Taken in by what surely is the most perfect cover known to books everywhere.

Prologue: I don't know who Samantha Irby is. I've neither read any of her former books or recognise her in any particular capacity from former works. So perhaps going into this one was a bit like piecing together a who-are-you from the set of essays found within this novel. I suppose I've managed to get a rough idea of who Irby is now thanks to this and a very quick superficial google search, but I still don't really know. In the case of these stories as well, they did seem rather plucked from Irby's brain at random, without much backstory for context.

Don't get me wrong. There were bits that I absolutely loved. Like Irby's attempts to understand being a homeowner for the first time--or owning a cat that would like to eat your face--or the general complaints of a human female growing older. It's all very open, sometimes even a little too honest for the sake of humour. (Boy, there's a lot of descriptions about shit in here. I get it, we all do it. But... I found it a bit squelchy.)

But there's a lot that just seemed so well and truly hilariously relatable.

I should write a girls' night out movie. But a realistic one, featuring people my age who have neck pain and no cartilage in their knees and spend the entire movie trying to calculate how to split a check and figure out how to tip across four different cards.

or...

Now when I go out I have to start gearing up for that shit at least three days in advance, and if I'm actually going to go through with it, it has to include both an ironclad reservation and a reliable seating arrangement.

Too true, Irby. I feel ya there.

3 stars for comedy, foul language, relatability, and squelchy poop references.

Sam Irby is one of the greatest writers of all time.

**Pop Sugar 2023 Reading Challenge #24- A book with a rabbit on the cover**

Some sections had me rolling on the floor and some sections I didn’t vibe with. It felt repetitive as it went in, and when it was auto-returned to the Libby app at like 75% completion and I didn’t feel like I needed to pick it back up.

I can't say that anything in this will stay with me very long, but I enjoyed Irby's stories, her point of view and her pacing, and appreciated how I could pick up and set down the book without getting lost. I associate this sort of book with the bathroom basket of books we had when I was growing up; it has a bit of a longer-form Erma Bombeck feel, and of course that is a high compliment.

I listened to the audio book read by the author and it was HILARIOUS

I liked parts of this quite a bit, but the endless, over-the-top self-deprecation bummed me out (like when she refers to her first book, another book of personal essays, as "a gross book about a dumb slut"). I thought of Hannah Gadsby explaining, in Nanette, why she no longer chooses to use this variety of humor: "Do you understand what self-deprecation means when it come from somebody who already exists in the margins? It’s not humility, it's humiliation."

This was my first Samantha Irby book, but it won't be my last. This was laugh-out-loud funny, like snort uncontrollably funny. I loved her writing style, and her stories were so relatable. Would recommend.