This is my year to chip away at the stack of unread books and get down to zero before buying new ones, despite my having had this exact same goal the last two CBRs and privately even before that. So what do I do? Read an entire book at the library to get around that whole “buying new ones” restriction. I feel like I put myself on a liquid diet to lose weight then started chugging condensed milk. Anyway, I picked this up because apparently […]
Clever Woman
This is comedian and writer Jen Kirkman’s second book, and it’s quite nice. It’s not a comedy book, but a collection of essays and stories about her life. She’s divorced, she’s childfree, and she has an unconventional job. Hopefully it goes without saying, but you don’t need to be any of those things to find her writing relatable and charming. If you listen to her podcast “I Seem Fun,” you’ll find that some of the stories are familiar. But definitely not all, or even most. […]
“You’ll Change Your Mind.”
I could not be more different from Jen Kirkman — I got married young, finished college, had a couple of kids and go to work every day at an office (albeit one where I wear blue jeans and sneakers..but still!). Jen does stand up and works for Chelsea Lately and knows that comedy is the job for her. She also knows that she absolutely, positively does not want kids — a position that she defends in this book (and apparently, to strangers who think they know better) with […]
A woman like me in at least one way
I’ve had I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids (2013) on my to-read list for quite a while. But with so many other books to read, I never got around to it. That is, until I finally picked up the audio version and started listening on my, lately, significantly increased drive time. The subject of this memoir by stand-up comedian Jen Kirkman is pretty obvious from the title. Kirkman shortly describes her life, from right after college, deciding to […]