Review: Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

Title: Let's Pretend This Never Happened
Author: Jenny Lawson
Source: Purchased
Genre: Memoir/Humor
Buy: Amazon ~*~ Barnes & Noble
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Caution: May contain spoilers

When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father (a professional taxidermist who created dead-animal hand puppets) and a childhood of wearing winter shoes made out of used bread sacks. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame spiral that is her life, and we are all the better for it.

Lawson's long-suffering husband and sweet daughter are the perfect comedic foils to her absurdities, and help her to uncover the surprising discovery that the most terribly human moments-the ones we want to pretend never happened-are the very same moments that make us the people we are today.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened is a poignantly disturbing, yet darkly hysterical tome for every intellectual misfit who thought they were the only ones to think the things that Lawson dares to say out loud. Like laughing at a funeral, this book is both irreverent and impossible to hold back once you get started.

~synopsis from Goodreads

My Thoughts:

Jenny Lawson is better known in the blogosphere as The Bloggess. I first discovered her blog upon reading this post after being linked to it from another site. I subscribed to her posts, not knowing much about her, and discovered that she was one of the most hilarious persons I’ve ever known. If her blog posts could have me laughing out loud, her book would have to be more funny. AND IT WAS. This book is, as she puts it, “a mostly true memoir” where she chronicles numerous events in her life. We’re taken through a maze of memories from her childhood with her parents and sister to adulthood with her husband and daughter.

You would think that reading a memoir could be boring… oh sweetie… not even. I picked this up right before I went to bed one night. MISTAKE. Not to read it in general, but to read it when everyone is in bed. Why? Because I almost laughed so hard that if I hadn’t shoved my face into a pillow I would have woken up everybody in the house who would then come to my door and demand why I’m laughing so hard. And to explain what was so funny would be not only hard to explain easily but also hard to speak without laughing and rolling around on the floor. I did end up reading the first paragraph of the first chapter to a friend and I could hardly get through the first half without doubling over.

What is so funny about what Jenny Lawson says? She is very straightforward about the things the majority would consider taboo to speak of so… frankly. Sometimes her thoughts fly off into left field, completely deviating from the original story to tell another story slightly irrelevant to the first. But the fact that she is so honest, direct, and outspoken makes these bizarre stories and thoughts so outrageously hilarious. She says everything you were thinking but would never admit, and everything you could be thinking if your train of thought ever went in that direction.

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened is, BY FAR, the most hilarious thing I have ever, or will ever read (until she publishes another book). I’m usually fairly conservative when it comes to expressing myself. I don’t go overboard--I’m very shy, even on this blog. Reading this book has opened me up to new heights. I want to be more funny, like I am in my head and around the people I am close to. Jenny Lawson had me not just laughing but applauding her for turning a phrase so perfectly. I recommend anyone who is not easily offended to check her out, not just her book, but also her blog. I suggest starting with this post, as it is one of my favorites.

My Rating:

Exceptional: Stay up until at least 1 AM