Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, follows up her popular memoir, Let's Pretend This Never Happened, with Furiously Happy, another book of essays about incidents that sound too wacky to be true but which longtime fans of her writing will recognize as everyday occurrences in her life.
This time around, Lawson also delves into the topic of mental illness, which she struggles with, having suffered depression, panic attacks, anxiety disorders and a "terrible boxed set" of other disorders and phobias. Despite the serious subject matter, Lawson's sense of humor remains intact. Readers will likely shake with laughter at her escapades, such as encountering inept ninjas trying to break into her hotel room in Japan, receiving the skins of three dead cats in the mail, running away from killer swans and her cats stealing her voodoo vagina.
In "Pretend You're Good at It," Lawson tells about one night in New York City when she can't sleep, is gripped by an anxiety attack and her foot is bleeding badly from the combination of cold weather and rheumatoid arthritis. When she looks out a window and sees falling snow, she decides to takes a walk in her bare feet and experiences a sense of calm. On the way back, she notices her footprints: "One side was glistening, small and white. The other was misshapen from my limp and each heel was pooled with spots of bright red blood. It struck me as a metaphor for my life." It could also be a description for this book--half light and humorous, half dark and raw. And fans will be grateful for it. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd