Maybe not furiously, but I'm sure happy

One of the perks of being a librarian? I am reading this book right now and it doesn't officially come out until Tuesday!!

I am a happy camper ... although I have to try to finish it before Monday evening so that it can go out officially on our shelves on Tuesday. And I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to read stuff before it officially comes out anyway, but I CAN'T NOT. It's Jenny Lawson.


I discovered Jenny Lawson through "Let's Pretend This Never Happened," which my library got, and I devoured, and then my book club read it so I read it again, on audio (which was even better because Jenny actually read it, and then told a bonus story about an ice cream shack), and then I bought it. This is big for me; despite being a librarian, I don't just buy books. Sometimes I grab them if they're free, or 25 cents or something. But I am often too scattered to get around to buying books I meant to buy because they're awesome and need to be in my personal library, much less buy books willy nilly. I do this with movie too, I will not be conscious of needing a movie until I've watched it 20 times and renewed it as many times as humanly possible from whatever library I got it from, and finally I think, "Huh, I should probably just buy this so I can rewatch it anytime I want."

 And books I hardly ever reread, even if they're great, because it just takes so damn long to read a book. But really, often I'll buy a book or movie and never actually open it, because I've already read/watched it 3 times, I just had to OWN it. (You know, the nice capitalist pig feeling of having something but not necessarily using it?) Anyway, "Let's Pretend This Never Happened" was one of those books, because I not only want to display it on my (overstuffed and double-stacked but nevertheless meticulously Dewey-ed) bookshelf, but I know I will actually reread it, because it cheers me up if I'm sad, because it's so damn hilarious. My sense of humor is really bizarre and I laugh at things no one else thinks is funny, force things to be funny that are even slightly amusing, and enjoy apparently very "indy" types of humor that the latest Hollywood comedy does not have - anyway, Jenny's books make me almost pee myself. It takes a lot to get me to that point (or sometimes the sentence "Hang on I gotta go steal a spoon."*) so I can only imagine what other people go through. All I know is this is my kinda funny. Or one of them.

And then there's the fact it makes me feel less crazy, or at least that other people are also crazy and people still love them and they get book deals. That is basically the gist of Jenny Lawson's books and why they are the Best Thing Ever: a) hilarious, and b) a comforting sense of I'm-mad-you're-mad-we're-all-mad-here (Lewis Carroll reference that if you don't get, I feel sorry for you).

Anyway I'm only about halfway through, but ...

Things Jenny Lawson Does/Writes About in "Furiously Happy" That I Also Do/Experience:

1) Get very behind on email/social media, freak out and then bail on the entire account and never go back
2) Write down weird random free-associative things I think of in the middle of the night/other times that I then reread and think WTF.
3) Want to hide under a table in social situations, and when I manage not to, probably say something weird/random that I regret later and/or no one gets, but hey at least I'm not under a table!

Yeah, in conclusion, I love these two books, which are now two books and not just one, and I'm really way too happy reading the latest one. My thesis is you should buy them both and read them immediately. (I mean, if you read A Series of Unfortunate Disclaimers in the front of the book and still want to proceed of course.)

*From Peter Craig's novel "Hot Plastic," a line that made me laugh really hard and I still have no idea why.