Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir
Ratings132
Average rating3.9
Supposed to be a funny memoir, but I didn't laugh once. Some bits were interesting. Probably could have just stuck to the blog, though.
I have NEVER laughed this hard and this often when reading any book - ever! Tears running down my face, and literally ending up in coughing fits of laughter...
I read it slowly (on purpose) so that I would be forced to enjoy a little bit of it each day.
(And here I am, changing this book's rating to five stars. It's because, months after I've read it, I've thought of certain parts and they made me laugh out loud all over again. I can't not give this 5 stars.)
The writing is messy (though in a very relatable and charming way) and the essays/anecdotes inside rarely flow.
That's about all the negative things I can say about this book. It's no masterpiece, but it's incredibly funny. It's absurd and awkward, though there's something really human and personal about it as well.
This was a perfect audiobook for my long commute. I laughed the entire way to class every night. Jenny Lawson is an absolute queen of the world and her stories made me both lightheaded from laughing and secure in the knowledge that I am not alone in being weird haha. Well done, Jenny.
I felt like this book was a 3.5 when I finished it, but now it's a 4 after thinking about it for the last week. I related to too many awkward, disgusting, or hilariously dark things in this book, and I'm SO glad. At times it made me appreciate parts of my life in new ways... And at other times it made me snort-suffocate while my husband glared at me for laughing so much.
4.5, really. It's rare that a book makes me laugh out loud. Loads of quotable quotes, some cringe-worthy moments, and plenty of feels.
It's funny, felt like attending a stand-up night that is never ending, but nothing more than that unfortunately
Much of this book was funny. I could totally relate to the small town girl growing up with crazy parents and I enjoyed that part. It has a lot or profanities, and it's easy to be offended by a lot of the content. I was hoping I could get through all the swearing and enjoy the story, but it's just so saturated with swear words and offensive words that I couldn't carry on. I read about half of it.
Entertaining but had a ton of filler. (saying “sorry editor” doesn't really help.) I really liked Jenny Lawson as a person. Still, there were very few guffaws (and more titters) to be had from this book.
I am getting mad at all the poor ratings I'm seeing on here cause that book is SO FREAKING GOOD.
back with an actual review
Very funny- this book had several LOL moments. You can't help but be won over by Jenny Lawson's self-depreciating humor. She helps you realize that life Is absurd, but that is also what makes it special.
This book arrived in the mail the other day. Great title. Great cover. I couldn't wait to read it.
Then I turned the book over and started reading the back.
And that was as far as I got.
Forgive me, but I cannot read this book. If my dad saw me reading this book, he'd wash my mouth out with soap. My mom would have put me in the corner and grounded me for a month. I have friends who would have had a public burning of this book.
I'm afraid it's not a book for me. I'm not really a modern girl who casually mixes the profane with the sacred.
I wish it had never come in the mail for me.
Can we pretend this never happened?
I should have started with that but instead started with Furiously Happy. In that one Jenny really found her style, in this one it's a bit less refined. Great book nonetheless!
It had great moments, laugh out loud ones really (see my updates). But they were not constant and throughout the whole book, which you kinda expect in a book like this. Of course, it is high expectations, but one does have them.
Before Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr made words superfluous, I was a card carrying member of the blogsphere. Apart from dissecting my life in long form several times a week over 4 years I eagerly consumed an extensive blogroll. I loved the funny vignettes painted by fellow bloggers. It was my equivalent to the morning paper as I settled into the office in the morning.
Jenny Lawson's book reminds me of some of the best aspects of that world (no surprise as she is a blogger herself) It's outsized personalities finding the drama in everyday life and celebrating the absurd while chasing down every tangent and oh look! something shiny over there! Bad-ass Harry Potter vaginas, Beyonce the Giant Metal Chicken, and hand puppets made from small dead rodents.
Oh relax, it was a squirrel. Funny, random, self-indulgent.
Jenny Lawson is a funny lady. She's just my kind of sassy, neurotic and rude. When this book works, it's because she's writing with her own voice, the same voice you hear on her blog. When this book doesn't work – which is, unfortunately, most of the time – it's because someone took that same voice and tried to hit it with the literary stick. What you get is a dull hybrid that falls too flat to be any way engaging. It's a shame. Although I'd say this is almost certainly first-time jitters and her next book will be something special.
This is a ridiculous book.
Jenny Lawson's blogging career is a pale curtain disguising a life so breathtakingly wild that even with the suspicion that much of this book is exaggerated, the fact remains that she's lived a magnificently hilarious life. Reading about it is a consistently compelling experience.
Also, be aware that you will likely split your sides laughing, because the stream-of-consciousness tangents and improbable anecdotes paint the picture of a person so bizarre and off the wall that we find her effortlessly charming in ways that are familiar to all introverts, nerds, and socially awkward people.
