We are never meeting in real life review

Title: we are never meeting in real life.
Author: Samantha Irby
Genre: Essays, Humor
Publisher: Vintage Books

Blurb: Sometimes you just have to laugh, even when life is a dumpster fire. With We Are Never Meeting in Real Life., "bitches gotta eat" blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making "adult" budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette--she's "35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something"--detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father's ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms--hang in there for the Costco loot--she's as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths. 

Me: Look at that cover. How could you not read this book??!!

Sweden: The 100-year old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared

Title: The 100-year old man who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared
Author: Jonas Jonasson
Publisher: Harper Collins
Genre: Humor, Contemporary

Blurb: It all starts on the one-hundredth birthday of Allan Karlsson. Sitting quietly in his room in an old people’s home, he is waiting for the party he-never-wanted-anyway to begin. Slowly but surely Allan climbs out of his bedroom window, into the flowerbed (in his slippers) and makes his getaway. And so begins his picaresque and unlikely journey involving criminals, several murders, a suitcase full of cash, and incompetent police. As his escapades unfold, we learn something of Allan’s earlier life in which – remarkably – he helped to make the atom bomb, became friends with American presidents, Russian tyrants, and Chinese leaders, and was a participant behind the scenes in many key events of the twentieth century.

Me: Hilarious! Came to me during a reading slump, and completely cured it. Such a nice change to a lot of the dramatic books I've been reading lately.

Beauty Queens Review

Title: Beauty Queens
Author: Libba Bray
Publisher: Scholastic
Genre: Humor, Contemporary

When a plane crash strands thirteen teen beauty contestants on a mysterious island, they struggle to survive, to get along with one another, to combat the island's other diabolical occupants, and to learn their dance numbers in case they are rescued in time for the competition.Written by Libba Bray, the hilarious, sensational, Printz Award-winning author of A Great and Terrible Beauty and Going Bovine. The result is a novel that will make you laugh, make you think, and make you never see beauty the same way again.

We Should Hang Out Sometime Review

Title: We Should Hang Out Sometime
Author: Josh Sundquist
Publisher: Little, Brown
Genre: Memoir, Humor 

Blurb: (from goodreads) A bright, poignant, and deeply funny autobiographical account of coming of age as an amputee cancer survivor, from Josh Sundquist: Paralympic ski racer, YouTube star, and motivational speaker.


Josh Sundquist only ever had one girlfriend.
For twenty-three hours.
In eighth grade.

Why was Josh still single? To find out, he tracked down the girls he had tried to date and asked them straight up: What went wrong?

The results of Josh's semiscientific, wholly hilarious investigation are captured here. From a disastrous Putt-Putt date involving a backward prosthetic foot, to his introduction to CFD (Close Fast Dancing), to a misguided "grand gesture" at a Miss America pageant, this story is about looking for love--or at least a girlfriend--in all the wrong places.

Me: Witty, hilarious, cringe-worthy, second-hand embarrassment...Ahh I loved this book. 

The Ups: John Sundquist is HILARIOUS. I adored the subject of this book and the ridiculousness and yet the relatability of wanting to know what old crushes thought about you was unbelievably funny in itself. The humor with which he works in the subject of his amputated leg, his "girlfriend" getting an actual boyfriend (news flash, it wasn't him) and his disastrous "dates" is light, breezy, and very conversational. 

I finished this book in the span of an hour and a half. At first, I felt bad that I had just breezed through it, but then I realized maybe that was how it was supposed to be read. 

Because in that short time I learned a few life lessons: 

• Love is hard, and usually sucks. 
  
• However, unfortunately for us, we tend to gravitate toward completely unattainable people. (Ahem, book boyfriends)
• That one sentence you said to your crush or that text you overanalyzed? They really don't care.
• When in doubt, one should scour their past and then conduct absolutely crazy and rather stalker-sh experiments and then record their priceless results. 

Okay...these lessons may be a bit of an exaggeration, as much of the book is. But needless to say, I fell in love with Josh Sundquist. And I think the main idea of the book, while it may be about romance, is self-discovery and confidence, and how that affects your life. 

The Downs: I do feel bad for the poor girls in this book...all of their actions are recorded from a slightly biased point of view for the world to read.

Overall: Funny, endearing, and absolutely priceless. Recommend it to everyone, even people who aren't non-fiction fans. 

Rating: 5 kisses! 

Hope you liked the review, and the little life lessons along with it!