Jenny Lawson, also known as The Bloggess, is very funny
- the kind of funny that makes you snort sometimes. I started reading her blog
after my mum forwarded me this post, which happened to be one of the stories she included
in her new “mostly true” memoir, Let’s
Pretend This Never Happened. Mum pre-ordered the book and then kindly
gave it to me to read first; in return I unknowingly gave her and her family the
bug we’d all come down with the previous week. It wasn’t really a fair swap.*
I’m not sure what makes a good memoir; is it how much
of it you can relate to? Because there’s not too much I share in common with Lawson. This book is a collection
of stories about things like growing up with a crazy (but loving) father in
Texas and meeting her husband while browsing alongside him in the witchcraft
section of a bookshop and dealing with anxiety disorders/OCD and being
strangely obsessed with zombies and taxidermied animals.
I wanted to like this book more than I did, and laugh
more than I did. There were truly hilarious parts in it, including a story about
laxatives which had me wheezing at one point, but I found Lawson’s chatty
writing style a little wearing and predictable at times and didn’t really mind
that the book ended. I’m not sure that I’d recommend it to anyone
who isn’t already a fan; I would, however, highly recommend Lawson's blog. If you
don’t already follow it, here are four example posts to either whet your appetite
or turn you off forever (I should warn you first: The Bloggess is irreverent
and doesn’t mind using the f-word):
- A conversation with her husband (Victor)
- What she wore to see Twilight
- Another conversation with Victor
- A recent one: David Thorne*-style correspondence with a guy from PETA
No, really.
///
* Sorry about that, Mum. I’ll return the book if you
promise not to give back the tummy thing.
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