I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley

Well, this was sweet and cute and ultimately, I probably won’t remember a word of it in six months. But it was a fun book to read in the bathtub.

Sloane Crosley’s collection of essays, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, touches on all sorts of important topics: the mall, weird parents, bad bosses, shitty boyfriends, etc. She has a good, self-deprecating sense of humor (important for a collection of memoirs) and an interesting take on a variety of subjects in life. Her brutal story about getting roped into the wedding of a girl she hasn’t seen in 10 years had me cringing and laughing:

“Hey there.’ I cleared my throat. ‘How are you?’
I’m engaged!’
Incidentally, this is an unacceptable answer to that question.” 

As did most of her childhood stories:

“I never asked my mother where babies came from but I remember clearly the day she volunteered the information….my mother called me to set the table for dinner. She sat me down in the kitchen, and under the classic caveat of ‘loving each other very, very much,’ explained that when a man and a woman hug tightly, the man plants a seed in the woman. The seed grows into a baby. Then she sent me to the pantry to get placemats. As a direct result of this conversation, I wouldn’t hug my father for two months.” 

I tend to like parts of memoirs that focus on kooky families and growing up. I feel they’re the most fun and easiest to relate to. Sloane has a good collection of those, as well as one of the worst “first real job” stories I’ve ever read. Ouch.