Highly recommended.
I laughed. I laughed until I cried.
And then I laughed until I cried so hard that my eyes hurt and I was snorting like an asthmatic hyena. And then I clapped my hands over my mouth because my son was sleeping. But I was still sort of snorting anyway.
Yes, it is that kind of book. It is irreverant and absurd, real and raw, touching and sweet.
It is one of my new favorite books ever and one that I will return to regularly when I need a good laugh, when I need to feel like I'm not crazy, and when I need to feel like there is at least one other human being in this world who can understand me...
It takes a strong person to share her most embarrassing moments with complete strangers. Lawson does so in a heart-to-heart, but don't-pity-me sort of way. I wanted to include the quotes that made me laugh or reflect on my life the most, but I just highlighted way too many to include here. I'll just include the one that sums up the book and Lawson's way of approaching life: “you are not defined by life's imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them. Because there is joy in embracing- rather than running screaming from- the utter absurdity of life.”
My biggest takeaway from reading this book: Accept that your dad marches to the beat of a different drum, hug him, and thank him for not waking you up in the middle of the night to entertain you with a dead squirrel puppet show. Thanks, Pop!
I wish Goodreads let us give books half-stars; 3 stars feels like not enough, and 4 stars feels like way too many. So pretend that I gave this book 3.5 stars.
In short: the start of this book is 4 out of 5, the middle bits are 5 out of 5, and the end is about 3 out of 5.
I'll start with the good things. Once you get used to her, Jenny Lawson is extremely funny. The start of the book kind of feels like she's trying too hard, but as you keep reading, you start to realize it isn't the case; I'm pretty sure that's just who she is in real life.
Surprisingly, Jenny is at her best when writing about more serious issues like friendship, sickness, and the babies she lost. She manages to handle these issues in her trademark style, without getting extraordinarily depressing, or being particularly offensive.
If you read this book in print, I kind of pity you. The audio edition is entirely worth the price. Although I must admit that I purchased my copy from audible for $5. But those of you reading the print book, instead of listening to it as Delivered by the author herself, missed a lot. First of all, Jenny feels the need to sing every chapter heading, for some strange reason that I really don't understand. This does add something to the book, although I'm not sure quite what. Second, she's an entirely natural sounding reader, giving the audiobook a conversational feel that I suspect would be missing from letters on a page. Third, some of the included sound effects were just so silly that they made me laugh in and of themselves. Fourth, the five or so minutes of bonus outtakes at the end were worth it, if only to convince me that Jenny Lawson really is who the book makes her out to be. But I'm glad they were saved for the end, because if I had tried to play that drinking game, I would be dead. The only criticisms I have of the audio are that the narration sounds really unnatural when she's trying to read her footnotes, and that her voice sounds a bit like she's 13. Hearing someone who sounds 13 say the word Vagina that many times is just a little disconcerting at first. Even though it's been 2 days since I finished the book, I've heard the word Vagina so often that it still sounds like nonsense.
Okay, now I'm going to move on to the stuff that I didn't like. First off, keep in mind that I don't suffer from any kind of anxiety disorder, and don't have a lot of experience with it. Also, I don't have a vagina. I suspect that makes my reaction quite different from those who are coping with anxiety, or do have a vagina. The best way I can articulate the problem is that I felt like I was laughing at the author, not with her. Especially in the chapter when she was discussing anxiety disorder directly, I would find myself belly-laughing. Then I would stop, realize this is a serious problem, and wonder if I should really be laughing at it. But the writing is so funny that it sets you up to laugh, even if you suspect that you shouldn't. I ran into that discomfort repeatedly throughout the book, realizing that I was laughing at something serious (poor parenting, female issues, etc) that I had no experience with, and wondering if that made me an insensitive person. If you're a female with anxiety disorder, I doubt you'll have this reaction at all, though you could be totally offended.
My second problem with the book is that it seems to drag on far too long. By about the three quarter mark, I was getting ready for the end, but it never seemed to come! Some of the visits home could have been cut, or shortened, without really taking anything away from the book. They just felt like the same humour, repeated with only slightly different events. Once again though, this could have had something to do with how I read the book. Me and my girlfriend sat down to listen to the audiobook in two marathon sittings, and by half way through the second one, we were both thinking about what book we wanted to read together next. I suspect that if I had read each chapter in the context of a blog, at one chapter per day, I might not have had this problem. It might just be a case of Lawson overload. If you have the time and ability, I recommend pacing yourself, and reading only 1 or 2 chapters per day. I suspect it'll be funnier that way.
The first book that has literally made me both laugh and cry hysterically. Jenny Lawson, you are my hero.