Book #53: Let's Pretend This Never Really Happened

[miyyu]

I listened to this as an audio book. Jenny Lawson herself narrates and for the most part, she's a hoot. She sings the chapter headings, and there are some added postscripts and commentary for the audio book that are fun. But the second time around, somehow this book was less charming and more sad. Listening to it, it went on a little too long, and

Comments

[hikerpoet]

I read it, and liked the actual text of the book. I think she's talented and funny. But in the book version, the footnotes are enormously distracting. They list them on the bottom of the page and there are so many of them they probably take up a third of each page/the book or more. I like her writing and in that sense they seem worth reading.

But they were just distracting. Usually when I read a book with footnotes either a) there are just a few or b) if they take up nearly half the page like that it is billed as an annotated, academic version and is meant to be used specifically for critical study. To read these, it either majorly affected flow, or you'd have to go through and re-read it again, half forgetting what they are referring to. Most would have made sense worked into the story. I've noticed this is a bit of a trend among some female comedy writers. What they have to say is funny without peripherals!