Before I get down to this review, I have a little housekeeping to take care of. I want to let you guys know that I’m going to start adding a content warning to My reviews. A friend of mine who is a good and sensitive soul recently pointed out that the phrase “trigger warning” could itself be upsetting to someone who has experienced gun violence, and besides, I think that phrase takes us all back to Livejournal in 2002 a little too much. And maybe I’m contributing to the dreaded PC culture, but I’m okay with that. The world can be a gnarly place, and plenty of us have racked up some kind of trauma, and a lot of us might not like to revisit that unexpectedly in a book. I think that’s fair.
I’ll warn for the obvious stuff like domestic violence, depression, eating disorders, pregnancy/child/spouse loss, etc., but I’m hoping to become more sensitive to what might be appropriate for a content warning as I go along, so bear with me. If there is something in particular that you would like me to add to my “things to warn about” list, please feel more than comfortable either leaving a comment or e-mailing me privately at blengle@comcast.net. I would love to be able to help you guys avoid whatever hurts your awesome brains.
I’ll stick my content warnings at the very end of my posts so that you can skip it easily if it’s not something you want or need, and if the nature of the warning is in any way spoilery I’ll put it lower on the page and give you a heads up about that. That’s all for that! I hope not too many of you are rolling your eyes. They’ll get stuck that way, you know.
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On to the review!
If you’re not already reading this book, you’re mishandling your life. It’s based on the blog by the same name, and is nice and thick for a comic format. There are so many internet humor bloggers with book deals who seem like they had one moderately funny idea and realized they could probably stretch it into something bigger. Or they recognized the platform that the internet provided for these types of things and thought up something to contribute. Rarely, there is someone who has so much humor and intelligence and creativity oozing out of every pore that they have to find an outlet for it, and along comes the internet. I don’t know her origin story, but that is how Allie Brosh comes across.
The book is a series of “chapters” that are illustrated stories. All of them are amazing and wonderful and perfect and funny, often extremely funny. A handful tackle more serious issues, but in the most wonderful way. All I can say is that you need to read this. If you’ve somehow missed out on reading the H&aH blog, you can test drive it before buying the book – if you like that, you’ll like this. There’s some overlapping content and some that is only in the book or only on the blog. Brosh stopped updating her blog in 2013, but there’s plenty to be read and I was thrilled to see when finding A&aH on Amazon that she has another book coming out in October.
So do what I can’t do and go forth and read some Allie Brosh content you’ve never read before. I don’t think I know anyone who wouldn’t love this book.
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Content warning: realistic portrayals of depression, skippable without getting lost.
You are a lovely and kind person.
A.) I think that’s an amazing thing to do.
B.) I need many content warnings, but one that seldom gets mentioned is bugs and insects. I have Acarophobia, Arachnophobia, and Entomophobia . Sometimes I’m okay, but other times just the mention of a bug can take me completely out of a story or show (I’m looking at you, The Magicians!) So, maybe that’s one that could be added?
I can certainly add bugs to the list. There are probably a lot of people who might like a heads up about that. If you need others, let me know as many as you want. It takes me one second to add an extra content warning to a post and if it makes anyone’s brain more comfortable that’s a second well spent! You never know who else might want the same thing warned for.