Someone Who Will Love You In All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Ben-Waksberg (2019)

LOVED. 

"Here is my impression of a play: Okay, so first you gotta imagine it's a hotel room, right? Just a normal, boring-looking hotel room, on the nice end of things, as far as hotel rooms go. And the audience is coming in, and they're taking their seats in this dinky little theater in lower Manhattan, barely bigger than a Winnebago, this theater, with seats that feel like someone just glued down some thin fabric over a block of hard metal. The main thing of a theater--like the whole point of it--is that there's going to be a lot of sitting in it, so you'd think they would at least consider investing in some comfortable chairs. Word to the wise: if they can't even get that part right, which absolutely most of the time they cannot, then buckle the fuck up, because I can tell you right now you are in for an ordeal of an evening."

I would like to recommend this book to you, friends. Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg.

This collection of stories about relationships is absurd and hilarious and live up to their titles. Some of the short stories in this collection include: Missed Connection-M4W, The Serial Monogamist's Guide to Important New York City Landmarks, Lunch with the Person Who Dumped You, and Rufus, which is about a relationship from the point of the dog. And of course, You Want to Know What Plays Are Like. DON'T MISS.

Going Into Town by Roz Chast (2017)

Subtitled: A Love Letter to New York and it couldn't be more so.

I adore Roz Chast and I love her New York. She created this guide for her daughter and expanded it into a quirky, funny, affectionate graphic memoir. I absolutely agree with her and her statement of how she "really likes density of visual information" and it's one of the reasons I love NYC.

Also, this:

“I feel about Manhattan the way I feel about a book, a TV series, a movie, a play, an artist, a song, a food, a whatever that I love. I want to tell you about it so that maybe you will love it, too. I'm not worried about it being 'ruined' by too many people 'discovering' it. Manhattan's been ruined since 1626 , when Peter Minuit bought it from Native Americans for $24.00.”

See also Chast's Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? 

For more NYC love, see Apple of My Eye by Helene Hanff and Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart. 

Choose Your Own Disaster by Dana Schwartz (2018)

Hilariously and descriptively subtitled: A. A Memoir, B. A Personality Quiz, C. A Mostly True and Completely Honest Look at One Young Woman's Attempt to Find Herself, D. All of the Above.

This millennial memoir is written in a cute Choose Your Own Adventure style and the writing transcends the gimmick. Quirky look at being in one's twenties and modern feminism.

Schwartz gained fame as the creator of @GuyInYourMFA on Twitter and I'm adding her book The White Man's Guide to White Male Writers of the Western Canon to my read-now list. 

You'll Grow Out of It by Jessi Klein (2016)

Memoir in short essay form by comedy writer and comedian Jessi Klein. Very funny essays on a range of topics from getting older, dating, Anthropologie, The Bachelor, infertility and becoming a stand-up comedian. 

This list makes it sound a bit vapid, but it's quite funny and truthy and clear-eyed. Delightful, really!

From the (Dating) Types essay: 

"Noses are of key importance. I need a large nose. Something with a bump. I cannot abide a small nose on anyone, really--men or women. I need the kind of nose that suggests some sort of Jewish/Italian/Greek/African influence. The kind of nose that says, 'At some point in the history of my people, we were forced to flee.'" (p. 94)

LOVE it.

Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg (2015)

Charming nonfiction book where Aziz, with the help of nonfiction writer Eric Klinenberg (Going Solo, Heat Wave), explores modern romance, online dating, patterns of love and so on. 

I love Aziz's distinctive, hilarious voice which comes through so vividly in the narrative. I totally also admire the effort he made to do something broader and more universal than the traditional comedian memoir. 

How to Be a Heroine, or, What I've Learned From Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis (2015)

I love this book so much I can barely write coherently about it. Hence, much love and little rational explanation. It's just one of the best books on books and reading ever.

Samantha Ellis is a British playwright who as part of her own writing spends some time thinking about how the literary heroines that she loved through her lifetime as a reader have influenced her life and her writing. 

From Anne Shirley to Scarlett O'Hara, Franny Glass and the Dolls of Valley of the Dolls, (oh, and Lucy Honeychurch!) this book is filled with so much love for reading and with a deliciously full bibliography for each chapter. 

I love her rethinking of her youthful love for Wuthering Heights and her disdain for Jane Eyre, and especially that she uses Gilbert and Gubar's feminist literary criticism classic The Madwoman in the Attic as a source. (I studied that up and down when writing my senior paper on Jane Austen's Emma.) And I love her love for Cold Comfort Farm. 

This is very meta, but bear with me. Ellis is writing about Flora Poste in Cold Comfort Farm and quotes from the novel:

"Her writing inspiration is Austen, who she thinks was just like her: 'She liked everything to be tidy and pleasant and comfortable about her, and so do I. You see ... unless everything is tidy and pleasant and comfortable all around one, people cannot even begin to enjoy life. I cannot endure messes.'"

