Book Review: You Are Here: An Owner’s Manual for Dangerous Minds by Jenny Lawson

 

You Are Here: An Owner’s Manual for Dangerous Minds

(Crayons & matches not included, but recommended.)

by Jenny Lawson

I received this book as a gift from my husband because we both love Jenny Lawson’s candid memoirs. (If you haven’t read Furiously Happy yet, I highly recommend you pick it up post haste.) She is utterly transparent about her experiences with mental illness and writes vividly, and humorously, about events in her life.

This book is a little bit different. It includes some of her writing, her thoughts, and a few anecdotes, but mostly her musings, and things she has done to help herself, along with beautiful pen and ink drawings that she created herself. Many of the drawings incorporate a thought or musing in writing that meanders around the lines of the drawing. Almost a meditation. They can be treated as coloring pages, if the reader wishes, though they are beautiful just to contemplate as drawings. I’ve found this book very relaxing just before bed.

One of my favorite pages, though I haven’t even done the exercise yet, asks the reader to write down five outrageous things that they’ve done, along with at least one that is a lie. Maybe she uses a bit of hyperbole and interesting word choice to describe hers, but that’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from Jenny — a colorful reframing that brings humor to the situation. For example –

“One time I made a human without even using an instruction manual. Like, hair, fingernails, all that jazz. It was a tiny human, but still, it was like making a clone except I did it inside my body where I couldn’t even see anything. Science!”

Many of the musings are incredibly poignant.

“Not all pain is visible. But not all love is visible either, and that doesn’t make it any less real. We believe the pain because we feel it, but we often forget how much we’re loved because it doesn’t always present itself in ways that make you physically gasp. It’s real, though. And you’re soaking in it.” P93

Another beautiful book from Jenny Lawson. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Book Review: Broken (In the Best Possible Way) by Jenny Lawson

 

Broken (in the Best Possible Way)

by Jenny Lawson

It’s been a while since I read a Jenny Lawson book, she’s only put three others out, and I had somewhat forgotten just how funny she is. I remembered laughing out loud at some things, but not how I couldn’t help but laugh out loud, and how I laughed until I couldn’t even talk.

Part of it is that her phrasing seem totally alien to me and hysterical, but then sometimes she relates something someone else said and it’s just as unusual, so maybe part of it is that she lives in Texas.

“ADD … gives me the attention level of a kitten on cocaine.”

I also didn’t remember how poignant and beautiful some of her writing can be. This book was a great reminder. In fact, I think it may be her best book yet.

“The anxiety attacks never really went away. They would get better and worse throughout my life, with no real rhyme or reason. Over the years I’d hide in bathrooms and closets and books. And mostly in myself. It was a lonely place to be, but safe.”

Now, if you’re offended by swearing, I wouldn’t recommend this book for you, but that’s about the only reason I wouldn’t recommend this book. Jenny is honest to a fault and bravely shares ALL of her fears and foibles.

Reflecting on seeing something beautiful because she was having an anxiety attack and couldn’t go out like she planned on, she says, “I considered it a sign that perhaps there is a path I’m supposed to be on. It’s not the same path that everyone else takes, and that can be hard and lonely…”

Her re-writing of truisms was spot on. “LIVE AS IF IT’S THE LAST DAY OF YOUR LIFE… Except don’t, because that sounds awful … I’d spend all day in tears if someone said I was going to die at midnight. That’s like having to have fun at gunpoint.”

She shares her chronicle of TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) therapy to combat her anxiety and depression then shares snippets of her journey afterward about how things were better for her, what stayed better, and what got worse again. It’s fascinating, for anyone who is interested in science, who might be considering the therapy, or who just wants to take that journey with her.

Her chapter titles are just as funny as her writing and give you the flavor of the book, like “That Time I Got Haunted by Lizards With Bike Horns,” or “Up Divorce Creek Without a Paddle (Because the Guide Didn’t Trust Me Not to Push Victor Overboard with It),” and I LOVED “Editing is Hell. Mostly for Editors.” The chapter “And That’s Why I Can Never Go Back to the Post Office Again” was hysterical and had me texting a good friend to make sure she knew this book was out so she would read it.

This is one of those books that you don’t want to put down, you just want to keep reading more, more, more, even while knowing you should slow down because you don’t want it to end. I loved this book, it is so human and funny and beautiful. It is definitely broken in the BEST possible way.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened

(A Mostly True Memoir)
By Jenny Lawson

Jenny Lawson is the Bloggess.  She had a somewhat… unusual childhood.  Usually when people hear that her father was a taxidermist they begin to get an inkling of what she means, but it goes beyond that. 

Like the time that Jenny brought her fiancé Victor home to meet her parents and her father snuck into the room and tossed a young bobcat on his lap, saying, “Hellooooo, Victor.”  Now, most people might think that was an extreme way for a father to try to intimidate a suitor but, the truth is, her father would have been just as likely to toss the bobcat on Jenny or her mother. 

Some strange things happen to Jenny but it’s also her take on them and her story telling ability that make her story so fascinating. 

“Did you notice how, like, half of this introduction was a rambling parenthetical?  That shit is going to happen all the time.”  And it does.  In fact, I can’t decide whether this book is more like one, long, run on, stand-up comedienne monologue or more like you’re trapped in a corner at a party with a woman who is hysterically telling you everything insane that has happened in her life in an effort to explain why she is drinking too much.   

In between the mile-a-minute speedball vignettes are some more poignant thoughts -  “When you’re surrounded by other people who are just as poor as you are, life doesn’t seem all that weird… I never really realized we were that poor, because my parents never said we couldn’t afford things, just that we didn’t need them.”

Jenny has been diagnosed with some ailments that she has turned to her advantage, in some ways, including OCD, depression and anxiety disorder.  “It’s like I have a censor in my head, but she works on a seven-second delay… well-meaning, but perpetually about seven seconds too late to actually do anything to stop the horrific avalanche of shit-you-shouldn’t-say-out-loud-but-I-just-did.”

Admittedly, if swearing offends you, this book isn’t for you.  But, everybody else who can follow this ramble will laugh hysterically (or at least chuckle out loud occasionally.)  I enjoyed it a lot!