Author: Jen Lancaster
Published: May 1, 2012
Genre: humorous memoir
Hardcover: 352 pages
Source: borrowed from the library
My Rating: 4 stars
Synopsis (from GoodReads): In Such a Pretty Fat, Jen Lancaster learned how to come to terms with her body. In My Fair Lazy, she expanded her mind. Now the New York Times bestselling author gives herself—and her generation—a kick in the X, by facing her greatest challenge to date: acting her age.
Jen is finally ready to put away childish things (except her Barbie Styling Head, of course) and embrace the investment-making, mortgage-carrying, life-insurance-having adult she’s become. From getting a mammogram to volunteering at a halfway house, she tackles the grown-up activities she’s resisted for years, and with each rite of passage she completes, she’ll uncover a valuable—and probably humiliating—life lesson that will ease her path to full-fledged, if reluctant, adulthood.
My Thoughts: This may come as a surprise to some people, but I've never read a Jen Lancaster memoir before. Sure, I read her one work of fiction (and loved it) but I never grabbed one of her many memoirs. So, when I heard that this one was coming out, I was super excited, and when I found it at the library one day, I just had to get it. While her novel was funny, this book had me laughing out loud at so many points that it's hard to list my favorite ones. While we did attend the same alma mater (Go Purdue!), there is something about her that is so relatable, even though we are from different generations and have never met (but if we did, we would totally be BFFs). Lancaster's writing seems like you are talking to one of your best friends, who happens to be slightly crazy and neurotic about most everything in her life. She's that friend that you love to hang out with because she's so honset and doesn't hold back.
While I will continue to say that it's hard for me to review a memoir because it's hard to rate someone else's life experiences, this is probably one of my favorites in the genre. She's so witty and sarcastic that you are laughing out loud (seriously, don't read this book in public place because people will stare at you while you laugh). Her experiences are things that we can relate to, from pet training to having unruly hair. She doesn't sugarcoat her life or make it seem like it's hard. She tends to mock herself and the life that she leads, which I think is one of the reasons that she's so relatable. Her essay on shopping at Whole Foods is hilarious because not only have we all been in a simiar situation, but also because she realizes how lucky she is to lead the life that she does.
While this is not groundbreaking or awe-inspiring, it is a memoir that will have you busting outloud and wishing that you and Jen could get together for some drinks and laugh about your lives. If you haven't read Jen Lancaster, don't wait another minute! Go out, right now, and read any of her books! And you can thank me later, haha!
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