Delicious!

Girl Walks Into a Bar by Rachel Dratch (2012)

Subtitled: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle.

I have a love-hate relationship with memoirs/humorous essay books written by comedians. However, I was surprised to find that I rather liked this one. (I should have been able to tell by the excellent subtitle alliteration.)

The beginning is a bit of inside dish on being a non-traditional looking actress in Hollywood who rather publicly got replaced on a major television show (30 Rock). The next part is about dating in New York, which is deliciously traumatizing, and the third is about finding herself unexpectedly pregnant in her early forties. Through the entire book, and all of her memoirs, she is wonderfully self-aware, and the book is well-organized and funny. Good stuff!

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh (2013)

Subtitled: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

Although I'd recommended and given it to a bunch of people, I was compelled to finally read it after listening to Allie Brosh's fascinating conversation with Marc Maron on the WTF podcast--one of the best discussions I've ever heard on depression.

This book is hilarious and honest and amazingly insightful into what depression feels like. Even her dog comics are adorable.  Beautifully, beautifully done.

Really. What else can be said!  Buy her book and give it to everyone you know.  Also, you should check out her blog as well, particularly:

Adventures in Depression

Depression: Part Two

And remember:

Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham (2014)

Most actress's memoirs--particularly if they are comic in tone--I find a bit facile and uneven. They tend to be loosely strung together collections of anecdotes.

However, you have to hand it to Dunham:  She tells it like it is.  I love the subtitle: A young woman tells you what she's "learned". She tells it warts and all, no writerly airbrushing or image enhancement to make her sound better.  

She's amazingly insightful but also amazingly self-aware. I can't help but like and admire her. This was a wonderfully enjoyable book.  Also, there are little sketchings in the book that give it the feel of a midcentury book on etiquette or relationships--and at the end, you find out the artist is her good friend that she refers to through the book.  And it's funny:  

"When I was born I was very fat for a baby--eleven pounds (which sounds thin to me now).  I had three chins and a stomach that drooped to one side of my stroller.  I never crawled, just rolled, an early sign that I was going to be resistant to most exercise and any sexual position that didn't allow me to relax my back." 

How can you not love that?

Sad Monsters by Frank Lesser (2011)

Loved, loved, loved, loved this adorable collection of short, humorous pieces on monsters subtitled: Growling on the Outside, Crying on the Inside.  

I especially loved it because I had just skimmed John Moe's awful book: Dear Luke, We Need to Talk, which is every bit as unfunny as his work on the radio show Wits. Sad Monsters, however, is everything that book wanted to be.  

This collection is filled with short vignettes that perfectly live up to their titles and premises, such as Missed Possessions (Missed Connections for succubi), His Fangs Just Aren't That Into You, Giant Ape Class-Action Lawsuit, and The Passive-Aggressive Monster in the Closet.  

SO so so clever and funny, and presented in a charming variety of different forms, from diaries to letters to court transcriptions, accompanied by adorable illustrations by Willie Real. Oh, and I can't forget the notes from The Roommate of Dorian Gray.  Fabulous!  So many funny funny lines.  LOVE.

Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast (2014)

I love Roz Chast, and this memoir of dealing with her parents' aging and eventual death is poignant, sad, truthful and surprisingly funny.  

She had a mixed relationship with her parents growing up, and dealing with her parents' eventual dependence on her is honestly and touchingly told.  

Very, very much enjoyed.  

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Crying by Carol Leifer (2014)

Subtitled: Lessons from a Life in Comedy, I'm totally considering this for my all-time favorite business books.  (Along with Good Boss, Bad Boss and Creating Magic.)

It's a bit of a mix--memoir, comedic essay and some good solid business sense mixed in. Fascinating look at her career, the challenges she's faced and her useful advice, including her great advice to always say hi to people and be kind to everyone.  Also, this quote really hit home for me personally:

"Still I wish I knew then what I know now, and I hope you'll benefit from knowing now what I didn't know then. Whatever workplace you're in, always aim to please the captain. It matters, even if the first mate is ecstatic with your performance, because it's the captain who ultimately decides who stays onboard. If, like I did, you sense that the one person in charge isn't thrilled with what you're doing [spoiler: it was Lorne Michaels], ask for feedback and figure out how to correct your course. Because flying under the radar is a passive tactic that will eventually get you tossed off the ship."

Dead End Gene Pool: A Memoir by Wendy Burden

I picked this up in a used bookstore based on the intriguing cover and it paid off in every way possible.  This is a memoir about the descendants of a very, very wealthy family (Vanderbilt), and how things went terribly wrong.

