{"id":1519,"date":"2012-06-09T00:38:37","date_gmt":"2012-06-09T00:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/?p=1519"},"modified":"2012-06-09T00:38:37","modified_gmt":"2012-06-09T00:38:37","slug":"lets-pretend-this-never-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/?p=1519","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Pretend This Never Happened"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Let's<\/a>
\n author: Jenny Lawson
\n name: Paul
\n average rating: 4.26
\n book published: 2012
\n rating: 5
\n read at: 2012\/05\/17
\n date added: 2012\/05\/18
\n shelves: humor, memoir, new-in-2012, non-fiction
\n review:
Jenny Lawson<\/a> is a recent discovery for me. I came to be aware of her website, The Bloggess, following the Beyonc\u00e9 (the giant metal chicken) post. As a result, I don’t know for sure how much of what appears in Let’s Pretend This Never Happened is lifted directly from her blog, how much is expanded or condensed from other blog posts and how much is new material. I say this because the Beyonc\u00e9 entry appears late in the book, verbatim from the blog as near as I can tell. That’s not really a complaint because the original post was awesome and deserves to be included. What I mean, really, is that it’s possible that if you’re a longtime reader of her blog, some or most of this won’t be fresh material.<\/p>\n

For me, that doesn’t really matter because like I said, there was only one brief chapter (worth re-reading anyway) that was familiar. And, I suppose, if you were a longtime fan of Lawson’s blog, you might be the kind of person to pick up this book just to have it, or just to support her career. So I’ll assume for the sake of the argument that you’re like me and un- or passingly-familiar with The Bloggess.<\/p>\n

The main thing to be said up front is that Lawson is hilarious. I mean, really, really, hilarious. It’s hard to remember the last time I laughed out loud at a book as frequently or as uncontrollably as I did reading Let’s Pretend. It got downright embarrassing at points to be reading this book on the train\/shuttle combo I take to work, because I’d be sitting there, shoulders shaking with laughter, tears and snot running down my face, side aching and trying desperately to convince my fellow commuters that I wasn’t having some sort of attack. Which of course I couldn’t, because I was laughing too hard to breathe or speak. I’m really surprised no one called an ambulance.<\/p>\n

What surprised me a little is how touching the book can be as well. It’s not really a see-saw kind of thing that plays with your emotions, but there are nuggets of sweet truths peppered throughout, just enough to make you understand that this isn’t simply a stand-up routine in prose. Lawson is brutally (I actually want to use the word “ruthlessly” here) honest, over-sharing almost on every page, but to perfection. I really can’t think of anyone else who can make a chapter about three miscarriages and the resulting mental breakdown that understandably accompanied them snort-beverage-through-your-nose funny, but Lawson manages it.<\/p>\n

I will say that, in case you didn’t catch the implication from the above, Lawson’s humor is raw, no-holds-barred and totally inappropriate. Which is the same as saying it’s not for everyone. I assume<\/em>, anyway; maybe there aren’t any people out there who dislike jokes about taxidermy and OD’ing on laxatives. What do I know? I do know that there are people I can think of to whom I wouldn’t necessarily give this book as a gift, so maybe that’s all I’m really saying. But for me, this was just a funny, funny book from cover to cover.<\/p>\n

I must be really weird about comedy, though. Because my inclination is to give this book four stars, even though I loved it. Somehow something that makes me laugh feels like… I’m not sure. Easy, maybe? But then I just got through saying that I couldn’t think of a book that had made me laugh as much as this. I guess something makes me think of humor as sort of disposable, as if it could only ever reach a certain plateau if it also contained a riveting plot or something. But then I have to remember that this is a memoir, and plot isn’t really the point. Then I start to think, “Yeah, but does this book really belong up there with my all-time favorites?” Perhaps not. But then again, I can’t think of a single reason for anyone not to read this book unless you’re the kind of person who doesn’t find Lawson’s brand of warped, irreverent, neurotic writing funny. At which point I decide to stop being stingy with my ratings just to be a grump and give it my highest praise.<\/p>\n

Seriously, though, read the book.<\/p>\n

\nfrom Paul's bookshelf: read<\/a> \u2014 May 18, 2012 at 08:53AM<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

author: Jenny Lawson name: Paul average rating: 4.26 book published: 2012 rating: 5 read at: 2012\/05\/17 date added: 2012\/05\/18 shelves: humor, memoir, new-in-2012, non-fiction review: Jenny Lawson is a recent discovery for me. I came to be aware of her website, The Bloggess, following the Beyonc\u00e9 (the giant metal chicken) post. As a result, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pauls-bookshelf-read"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1520,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519\/revisions\/1520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}