Weekly Reads: The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo

I listened to Amy Schumer's The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo on audiobook. I had just started listening to it on a trip down to visit my mom. Two days later she passed away. I spent a lot of time in my car driving back and forth to spend time with my dad and then come home over that next week. And every time I got in my car, Amy was there to cheer me up. I laughed out loud, teared up, and it was so good. She did not disappoint.

My rating: 5 stars.

Summary from goodreads:

In The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, Amy mines her past for stories about her teenage years, her family, relationships, and sex and shares the experiences that have shaped who she is - a woman with the courage to bare her soul to stand up for what she believes in, all while making us laugh.

Ranging from the raucous to the romantic, the heartfelt to the harrowing, this highly entertaining and universally appealing collection is the literary equivalent of a night out with your best friends - an unforgettable and fun adventure that you wish could last forever. Whether she's experiencing lust-at-first-sight while in the airport security line, sharing her own views on love and marriage, admitting to being an introvert, or discovering her cross-fit instructor's secret bad habit, Amy Schumer proves to be a bighearted, brave, and thoughtful storyteller that will leave you nodding your head in recognition, laughing out loud, and sobbing uncontrollably - but only because it's over.

Weekly Reads: Scrappy Little Nobody

As soon as I heard that Anna Kendrick was writing a book, Scrappy Little Nobody, I put in a request to my library for the book and the audiobook. I need them BOTH. Once the items were added to our library, I realized that I didn't get added to the list for the audiobook. Insert sad face here. I got the book copy and flew through it. I feel like I would be besties with her. If given the option, I would've much preferred to listen to it, but that's how the cookie crumbles.

My rating: 4.5 stars

Summary from goodreads:

A collection of humorous autobiographical essays by the Academy Award-nominated actress and star of Up in the Air and Pitch Perfect.

Even before she made a name for herself on the silver screen starring in films like Pitch Perfect, Up in the Air, Twilight, and Into the Woods, Anna Kendrick was unusually small, weird, and “10 percent defiant.”

At the ripe age of thirteen, she had already resolved to “keep the crazy inside my head where it belonged. Forever. But here’s the thing about crazy: It. Wants. Out.” In Scrappy Little Nobody, she invites readers inside her brain, sharing extraordinary and charmingly ordinary stories with candor and winningly wry observations.

With her razor-sharp wit, Anna recounts the absurdities she’s experienced on her way to and from the heart of pop culture as only she can—from her unusual path to the performing arts (Vanilla Ice and baggy neon pants may have played a role) to her double life as a middle-school student who also starred on Broadway to her initial “dating experiments” (including only liking boys who didn’t like her back) to reviewing a binder full of butt doubles to her struggle to live like an adult woman instead of a perpetual “man-child.”

Enter Anna’s world and follow her rise from “scrappy little nobody” to somebody who dazzles on the stage, the screen, and now the page—with an electric, singular voice, at once familiar and surprising, sharp and sweet, funny and serious (well, not that serious).

Weekly Reads: Tao of Martha

This week's weekly read is Jen Lancaster's new book The Tao of Martha.

Pug read (lie).  Pug approved (lie, but if she could read, she'd be enjoying it along with me).

I've loved Jen's books since the "early days" of Bright Lights, Big Ass, Bitter is the New Black, Such a Pretty Fat, and Pretty in Plaid but have to be honest when I say I haven't loved her last two books of true fiction.  For those that are unfamilar with Jen's work, she typically writes really hilarious memoirs.

I put in a purchase suggestion for this title at my library, so when we got it in, Jerbear was the first to check it out!  I flew through the first half last Tuesday and Wednesday and then class started.  And since then, and after the panicking that ensued from all of the reading I have to do (yes, still freaking out, thanks for asking), I've realized I have to put the rest of the book on hold.  WAH.

Current thoughts:  pretty hilar.  A cross between some of her earlier funny stuff and Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project.  If Gretchen Rubin had more of a foul mouth.  :)


Interesting fun fact:  It was Jen Lancaster that convinced me to get twitter a bunch of years ago.  I was a devout follower of her blog, and she posted about this twitter "thing" and said she'd follow people back on there.  And this little bird was formed.  :)