taralovesbooks’ #CBR4 Review #15: Pledged by Alexandra Robbins
Cannonball Read IV: Book #15/52
Published: 2004
Pages: 384
Genre: Nonfiction
I have almost zero interest in sororities, but I found this book for $1 at a used bookstore. I decided to pick it up because my best friend from high school joined a sorority in college while my small, private college had absolutely no Greek system whatsoever (we didn’t even have a football team!). She got really into the whole sorority thing (and still is five years after college) and I guess I just don’t really get it. To me, it seems like you’re paying people to choose whether your good enough to be their friend. But she seemed to have a good experience that was almost nothing like the craziness in this book. Because of that (and so I don’t get flamed by sorority girls), I completely understand that what I read is NOT a representation of all sororities. The author even states this at the beginning of the book. Just to clarify again, I fully understand that there are good, decent sororities out there….they just aren’t really represented in this book because, frankly, that would be boring.
I read this book knowing almost nothing about how the Greek system works besides random tidbits I’ve heard from my one friend (the only person I really know that was in a sorority). The lingo was always strange (Spring Sing? Jump week? Bigs and littles?) and I never really knew what any of it was. Thanks to this book, I now know what all that crap is. Sigh. More useless knowledge, I guess.
Read the rest of my review in my blog!
Interestingly, I read this before I started college. A friend who, at the time, was interested in pledging a sorority handed it off to me just because she found it interesting and recommended it to me. I, at the time, had no particular desire to join the Greek system, but through an unexpected series of events ended up joining a sorority anyway my freshman year.
There were several elements in this book at did ring true, but overall it wasn’t reflective of my experience (thank God.) Most of my “sisters” had also read it and we were trying desperately to figure out where this was taking place!