reaction: This book deserves ALL THE STARS!
You knew that was coming, right : On a serious note, I loved Allie Brosh's funny, honest, and charming account of her life through the artwork and narration in "Hyperbole and a Half.
" This book is a compilation of several stories Brosh has told on her blog of the same name, compiled in this book, along with some stories I'll admit I haven't seen before.
Full review:
I always have a difficult time writing reviews on books that hit my alltime favorites list, and this book was no exception.
Allie Brosh's "Hyperbole and a Half" is based upon her very popular posts on her website of the same name.
I started following it quite some time ago and was taken by her very humorous and true to life narratives coupled with awesome artwork.
Yes, I said it, her artwork is awesome, even if said artwork includes possessed, demonic repressed geese, But at least accurate portrayal is accurate, That true story was hilarious,
If there were a single quibble that I would have about the collection in general I think the ARC could've done with maybe a bit of background info on Allie as well as a TOC showing the order of the tales that were included in the narrative.
I think that might be helpful for people who are not only just being introduced to Allie's narratives in general, but also just for organizational/orientation's sake.
I think the first included entry in the series of comics and narratives is appropriate though, considering it's Allie addressing her ten year old self and younger selves at the age of, and realizing that finding a letter written to her future self from ten years old was.
. . well, a weird experience.
The narratives from there on are random presentations of Allie Brosh's life, from her experiences with her family, loved ones, and dogs, to expansions on growing up to adulthood and depression.
So much of the narratives I could relate to, and I had a good laugh with them and learned a bit more about Brosh in the process.
She has a fresh, identifiable wit that comes across in both the art and anecdotes, even for some of the tough subjects she addresses.
That I respected a lot and I consider her my heroine for being honest and good humored in the same measure.
It's a fun read, and one I would wholeheartedly recommend,
Overall score:/stars
Note: I received this as an ARC from NetGalley, from the publisher Touchstone.
This book had me laughing so hard I started crying, I mean that as a compliment,
Allie Brosh writes the popular blog Hyperbole and a Half, and this is a collection of her favorite web comics and a few new ones.
I first found her blog when her post titled "This is Why I'll Never Be an Adult" was getting shared on Facebook and Twitter.
It's about her occasional bursts of motivation to Get Stuff Done, but how exhausting and frustrating it quickly becomes to be so responsible.
I was happy to see this comic included in the book,
Besides the Adult chapter, some of my favorite pieces were about Allie trying to train her dog, her early obsession with cake, a hilarious and terrifying attack by a goose, and some letters she writes to her younger self.
I was laughing so loudly and uncontrollably that I think I annoyed my husband, who was trying to work in the other room.
Of course I had to interrupt him every few minutes and thrust the book at him, saying, "Read this! It's so funny and clever!" He did admit it was funny.
Some of the comics are also insightful, discussing her experiences with depression and identity in a selfdeprecating way.
I highly recommend the book to anyone who wants a good laugh,
For your reading enjoyment, here is a link to her post about trying to be an adult: sitelink blogspot. com Hyperbole and a Half
I'm happy that this book exists.
If I had known about the blog, like millions of other people, before the book came out I would have been happy that it had existed.
But I didn't. Who knew there was good stuff out there on the interwebs
I couldn't believe how much I was actually laughing out loud at the first story when she finds a letter from her ten year old self to her older self and then responds with writing letters to various aged younger versions of herself.
This is literally and I mean literally, literally here the most I've ever laughed at something in a book.
A few of the later stories I was not a huge fan of, but they didn't do much to diminish my overall enjoyment of the book.
Eight days after reading the book I can't even remember which ones those were, In my memory they are all great, so yay shitty memory!
I also blame myself for reading most of this book in one sitting.
I kept thinking, maybe I should leave Karen's apartment, and not just sit on her bed and pet her cat for a while longer, but I'll just read one more story, and that one story led to one more, and one more and then I was all done with the book thanks to the humorous crack like quality of the book.
I'm sure Maggie was happy with the extra pets she got because of this,
Allie Brosh is fucking funny, If you're like me and fairly stupid about popular things on the internet i, e. , you never heard of her blog before seeing this in a bookstore, then I'd recommend you either going to look at the blog now or picking up a copy of this.
I really don't know how much of this is original material, so maybe if you've been reading the blog it wouldn't be as new and exciting for you as it was for me, but it's now available in the handy handheld version that you can touch and turn the pages of.
Anyway really funny and cute, She draws dogs just about as good as Jeffrey Brown draws cats, which is a total compliment, A couple of the things in the depression pieces hit a little too close to home, and may have soured my mood for the rest of the day, but they were still a pleasurable way to have my mood soured for the day, sort of in the same way I'll keeping listening to Clarissa's Wierd over and over again even though I know that it's not going to end well for me.
Some reviewers I have seen say that this book mostly contains things from the blog, which is great for those of us who seem to be blind to the internet outside of goodreads.
Maybe inI'll set myself some low reading goal for the year so I can focus more on catching up with this whole blogging craze.
This will be a good time to do this, because I'm sure there will be something all new and exciting going on by then or now that I can be equally clueless about, but marvel at when it's released in book format.
