Chapter One Hundred Eighty: Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

So I just finished listening to the audiobook of Jenny Lawson's first memoir, Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir.*  I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this memoir, but first, an important fact about it: the cover features a taxidermied white mouse standing on its hind legs and wearing a cape and Elizabethan neck ruff, so if that scares you off, this probably isn't the book for you (although I'd still suggest giving it a try anyway because it's always good to expand your horizons).  What can I even say about Let's Pretend This Never Happened?  It's mainly hilarious (especially in the audio version, which features great sound effects (cow bells, staplers, crying babies, etc.) when appropriate and also because Lawson reads it herself, singing the title of each chapter).  Right, so Let's Pretend This Never Happened is definitely humorous, but it also offers up a nice balance of more reflective moments--it's not just Lawson mindlessly poking fun at herself or her childhood and family life.  (The key word in that last sentence was mindlessly--there's plenty of fun-poking, but never really just for its own sake.)  This memoir ranges from Lawson's childhood to her adult life (up till the time she wrote it, obviously, it's not like she tries to write a memoir of her future life, though if anyone could pull it off, it might be her), covering topics from taxidermy (duh) to her anxiety disorder to her time working in HR (hilarious!) to her attempt at being goth as a high schooler in rural, small-town Texas.  Basically, there's something for everyone in here!  But it's especially for you if you like memoirs of people with interesting daily lives, or humorous personal essays, or people who write with a really original voice.

>>Read alike: If you enjoy reading David Sedaris, definitely try Let's Pretend This Never Happened.



*You can find my thoughts about her second memoir, Furiously Happy, in a December 2015 post on this blog.  Her next book, You Are Here: An Owner's Manual for Dangerous Minds is coming out this fall, and I'm already on the waitlist at the library for it, so look for a future Jenny Lawson post, too.

Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Nine: The Night Circus

So I read Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus about a month ago, before embarking on vacation (and actually ended up having a great conversation with the woman across the aisle from me on the plane when she saw me finishing it).  I don't know why it's taken me so long to write about it here, because I really enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a good solid fantastic love story about dueling magicians who just happen to be star-crossed lovers.  Set in the years around the fin de siècle, this story, told from multiple perspectives and not entirely chronologically, follows the movements of and main players in a literally magical circus.  The characters are vivid, the setting is engrossing, the plot is original--the whole book is really almost too atmospheric, but stops just short of being overdone and instead just creates this fantastic world that's a pleasure to inhabit for the course of the book.  (It reminds me a bit of The Swan Gondola--which I reviewed on this blog in August 2014--but where The Swan Gondola did go just that bit overboard in being atmospheric, The Night Circus gets the blend of atmosphere and action just right.  If you liked The Swan Gondola, though, do check out The Night Circus, and vice versa.)  I was so eager to find out how things would end that I couldn't read the last quarter of the book fast enough, and at some point I'd like to go back and re-read the book with a bit more of an eye toward its many details, now that the fever of wanting to know what will happen has been broken.  For an engaging and entertaining work of fantasy--or maybe magical realism is more accurate, actually--that combines intrigue and romance, take a look at The Night Circus.

Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Eight: Dark Matter

So I just, within the last hour, finished reading Dark Matter by Blake Crouch.  Not normally the type of book I'd choose on my own, I read it upon the strong and enthusiastic suggestion (exhortation, really) of a co-worker, and I see now why she was pushing it.  The first third or so of the book is... not slow, for sure, there's plenty of action--it's more that the stakes really aren't clear yet.  But at a certain point, everything shifts, and it's like [insert explosion sound effects here].  I'm not sure there are words to really describe it.  Then things get intense, and I was nearly late to work today and coming back from lunch because I was reading Dark Matter!  You have to be open to science fiction, and there's some fairly dark and violent stuff (but I generally steer clear of that sort of thing, and I was okay with this book), but if you want a book that will keep you guessing until the last page,  take a look at Dark Matter.