Let's Pretend This Never Happened Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B007UWP66O | Format: PDF
Let's Pretend This Never Happened Description
Audie Award Nominee, Humor, 2013
For fans of Tina Fey and David Sedaris - Internet star Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, makes her literary debut.
Jenny Lawson realized that the most mortifying moments of our lives - the ones we'd like to pretend never happened - are in fact the ones that define us. In Let's Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson takes listeners on a hilarious journey recalling her bizarre upbringing in rural Texas, her devastatingly awkward high school years, and her relationship with her long-suffering husband, Victor.
Chapters include: "Stanley the Magical, Talking Squirrel", "A Series of Angry Post-It Notes to My Husband", "My Vagina Is Fine. Thanks for Asking", and "And Then I Snuck a Dead Cuban Alligator on an Airplane".
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 8 hours and 41 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Penguin Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: April 17, 2012
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B007UWP66O
I like the bloggess. Jenny Lawson is witty, warm, and delightful, and can be clever as well. Not that you'd be able to tell by this book. Let's Pretend This Never Happened is a rambling collection of anecdotes from Mrs. Lawson's "crazy" upbringing, and some of the stories are amusing, and pitiful, but lordy, she steps all over her punchlines with her absolute, undying need to point out just how wacky it all really was. Just tell me the story and let me decide, okay? If I think it's funny, I'll laugh. You don't have to cue me. It's like how Jay Leno has to ruin EVERY joke he tells by explaining the punch line in detail. We get it. You're now making it less funny. I retract my laugh. Thank you.
I respect Mrs. Lawson too much to suggest that her editor required her to pad the book for a greater word count, but it does tend to feel that way. Stories that might have been funny (might, not a given) if left to their own devices are weighed down by the author's assertions that Yes! My childhood was just THAT effed up, ya'll! I really wanted her to stop doing that. Over and over. And on that point, exactly how many times can you read the F word before it loses its power of emphasis? It is not used sparingly. I am a cusser, so I was not offended in the least, but it did get distracting. I started to wonder at her unvaried vocabulary a little bit.
The stories themselves are hit or miss. It was difficult for me to tell if I wasn't laughing because it wasn't a funny story or if the stories were just interrupted too much and overly interpreted for me by the author. I also had an unconventional upbringing, and it's possible my opinion is skewed on that account, but I felt that many of these "crazy" scenarios just weren't that weird. She just kept telling me that they were.
If we're all a figment of someone's imagination (and who doesn't hope that's true), I'm pretty sure that "someone" is Jenny Lawson. In her Mostly True Memoir, Jenny pops open her skull and takes readers on a tour of her memories by way of a kind of genius that leans precariously close to insanity. "Let's Pretend..." is a roller coaster of little stories constructed from run-on sentences, rabbit trails and footnotes, but you absolutely have to ride it because the people getting off are smiling creepy-big smiles while they're puking and it's clear they won't hesitate to stab you for your place in line.
It's the kind of book you pick up because there's a Shakespearean mouse on the cover and can't put down because the literary taxidermy on the inside is an even more compelling blend of the real and the unreal. Her humor comes as much from the way she tells her stories as the stories themselves. Jenny isn't for the squeamish, though, which is another way of saying she writes without filters or a net. This is a good thing, because her family's stories couldn't be told any other way. By the way, her family is nothing like your family. And yet, after reading the book, you'll wonder how she managed to reveal your family's secrets anyway.
"Let's Pretend This Never Happened" will prompt more than a few embarrassed laughs, but that's kind of the point. We should all laugh embarrassed laughs at least twice a week.
Lots of readers will probably compare Jenny to David Sedaris and Tina Fey, and these are reasonable, polite and generous comparisons, but Jenny's voice is ultimately her own and entirely unique. It is as confident as it is uncertain, as broad as it is intimate, as raw as it is refined, and it is because of these paradoxes that readers will feel safe here.
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