I don't think I've read any other humor books released this year, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is the best one.
If not the actual best one, then the best one I've read,
legal disclaimer: I have borrowed this book from a friend, which is like getting it from Netgalley.
I didn't pay to read it, and after a certain period of time it will no longer be in my possession, and I will have to get my own copy, or just leaf through it in a bookstore, or maybe a library, if I want to reread it, or refer back to the book when three or four years from now someone decides to tell me that I'm not very clever or smart and that I was in fact wrong about finding this book funny, and then I'll feel the need to go back to the book to defend why I thought it was funny, which will be impossible because if someone doesn't find something funny it never adds improves the situation by describing to the person why something is funny.
I've been amiss lately at adding necessary legal disclaimers to my reviews, It's almost safe to say but not entirely true, that just about everything I've reviewed in the past few months was not purchased by me, and in most times not purchased by anyone.
I'm certain this book has been purchased though, In the past six months I'm fairly certain that I have purchasedbooks, two of which I have read and one which I reviewed favorably.
I feel like I'm begging the question of, “what did you purchase, Greg” It's not important,
“Desperation breeds ingenuity”
It was definitely a witty, funny read, many times it was so hilarious, often, twisted and yet, still very relatable.
It was also sometimes sad but very genuine, Just salute to the author for simply admitting the lousiest things that sometimes come across our humans unpredictable, messed up heads.
The drawings are hilarious and I completely enjoyed the fun read,
I know this is not much so do check out my friends' reviews:
sitelinkShelby's
sitelinkTamara's
sitelinkPinky's I'd like to say I liked this book I did try to.
And I can't deny the freaky power of Allie Brosh's crudely drawn illustrations to evoke complicated emotions and ideas.
But I'm tired of navelgazing blogs turned into books this one reminded me over and over again of Jen Lancaster
both Brosh and Lancaster, for instance, tell stories of their unloveable dogs that I suppose are intended to make us love the wild rascals or admire their owners for putting up with their bad behavior but only leave me cold and disgusted.
Train your goddamn dog or put it down,
And both Brosh and Lancaster spend much time reminding us of what petty and shitty Brosh's word people they are.
While Lancaster writes with selfdeprecating humor in an effort to diffuse her petty behavior, Brosh analyzes and analyzes how she compensates for her shittiness by lying to herself and consoling herself with delusions about how great she is.
Her poststurnedintochapters can be funny, but they also leave me with a bad taste in my mouth,
We are all shitty people, We all are essentially selfcentered with delusions of grandeur, And we all rationalize our flaws away, So what That doesn't excuse your not recycling, Allie Brosh, I am a chronic anxiety sufferer: so I can tell you that the most frightening labyrinths and the most fearsome torture chambers are within one's own mind.
I inhabit quite a substantial part of my time there, The constant fear is that one might get permanently stuck there, in the condition we call "insanity", Each one of us have our way of coping so that the tunnels never cave in,
Allie Brosh, from her own confessions and from what I could gather from her book, spends a lot of time down in those tunnels.
This book which is a collection of her blog posts is Allie's way of fighting back, Her main weapons are the courage to lay bare the innermost workings of her soul, and deliciously dark humour.
On the surface, it is not different many other memoirs: the author writes of her childhood and her daytoday life in satirical vein, exaggerating her failures and the flaws in her personality to draw a laugh.
It has been done before, and it shall be done again, Meh.
What makes it different are the pictures and the way the subject matter is treated,
The pictures are purposefully crudely drawn, like the way a kid would draw however, there is a pattern to this crudeness, a method in this madness.
The style of the pictures immediately force us away from a "realistic" mindset, It's a child's eye view we are being offered here,
However, there is a consistency to the pictures which is seldom found in children's efforts: this is a child's eye view, but provided purposefully by an adult.
It is drawn like that for a reason, especially Allie's unflattering selfportrait, a cross between a fish and a lizard.
It's as though Allie is telling us Look at all this as if you are a child.
Please remove all grownup filters, Then you may really see,
And what do we see
Even the most silly of the episodes are treated with a swish of the dark brush: it's as though, once we remove the mask of humour, the true horror of life will strike as in its stark reality.
The episode where Allie, her sister and mother get lost in the woods is a good example, It could easily have been a Stephen King story, had they not managed to find a house in the woods but that part is never stressed, always just simmering beneath the surface.
A potential disaster is laughed off, because doing anything else would be opening the door to madness,
But what really grabbed me by the neck was the way Allie handled the chapters on depression.
I can guess how difficult it would have been for her but she converts the whole thing into a comedic odyssey.
But the real horror comes out in the passages such as the one quoted below:
But my experiences slowly flattened and blended together until it became obvious that theres a huge difference between not giving a fuck and not being able to give a fuck.
Cognitively, you might know that different things are happening to you, but they dont feel very different,
Allie is very honest about herself, Such personal veracity is difficult to digest,
I dont just want to do the right thing, I want to WANT to do the right thing, This might seem like a noble goal to strive for, but I dont actually care about adhering to morality.
Its more that being aware of not wanting to do the right thing ruins my ability to enjoy doing the right thing after Im forced into doing it through shame.
A worthwhile read, also her blog,
.