Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson


When your hairdresser recommends a book that made her laugh so hard on vacation that people wondered about her sanity - and then goes the extra mile and brings the book to the salon to loan - you have to read it.  I was unfamiliar with Jenny Lawson (aka The Bloggess: Like Mother Theresa Only Better).  The comparisons to Tina Fey and David Sedaris are correct - she is a hoot.  The book is purportedly a memoir of her twisted upbringing with parents who make Jeanette Walls' (The Glass Castle) parents look like the safe bet.  A tiny bit of the humor of her stories about her red neck father's hunting may have seemed a bit more believable because I read most of the book as I spend a luxurious night alone while my husband was overseeing the antics of his nephew's bachelor party taking place in an unfinished hunting cabin in Southern Ohio.  I have seen guys like her father, but never had them brought to life in such hilarious detail.  Every chapter - and they have titles like:“Stanley the Magical, Talking Squirrel”; “A Series of Angry Post-It Notes to My Husband”; and “My Vagina Is Fine. Thanks for Asking” - is a crazed rant about a single episode of her life and most of them are illustrated with vintage black and white photographs captioned to document the events.  If you want a better introduction, check out the book trailer 

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