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3.95 AVERAGE
3.95 AVERAGE
She articulates her experience with neurodiversity so well. And the book is hilarious. Her writing is pitch perfect.
I loved every bit of this book! As someone who suffers from depression (like Jenny) sometimes the only way to cope with the nonsense life throws at you is humor even it's a little dark. I love the humor and straight up bluntness throughout the whole story. At some points, it was like stepping into my own brain, and that was honestly, and maybe even chaotically, refreshing to read.
“We all get our share of tragedy or insanity or drama, but what we do with that horror is what makes all the difference.”
“We all get our share of tragedy or insanity or drama, but what we do with that horror is what makes all the difference.”
Unique in the best way
It’s so refreshing to read an honest memoir about the thoughts most of us try to lock away in our heads. This book has no shame in letting everything fill out of those drawers in our heads and instead chooses to love among the insanity.
It’s so refreshing to read an honest memoir about the thoughts most of us try to lock away in our heads. This book has no shame in letting everything fill out of those drawers in our heads and instead chooses to love among the insanity.
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
funny
fast-paced
I loved this book. After trying several new authors to me and being sadly disappointed I loaned the audible version of this book from the library. I immediately purchased it after since I knew this would be a re-read.
In a nutshell: The “Bloggess” strikes again in her second book, which attempts to help others like herself suffering with mental illness… but the book misses the mark with distracting side stories and “beat-around-the-bush” advice.
I enjoyed this book a lot less than I enjoyed her first one… Her first one didn’t really have a point to it and was all over the place, but I don’t know. I just enjoyed it more. This one was SUPPOSED to have a main point: how to live with mental illness, mainly anxiety and depression. But Lawson is so distracting with her random stories that no clear points are made. I still laughed at several parts though because they were utterly ridiculous and hilarious.
Jenny Lawson has battled with mental illness her entire life, mainly with depression and anxiety. Despite this, she has a crazy, random, and albeit morbid sense of humour about it all and writes about it in a way so that someone without these disorders would understand. In Furiously Happy, Lawson shares her thoughts on mental illness and shares some food for thought that helps her get through her days, all while raising her daughter, continuously working on her marriage, and keeping up with her blog of course. The way the book is organized is like a collection of short essays and recollections of arguments she has had with her husband, Victor, and conversations she has had with her friends and her therapist. Lawson’s stories seem so ridiculous that you can’t help but sit back and laugh and wonder how much of them are actually true. All in all, Furiously Happy, despite its arguable disorganization and unnecessary side-tracking from stories, is entertaining and humourous for the reader.
When I really think about it, Lawson’s first book, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, isn’t much different from Furiously Happy. At all. Both books are so random, and unless you’ve read them or Lawson’s blog… it’s difficult to explain. For instance, she will be launching into a story about how she has a sleep disorder, but then she’ll talk about how she was having a “dead raccoon rodeo in the kitchen.” Yes, the story about the raccoon is absolutely hilarious, but yes, random. Most of Lawson’s stories are like this. She will write a story about a house she moved into and how she knew it was wrong because the swans in the neighbourhood hated her, and it will be written in the style of an essay. And then she will have another chapter that is an argument she had with her husband written in the form of a script. Her last book was like this too… however, I enjoyed her last book more, which upsets me.
See, Lawson has tried to make Furiously Happy about battling mental illness, but I feel like she fails by trying to make it too funny, or having SERIOUS life lessons written in there, but you have to read between the lines in order to really understand what point she is making. It does make me sad because I wanted to love this book. I was in the hospital on my second round of chemotherapy when I read it(I am currently battling cancer) and it did make me laugh and lighten the mood at least, so I AM happy about that. But then I found that I was just getting sick of the random chapters.
The other problem is that the way that Lawson deals with her anxiety isn’t necessarily doable for others. For instance, at one point she talks about how nervous she was to do an interview and that she reached out to her loyal band of Twitter followers and they were there for her because they were just like her. Maybe the point is that no one is alone in their fight with mental illness because there are so many others that suffer from it, but I would argue that not all of them have Twitter followers to help them get through their anxiety. That’s just a problem I have.
