THE DYING BOOK AFFAIR: #readingbingo

Showing posts with label #readingbingo. Show all posts

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh

Book: Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, and Other Things that Happened

Author: Allie Brosh

Why I Read It: The Under 30 Author square on my #ReadingBingo. Plus I love her blog. Ordered this book in the mail and couldn't wait for it to get here.

First Line: It seems like there should be some sort of introduction to this.

First Impression: Yay! It's here!

Last Impression: Hmm....a lot of this was already on her blog. And it loses its edge in the printed form. Sad day.

Ratings

Overall – 4 Heart Skipped a Beat Turns out, her work doesn't translate all that well to the printed page. If this was a rating on her blog, 5. A rating on how funny she is, 6. But as a book, it just didn't hit all the right notes. Pacing is so important in humor and seeing the hilariously awesome images before she's fully built up why they are hilariously awesome kills the moment.

Characters – 5 The dogs are the best characters ever, especially the Simple Dog. And the Alot is grammar joke gold.

Story – 3 Repeated content from much of her blog. Great stuff, just not new.

Narration – 5 She builds stories so very, very well. Comedic genius.

Read Again? Yeah. Mostly the dog ones.

Tell Others to Read? The book? No. The blog? Abso-frickin-lutely.

Excerpt: I can't. The images are mandatory in this situation. Thankfully, many excerpts (and really most of the book content) can be found here: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

Book: Let's Pretend This Never Happened

Author: Jenny Lawson

Why I Read It: #ReadingBingo - Filling in the "Funny" square.

First Line: Call me Ishmael.

First Impression: Witty, biting humor. It can come off as overly snarky if read in a bad mood, however.

Last Impression: Quite the crazy life she's had and the sense of humor to survive/retell it.

Ratings

Overall – 4 Heart Skipped a Beat It was quite funny. Her sense of humor requires a particular mood from the reader and the novelty of her life wears off, but she still is a delightful narrator and you genuinely care about her and her wacky life.

Characters – 4 The people in the book come alive on the page and it is easy to envision her crazy father actually waking them up with a disembodied squirrel puppet.

Story – 5 I wavered here because the book wavered. At times it was a 6, others it was a 3. Overall, her life is too strange to be fiction and fun to journey through.

Narration – 5 Her voice reaches the female audience quite well, but may not translate as well to the male audience. Check out the excerpt, which is taken from the first page of the book, to get a sense of what I mean. The rest of the novel continues in much the same direction. But, being a woman, her narration and style resonated with me. Thus the rating.

Read Again? No. I know the punchline/crazy experience already. But I enjoyed it.

Tell Others to Read? Every woman should read this, and open-minded guys as well. It's exceptionally funny, but some of her best moments are geared toward the females.

Excerpt:...it makes a way more respectable beginning than the sentence I'd originally written, which was about how I'd just run into my gynecologist at Starbucks and she totally looked right past me like she didn't even know me. And so I stood there wondering whether that's something she does on purpose to make her clients feel less uncomfortable, or whether she genuinely didn't recognize me without my vagina. Either way, it's very disconcerting when people who've been inside your vagina don't acknowledge your existence. Also, I just want to clarify that I don't mean "without my vagina" like I didn't have it with me at the time. I just meant that I wasn't, you know...displaying it while I was at Starbucks. That's probably understood, but I thought I should clarify, since it's the first chapter and you don't know that much about me. So just to clarify, I always have my vagina with me. It's like my American Express card. (In that I don't leave home without it. Not that I use it to buy stuff with.)

Reading Bingo

This delightful reading bingo image was circulating the social media sites and I found it particularly inspiring. What a fun way to mix up your reading habit and get through all those books in your TBR list!

Of course other books will be reviewed here, but this seemed like a fun way to read those books currently sitting on TDBA shelves. The only rule was that each book had to be one I've never read. This is my personal list, so it is very science fiction, science, and nonfiction heavy, as those are some of my favorite genres. However, I encourage you to dig through your personal library and actual libraries near you to fill out your reading bingo.

So, without further ado, here is the list!