Hyperbole and a Half Review



I'm happy that this book exists. If I had known about the blog, like millions of other people, before the book came out I would have been happy that it had existed. But I didn't. Who knew there was good stuff out there on the interwebs?



I couldn't believe how much I was actually laughing out loud at the first story when she finds a letter from her ten year old self to her older self and then responds with writing letters to various aged younger versions of herself. This

I'm happy that this book exists. If I had known about the blog, like millions of other people, before the book came out I would have been happy that it had existed. But I didn't. Who knew there was good stuff out there on the interwebs?I couldn't believe how much I was actually laughing out loud at the first story when she finds a letter from her ten year old self to her older self and then responds with writing letters to various aged younger versions of herself. This is literally (and I mean literally, literally here) the most I've ever laughed at something in a book.A few of the later stories I was not a huge fan of, but they didn't do much to diminish my overall enjoyment of the book. Eight days after reading the book I can't even remember which ones those were. In my memory they are all great, so yay shitty memory!I also blame myself for reading most of this book in one sitting. I kept thinking, maybe I should leave Karen's apartment, and not just sit on her bed and pet her cat for a while longer, but I'll just read one more story, and that one story led to one more, and one more and then I was all done with the book thanks to the humorous crack like quality of the book.I'm sure Maggie was happy with the extra pets she got because of this.Allie Brosh is fucking funny. If you're like me and fairly stupid about popular things on the internet (i.e., you never heard of her blog before seeing this in a bookstore), then I'd recommend you either going to look at the blog now or picking up a copy of this. I really don't know how much of this is original material, so maybe if you've been reading the blog it wouldn't be as new and exciting for you as it was for me, but it's now available in the handy hand-held version that you can touch and turn the pages of.Anyway really funny and cute. She draws dogs just about as good as Jeffrey Brown draws cats, which is a total compliment. A couple of the things in the depression pieces hit a little too close to home, and may have soured my mood for the rest of the day, but they were still a pleasurable way to have my mood soured for the day, sort of in the same way I'll keeping listening to Clarissa's Wierd over and over again even though I know that it's not going to end well for me.Some reviewers I have seen say that this book mostly contains things from the blog, which is great for those of us who seem to be blind to the internet outside of goodreads. Maybe in 2015 I'll set myself some low reading goal for the year so I can focus more on catching up with this whole blogging craze. This will be a good time to do this, because I'm sure there will be something all new and exciting going on by then (or now) that I can be equally clueless about, but marvel at when it's released in book format.I don't think I've read any other humor books released this year, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is the best one. If not the actual best one, then the best one I've read.: I have borrowed this book from a friend, which is like getting it from Netgalley. I didn't pay to read it, and after a certain period of time it will no longer be in my possession, and I will have to get my own copy, or just leaf through it in a bookstore, or maybe a library, if I want to re-read it, or refer back to the book when three or four years from now someone decides to tell me that I'm not very clever or smart and that I was in fact wrong about finding this book funny, and then I'll feel the need to go back to the book to defend why I thought it was funny, which will be impossible because if someone doesn't find something funny it never adds improves the situation by describing to the person why something is funny. I've been amiss lately at adding necessary legal disclaimers to my reviews. It's almost safe to say (but not entirely true), that just about everything I've reviewed in the past few months was not purchased by me, and in most times not purchased by anyone. I'm certain this book has been purchased though. In the past six months I'm fairly certain that I have purchased 7 books, two of which I have read and one which I reviewed (favorably). I feel like I'm begging the question of, “what did you purchase, Greg?” It's not important.