Reviews

All of the things my therapist has been trying to tell me for years, conveniently compiled into a warm, witty graphic format. Bear's writing has such a generous and good-hearted quality, and the illustrations are just as delightful (including their intentional representation of lots of different kinds of people). I wouldn't say that anything in here was life-changing for me, but it was a quick and heartwarming read and it'd make a great gift for a young adult.

One caveat: I found the typeface (all caps, small punctuation) difficult for prolonged reading, and wish they'd used uppercase/lowercase instead. Readers with dyslexia or ADHD may have a tough time parsing the text in this one.

epaisley's review

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emotional funny inspiring medium-paced

5.0

bhrtng's review

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5.0

Special Topics in Being a Human is a collection of all the wise words Bear has offered over the years during his time as an advice columnist. Each chapter covers a different hard topic that is essentially a distillation of the queries he received, such as 'how to deliver hard news' or 'how to offer a genuine apology' (I'm paraphrasing). I loved Bear's conversational tone and the accompanying illustrations. I found his advice to be sound and even sometimes hard to hear! There were a couple typos I noticed, including an instance of "pubic" when he meant "public" haha but it didn't distract too much from the flow. There were some truly helpful nuggets of wisdom that I know I'll be keeping in mind going forward! Highly recommend.