Imprint Friday: Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

Welcome to Imprint Friday and today's featured imprint: Amy Einhorn Books. Stop by each week to be introduced to a must-read title from one of my favorite imprints. I know you'll be adding many of these books to your wish list.

You might not recognize the author of today's featured title by her name, Jenny Lawson, but I bet you recognize her online persona: The Bloggess, both the name of her very popular and successful blog and her Twitter handle. I have always loved Lawson's sense of humor, so I knew I had to read her new book, Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir).

Here's the publisher's summary:

When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father (a professional taxidermist who created dead-animal hand puppets) and a childhood of wearing winter shoes made out of used bread sacks. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame spiral that is her life, and we are all the better for it.

Lawson's long-suffering husband and sweet daughter are the perfect comedic foils to her absurdities, and help her to uncover the surprising discovery that the most terribly human moments--the ones we want to pretend never happened--are the very same moments that make us the people we are today.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened is a poignantly disturbing, yet darkly hysterical tome for every intellectual misfit who thought they were the only ones to think the things that Lawson dares to say out loud. Like laughing at a funeral, this book is both irreverent and impossible to hold back once you get started.

You might be like me: As soon as someone tells me a book or a movie is laugh-out-loud funny, I'm immediately on guard and sure that I'll not be doing any guffawing. Jenny Lawson, however, is the exception. It's difficult for me to believe anyone could get through her memoir without truly laughing.

No matter how insane you think your own life has been, I bet Lawson has you beat. As I said in my review for the SheKnows Book Lounge, "Whether she's scaring the vultures off her half-buried dog, learning throw-cushion etiquette at her mother-in-law's, or arguing with her husband via sticky notes, Lawson's sharp, self-directed wit is contagious." You might be tempted to think (more than once) that there's very little true in the "mostly true" part of the memoir, but Lawson anticipated this reaction and has provided photographic proof, including a snapshot to go along with this:

Half of a squirrel arrived in the mail today. It was the front part, almost down to the belly button, and it was mounted on a tiny wooden plaque.

It was odd. Both because I was not expecting any squirrel parts and because the squirrel was dressed in full cowboy regalia. (p. 289)

There's more to the story, but I'll let you read it yourself.

In more than 30 short chapters, Lawson talks about her childhood, her husband, motherhood, and her work in human resources. Fans of The Bloggess blog need not fear that Lawson is covering old ground; almost all of Let's Pretend This Never Happened contains never-before-revealed (mostly true) events.

Here are some other opinions (click on the links for the full review):

• Mandy from the Well-Read Wife: "If I were the type of book blog that had a ratings system, I would give her ten million gold stars and one humanely deceased, taxidermied unicorn head mounted on a purple plaque. That’s how much I loved this memoir."
• Jennifer Miner writing from Moms LA: "You’ll laugh, you’ll snort, you’ll want to write The Bloggess a fan letter. One thing you won’t do is regret buying Jenny’s book. It’s great."
• Jess from Don't Mind the Mess: "When I read this book, it was like making a good friend. Don’t you love that experience?"

To learn more about Jenny Lawson, start reading The Bloggess, follow her on Twitter, or like her Facebook page. Lawson has given a number of interviews, including one with Booktopia.

Amy Einhorn Books is a featured imprint on Beth Fish Reads. For more information about the imprint, please read Amy Einhorn's open letter posted here on January 25, 2010, or click the Amy Einhorn tab below my banner photo. To join the Amy Einhorn Books Reading Challenge, click the link.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened at an Indie

Let's Pretend This Never Happened at Powell's

Let's Pretend This Never Happened at Book Depository
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Published by Putnam / Amy Einhorn Books, 2012
ISBN-13: 9780399159015