Jenny Lawson's mostly true memoir, Let's Pretend This Never Happened is an hilarious look at life from her point of view. As a child in Wall, Texas, her father "entertained" his children with a dead squirrel he used as a hand puppet, threw bobcats at her boyfriend and had a taxidermy workshop attached to the house. Although there is a considerable amount of bad language and a lot of rambling in the book, these ramp up the many laugh out loud moments as she introduces us to her zany world.Following her years as a successful blogger at The Bloggess (her last post netted 2031 comments), she put her thoughts both lighthearted and dark into Let's Pretend This Never Happened and shared her less than normal childhood and her heartbreaking miscarriages. She also gives us dire warnings, one of which is to make sure your child wears a swim diaper. A normal diaper swells to an enormous size, bursts and blue gel-like substance explodes on everything. Not a fun experience for either mother or child. To prove this she adds a picture of her crying child.
I'm only half way through the book but I'm sure the last half is sure to be as good as the first.
Her book has also been translated into several languages. Read her comments about the Turkish version
Hop on over to her blog, The Bloggess it's every bit as hilarious as her book or maybe you're thinking it's sad that I find her anecdotes funny. Here's an example:
Also, I asked if I could keep my gallstones so I could make a necklace out of them and the doctor said that he couldn’t do that because new regulations are assholes, and that he couldn’t even give the people who’d been shot the bullets he dug out of them because it’s considered “medical waste” once it’s been in your body. Which seems weird because my daughter came out of my body and they totally let me take her home.
Note to writers: Jenny Lawson built up a successful blog and many followers before publishing her book. Whether you are looking for a publisher or plan to self publish, this is the smart way to do it.
