parenting, it does cover other topics. There is definitely humour… and there are moments which are genuinely funny, some amusing, some that that would have been funny / funnier perhaps 15 years ago since they include commentaries on celebrities whose years in the flash of the paparazzi included years where their public behavior was questionable, ridiculed.

There is advice for fathers of young children, infants, or that age when you start to see them pulling away, asserting their independence… there’s some words for fathers-to-be, as well.

”I’ll never forget the day my first child was born, when the nurse came up to me, smiling, and ever-so-gently handed me a small, warm bundle of hospital bills.”

Somehow, I managed to never have seen an episode of “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter,” one of the two #1 New York Times Best Selling Books – the other one being, of course, “A Dog’s Purpose.” There’s a lovely section about John Ritter, and what a wonderful man he was in real life, beyond the cameras. There’s really quite a lot of short, fun, funny stories in here, stories about boys trying to date his daughters, about dogs, about his parents, Santa, his time as “Montgomery Moose,” Yoga, flying first class, aging, calories, teaching children how to drive… divorce.

And then he turns on the charm, and shows his tender side, offering some heartfelt advice.

”We parents are not often afforded the opportunity to specifically remember and treasure the last time our kids perform some childlike act. I can’t recall the final bedtime story I read my children, or the last time any of them needed to be carried anywhere. I didn’t notice when it was no longer necessary for me to kiss every one of their dolls good night when I tucked my daughter in, or even the last time I tucked them in. There’s no warning that a treasured ritual is having its curtain call; if there were, perhaps we’d do something special to record the occasion, in memory if not on paper or video, so that maybe we could relive that precious moment.”

This may not have been what I expected, or what I was looking for, but I enjoyed this. Some parts definitely more than others, but I think this would be perfect for someone who reads in smaller doses, since each chapter / section is about ten pages long.


Pub Date: 06 Jun 2017

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Cameron Productions, Inc. / Trident Media Group