Wendy Burden writes unsparingly and hilariously about her very wealthy and very dysfunctional family.  From visiting her grandparents' estate on an island to only occasionally seeing her flighty, hippie mother, this is a fascinating look at the 1% and how things can go terribly wrong no matter how much money you have.  

But above all, it is utterly hilarious.  I didn't write much about it when I read it, but DANG, it's good.  You should read it.  I mean, look at that awesome cover!

I See You Made an Effort by Annabelle Gurwitch (2014)

Subtitled: Compliments, Indignities and Survival Stories from the Edge of 50, this is a hilarious and poignant collection of essays about aging.

Gurwitch is not just funny, but a great comic craftsperson.  She doesn't go for the easy joke--she stays true to her story. I loved the mental affair she had with her Apple Genius, all the way down to the best position to have the most flattering sex (rock climbing wall for best gravity defiance, wrap dress for flattering and easy access). 

Struggling with cancer, being part of the sandwich generation, living in Los Angeles, and many more topics of interest to those of us who are feeling the effects of age are all covered in this collection.  If you like her sense of humor (and you should), check out this, check out her excellent Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized, and Dismissed (2006).

Love, Nina: A Nanny Writes Home by Nina Stibbe (2014)

In the early 1980s, Nina Stibbe moved to London to work as a nanny to Mary-Kay (MK) Wilmers, deputy editor of the London Review of Books, and her two children with Stephen Frears, Sam and Will. 

Stibbe kept in touch with her sister Victoria back in Leicestershire through letters outlining the events of the household, reproducing hilarious (and eminently quotable) conversations with Sam, Will and MK as well as frequent household visitor Alan Bennett. 

 Along the way, Stibbe is persuaded to attend university and studies English (her observations on literature are a stitch). With an introduction by Nick Hornby, this charming epistolary novel is a treat for anyone who loves dry, British humor and gets a bit starstruck by London literary elite.

What I'd Say to the Martians: And Other Veiled Threats by Jack Handey (2008)

Oh man, I LOVE Jack Handey.

He is the perfect, miniaturist, humorist with perfect petite humorous essays. And I love the call-forwards to The Stench of Honolulu with Doctor Ponzari and his friend Don. 

I love Handey's crazy, crazy world. And his humor is like perfectly crafted little jewel boxes. And there's a gem on every danged page.

That's all there is to say.  

How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran (2011)

So utterly utterly utterly loved this book.

I saw this collection of essays by Moran in bookstores all over London and wanted to buy it then but suitcase space didn't permit. When it FINALLY came in for me at the library and I started reading it, I loved it instantly. 

So funny, so charming, so realistic, and she is so awesome on women's issues. I love her diatribes about reclaiming the term "strident" (not to mention feminist) and stopping waxing. Love her!!! Caitlin Moran is smart and funny and my new heroine.

Followed by the equally wonderful Moranthology, which for me was the perfect book at the perfect time. Returning from an awesome trip to NYC, I was consoled by coming home and reading this tremendously fun, funny and endearing collection of Moran's essays. Lighter than How to Be a Woman, but still fabulous. Essays about Sherlock, Downton, the Royal Wedding, poverty and being a woman--all amazing. LOVE her.

What I Hate from A to Z by Roz Chast (2011)

I adore Roz Chast's drawings, and I adore a good rant and this book brings both of those things together in one.  Although, as Chast explains in the introduction, it's really less things she hates than things that make her anxious. But that's not as snappy of a title. One of my favorites is her entry on balloons: "When I look at a balloon, all I see is an imminent explosion. Where's the fun in that?"  Amen.

My Korean Deli by Ben Ryder Howe (2010)

Subtitled Risking it all for a Convenience Store.   This is a fascinating story about an editor at the Paris Review who buys a deli in Brooklyn with his wife for their Korean in-laws.   He spends his time between working to make the deli a success (and get along with his in-laws) and working in Manhattan at George Plimpton's townhouse for the Review.  Interesting inside story into how a deli is run, and all of the interactions with customers, vendors and the community.  Much struggle and some hilarity ensue.

I listened to this on audio, read by Bronson Pinchot.  Pinchot's reading is fabulously expressive, and he does a dead-on George Plimpton.   His narration made all of the characters so endearing and hilarious--even when I got a big impatient with Howe.  One of the best audiobooks I've ever listened to, ever.

Why is My Mother Getting a Tattoo? by Jancee Dunn (2009)

Subtitled And Other Questions I Wish I Never Had to Ask, this is a collection of essays on family and friends that are laugh out loud funny, and poignant. I suspect that Jancee and I might be the same person, which of course, just makes me love her more.  See also her hilarious memoir But Enough About Me.