I am not trying to accuse Lawson of anything, because I’m sure her intentions were good with writing this book. I’m sure she really does feel like this book helps people with mental illnesses like hers and that this is the reason she wrote the book. However, I cannot help but hear the words “CASH GRAB” in my head when I think of this book. Her first book was so popular that she might have thought “I’m a best seller now. Let’s write another book to make more money because people will buy it any way!” I do feel bad for feeling this way, but I can’t help it. It’s like the way I feel about Yes Please by Amy Poehler(cash grab: her bestie wrote a book so she took a crack at it too and there was no REAL point to it).
Maybe it was all lost on me because I don’t believe that I have a disorder as severe as Lawson’s. Maybe those with mental illness will be able to resonate more with the message that Lawson is trying to send that I feel is hiding beneath the surface of a thick layer of ice. But again, that’s just me.
I enjoyed this book a lot less than I enjoyed her first one… Her first one didn’t really have a point to it and was all over the place, but I don’t know. I just enjoyed it more. This one was SUPPOSED to have a main point: how to live with mental illness, mainly anxiety and depression. But Lawson is so distracting with her random stories that no clear points are made. I still laughed at several parts though because they were utterly ridiculous and hilarious.
Jenny Lawson has battled with mental illness her entire life, mainly with depression and anxiety. Despite this, she has a crazy, random, and albeit morbid sense of humour about it all and writes about it in a way so that someone without these disorders would understand. In Furiously Happy, Lawson shares her thoughts on mental illness and shares some food for thought that helps her get through her days, all while raising her daughter, continuously working on her marriage, and keeping up with her blog of course. The way the book is organized is like a collection of short essays and recollections of arguments she has had with her husband, Victor, and conversations she has had with her friends and her therapist. Lawson’s stories seem so ridiculous that you can’t help but sit back and laugh and wonder how much of them are actually true. All in all, Furiously Happy, despite its arguable disorganization and unnecessary side-tracking from stories, is entertaining and humourous for the reader.
When I really think about it, Lawson’s first book, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, isn’t much different from Furiously Happy. At all. Both books are so random, and unless you’ve read them or Lawson’s blog… it’s difficult to explain. For instance, she will be launching into a story about how she has a sleep disorder, but then she’ll talk about how she was having a “dead raccoon rodeo in the kitchen.” Yes, the story about the raccoon is absolutely hilarious, but yes, random. Most of Lawson’s stories are like this. She will write a story about a house she moved into and how she knew it was wrong because the swans in the neighbourhood hated her, and it will be written in the style of an essay. And then she will have another chapter that is an argument she had with her husband written in the form of a script. Her last book was like this too… however, I enjoyed her last book more, which upsets me.
See, Lawson has tried to make Furiously Happy about battling mental illness, but I feel like she fails by trying to make it too funny, or having SERIOUS life lessons written in there, but you have to read between the lines in order to really understand what point she is making. It does make me sad because I wanted to love this book. I was in the hospital on my second round of chemotherapy when I read it(I am currently battling cancer) and it did make me laugh and lighten the mood at least, so I AM happy about that. But then I found that I was just getting sick of the random chapters.
The other problem is that the way that Lawson deals with her anxiety isn’t necessarily doable for others. For instance, at one point she talks about how nervous she was to do an interview and that she reached out to her loyal band of Twitter followers and they were there for her because they were just like her. Maybe the point is that no one is alone in their fight with mental illness because there are so many others that suffer from it, but I would argue that not all of them have Twitter followers to help them get through their anxiety. That’s just a problem I have.
I am not trying to accuse Lawson of anything, because I’m sure her intentions were good with writing this book. I’m sure she really does feel like this book helps people with mental illnesses like hers and that this is the reason she wrote the book. However, I cannot help but hear the words “CASH GRAB” in my head when I think of this book. Her first book was so popular that she might have thought “I’m a best seller now. Let’s write another book to make more money because people will buy it any way!” I do feel bad for feeling this way, but I can’t help it. It’s like the way I feel about Yes Please by Amy Poehler(cash grab: her bestie wrote a book so she took a crack at it too and there was no REAL point to it).
Maybe it was all lost on me because I don’t believe that I have a disorder as severe as Lawson’s. Maybe those with mental illness will be able to resonate more with the message that Lawson is trying to send that I feel is hiding beneath the surface of a thick layer of ice. But again, that’s just me.
I always struggle with books where the author has had a personal struggle because yay - you bested the thing to share your story but this? This was a slog to get through. It is also seems wild to me that people find the author funny. Because very early on - it’s clear that their sense of humor is pretty one note and childish.
Made me laugh and cry...both within the same 15 minutes.