One of my favourite bloggers, who is also one of the biggest in the bloggy world, has just published her first book. She is Jenny Lawson who writes as The Bloggess, and the book is Let's Pretend This Never Happened. It is smart and funny, and oh yeah debuted at number one on The New York Times bestseller list. Jenny is like a Texas version of Tina Fey, with a crazier life and a way filthier mouth.
Lawson writes about health crises, infertility, loss, motherhood, drugs, crazy stuff at work, crazy families, and lots of taxidermy. She is such a good writer that I could relate, though we have so little in common. But I related to all her life stories because she is smart and funny and real and crazy and loving a hellluva writer and yep mostly crazy.
Any woman who buys a 5-foot metal chicken, which she then names Beyonce, just to drop it at her own front door and run away, all just to startle her husband, is aces in my books. Oh and the husband's reaction? Nothing. Blankly shuts the door and walks away, cuz thats not the strangest thing that has happened to him that day.
Chapter titles include I Was a Three-Year-Old Arsonist, No One Ever Taught Me Couch Etiquette, My Vagina Is Fine Thanks For Asking, and Draw Me A Fucking Dog. So you get the idea...
Example from the book: I just bought a fifty-year-old Cuban alligator dressed as a pirate. It apparently isn't weird, as it sort of goes with Hamlet con Schnitzel (a taxidermied mouse dressed up as Hamlet in a Shakespearean ruff collar) and a stuffed mounted half-squirrel in cowboy gear.
I learned stuff from Let's Pretend..., like it is somewhat sensible when someone brings their pet donkey into a bar, because it's illegal to leave an unattended donkey in your car in Texas.
Lawson is smart and funny and damaged. She believes that the most mortifying moments of our lives, the ones we’d like to pretend never happened, are actually the ones that define us. She shares all of her embarrassing moments proudly, and you may hurt yourself laughing.
I wish I had written this book; not only because is a blogger gone really big, but because the book is smart and touching and hysterically funny. Read it. But read it at home, because you will laugh out loud. A lot. I read it in airports and on planes, and as I laughed out loud over and over it became a little weird. People stared at me. Those judgey bastards....
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