Thanks to Pen, who heeded my call for a book exchange, I have now been introduced to Laurie Notaro and I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies): True Tales of a Loudmouth Girl. Pure genius, it is, and as such I am wholeheartedly recommending it to you.I don't know where I've been hiding, having never heard of Laurie or her first (and rather popular) book, The Idiot Girls Action Adventure Club, but hide no more! After reading this laugh out loud book of baby chapters of hilarious happenings, I will be hitting up the local library for other Notaro gems pronto! Even better than that, I may order a few of them from A Better World Books (from Pen's suggestion, as well) since they promote buying used books and each purchase supports literacy.
From I Love Everybody, a chapter about Laurie's favorite brown cords after getting slightly shrunk in the dryer (whereupon she engages in some deep knee bends to, you know, stretch them out a bit):
"My pants exploded," I said as I shook my head. "My pants just... detonated. They... kind of... blew up."
And then I showed Jamie how, just at mid-inner thigh level, my pants had been pushed to the brink, and how, just at the inner seam, the pressure of my knee bends had cut through the fabric with the precision of a laser beam at a complete 360 degrees, slicing the pant leg off as if it were horizontally chopped by a guillotine. Not vertically, but horizontally, that's how much my gargantuan double-wide ass should NOT have been in those pants. They tore against the grain. The inner seam was still miraculously held together by several threads, although the remainder of the fabric that once bound the leg to the rest of my pants was now reduced to a brown thread cloud, some still floating in the air, some settling finally on the floor.
"Oh!" Jamie gasped again, covering her mouth. "Knee bends!"
"Knee bends," I confirmed, aghast and nodding.
"It's amazing," my best friend offered. "It's as if they were cut by a knife. Right across. I've never seen anything like it! Or, for that matter, like that little brown haze behind you! Wow, look at that. It's the soul of your pants leaving its earthly prison."
6 tips left at the bar:
You're so funny! I have the inner seam problem but it has never gone against the grain, for that I am thankful and can just mock you from afar!
Yay! Glad you liked it! I need to check out her other ones as well.
Okay Smegan, I got the message, I am dumb! So she totally called me out on scanning the post rather than reading it properly, and thinking that she was talking about herself when in fact, it was an excerpt from the book!
The blonde is out of a bottle but the dumb is all me!
Oh fantastic! I need to get this from the library. I am always in need of a new fun book! Thanks for the rec!
I will read this based on your rec so hopefully you were not too drunk while reviewing it..since my experience is that the books get wittier at closing time.
I sent people over to read your book reviews from my blog-hope they clean up after themselves.
She sounds fab. I'm definitely going to have to check her out!
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