What’s this? NONFICTION? What am I doing, reading a non-fiction book not related to school?
Blasphemy!
This is
generally my reaction to reading nonfiction—if I don’t have to do it, I won’t.
I’m sure nonfiction is interesting in its own way, but I read to escape the
real world, not learn more about it. As a general rule, this really happened stories just don’t appeal to me. Unless it’s
required for English, you won’t see me hanging around the nonfiction section of
the library.
However,
for part of my senior project I have to “expand my horizons” and include books
in this blog that I don’t usually read and some that I don’t even like (like
that Wolf Hall book). It seems that’s
for the best, because after reading this book I may have completely
underestimated the entertainment value of the nonfiction section. Because let
me tell you, Let’s Pretend this Never
Happened is likely one of the most entertaining books I’ve ever read. Look
at this cover:
It’s a picture of a mouse playing Hamlet.
How is that not adorable? (Added bonus: this mouse actually shows up in the book. Stuffed, and slightly creepy, but it shows up.) If it didn’t have the word “memoir” in the subtitle I
might have picked it up of my own volition. As it was, I had to get three
separate people to tell me, read it, it’s
funny, and this senior project to say, oh
yeah, you need stuff on this other than sci-fi and fantasy YA books, good luck
with that for me to read this. And it’s a good thing, too, or I would have
missed out on one of the funniest books I’ve ever come across. Look at this summary:
When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father 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 help her 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.
Jenny Lawson
knows how to put her life into a very funny perspective—which isn’t actually
that hard, considering she had a pretty crazy life. In the first chapter, she
explains that it’s called a Mostly True
Memoir because some of the names and dates are changed for the sake of
privacy, and that everything else is true—but you won’t believe it. No one
believes it. She has to put pictures in the book as proof, and I believe me
when I say you need them to believe this stuff actually happened.
Everything
she writes is incredibly amusing, and I’m not the only person that thinks this
(for once)—the three people who recommended it to me all said: “Here, you’ll
like it, it’s funny.” It’s a generally accepted fact that you’ll laugh aloud
while reading this, and you’ll have the added satisfaction of knowing this
stuff actually happened to someone you don’t know somewhere in the world, and
that it will likely never happen to you, ever. Which is a good thing, because most of us would go insane after going through the hilariously strange details of Ms. Lawson's life.
I give
it a nine out of ten, and seriously recommend this to anyone who wants to have
a laugh while reading. I’d suggest asking Mrs. V where to find it, though—the
nonfiction section can be rather hard to navigate.
Tl;dr: Funny moments, a great narrative, and hilarious story of a person's life can almost make you forget this really did happen, and I definitely suggest it to anyone looking for a good book to read.
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