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Furiously happy : a funny book about horrible things

2015

Format:	Book
Author:	Lawson, Jenny, 1973- author.
Title:	Furiously happy : a funny book about horrible things / Jenny Lawson.
Edition:	First Edition.
Publisher, Date:	New York : Flatiron Books, 2015.
Description:	xxii, 329 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Summary:	"In Furiously Happy, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jenny Lawson explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea. But terrible ideas are what Jenny does best.As Jenny says: "Some people might think that being 'furiously happy' is just an excuse to be stupid and irresponsible and invite a herd of kangaroos over to your house without telling your husband first because you suspect he would say no since he's never particularly liked kangaroos. And that would be ridiculous because no one would invite a herd of kangaroos into their house. Two is the limit. I speak from personal experience. My husband says that none is the new limit. I say he should have been clearer about that before I rented all those kangaroos. "Most of my favorite people are dangerously fucked-up but you'd never guess because we've learned to bare it so honestly that it becomes the new normal. Like John Hughes wrote in The Breakfast Club, 'We're all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it.' Except go back and cross out the word 'hiding.'"Furiously Happy is about "taking those moments when things are fine and making them amazing, because those moments are what make us who we are, and they're the same moments we take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence. It's the difference between "surviving life" and "living life". It's the difference between "taking a shower" and "teaching your monkey butler how to shampoo your hair." It's the difference between being "sane" and being "furiously happy."Lawson is beloved around the world for her inimitable humor and honesty, and in Furiously Happy, she is at her snort-inducing funniest. This is a book about embracing everything that makes us who we are - the beautiful and the flawed - and then using it to find joy in fantastic and outrageous ways. Because as Jenny's mom says, "Maybe 'crazy' isn't so bad after all." Sometimes crazy is just right"-- Provided by publisher.
Subjects:	Lawson, Jenny, 1973- Journalists -- United States -- Biography. Humorists, American -- 21st century -- Biography. Mental illness -- Humor.
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references.
LCCN:	2015022196
ISBN:	9781250077004 1250077001
System Availability:	5
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Genre
	NonFiction
	Health, Mind and Body
	Humor
Topics
	Mental depression
	Anxiety
	Mental illness
	Resilience (Personality trait)
	Overcoming adversity
Setting
	- United States
Time Period
	-- 20th-21st century

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Trade Reviews

Library Journal Review

Lawson's newest memoir is about her determination to embrace life-to be "furiously happy"-despite her lifelong struggles with anxiety and depression. (There's also a surprising number of stories about taxidermied animals.) It's enthusiastically profane, consistently hilarious, and often surprisingly heartfelt and vulnerable. Between (and in the midst of) stories about her quest to hug koalas while wearing a koala costume in Australia and her plans to laminate her cats to prevent shedding, Lawson talks frankly about how mental illness hurts the quality of her life but also how it's taught her to value and take joy in new and unexpected aspects of living. After listening to the book it would be hard to imagine anyone other than Lawson herself reading such a personal work; her narration is as sincere, funny, and touching as her words. Verdict Recommended for readers looking for idiosyncratic memoirs, frank accounts of depression, and possibly also fans of taxidermy.-Jason Puckett, Georgia State Univ. Lib., Atlanta © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Lawson-aka "the Bloggess"-delivers a captivating roller-coaster ride of a performance that elicits wickedly uproarious laughter and heartfelt emotional catharsis. In this collection of personal issues, Lawson mixes her lifelong struggle with mental and physical illnesses and her quirky brand of humor, connecting those two threads together with the notion that those who suffer the deepest lows should embrace a form of happiness that allows for the wild and uninhibited side of life. Lawson possesses a distinct vocal pitch and tangential style of delivery that matches the unapologetically scattershot nature of her narrative. Her renderings of the daily banter of her marriage to a supportive husband with a diametrically opposite temperament ring with authenticity. As a quirky animal lover who also loves taxidermy, Lawson doesn't miss a beat in giving voice to the rich characterizations she has created for the critters in her life, both living and dead. Her language is not for the faint of heart, but the appeal of Lawson's sheer humanity cannot be denied. A Flatiron hardcover. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Lawson, known as The Bloggess to readers of her immensely popular blog of the same name, fills her second memoir with stories that revolve around the crazy things that happen in her life, with an emphasis here on her struggles with mental illness mainly anxiety and depression. Lawson is known for blowing just about everything out of proportion, often proudly. For example, she recounts how she was once convinced that a herd of swans was chasing her in order to eat her, or, worse, impregnate her (hey, she read about it on the Internet!). In most of these anecdotes, her long-suffering husband attempts to bring her back to reality. But, in some, she digs deep, revealing how her mental issues leave her feeling frightened and useless. Scenes from her therapists' offices are funny but usually uncomfortably so. Lawson is a witty comic writer, but the repeated subject matter here feels best read in bits and pieces as one would with a blog. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: TheBloggess.com gets a reported one to two million page views per month, and promotion at book and library conferences has been high. While Lawson's offbeat brand of humor might not be a hit with all readers, the 300,000-copy print run suggests that this book will make the best-seller lists as quickly as her first title, Let's Pretend This Never Happened, did.--Vnuk, Rebecca Copyright 2015 Booklist

Kirkus Review

Lawson (Let's Pretend This Never Happened, 2012), "The Bloggess," pokes fun at herself as she addresses the serious nature of her mental and physical illnesses. "I've struggled with many forms of mental illness since I was a kid," writes the author, "but clinical depression is a semi-regular visitor and anxiety disorder is my long-term abusive boyfriend." Rather than hiding the facts, she openly divulges, in a darkly humorous way, how she copes with rheumatoid arthritis, depression, panic attacks, anxiety, and the days when she is driven to pull her hair out or cut herself. Along with discussions about taxidermic giraffes and raccoons, whether cats yawn, and mobs of swans attacking her, readers learn the particular ways Lawson has learned to cope with those moments that threaten to overwhelm here.g., readings that send her cowering behind the podium or fleeing to the bathroom, passing out during a gynecological exam because she's afraid of medical coats, or trying to find a solution to her sleep problems by attending a sleep clinic. The details are sometimes graphic"I always tell gynecologists that if I pass out when they're in my vagina they should just take that opportunity to get everything out of the way while I'm out"but always honest and usually funny. Lawson's goal is not to offend, although that might happen to some readers, but to lay bare the truth about her struggles in life so that others can benefit. She does a solid job exposing the hidden nature of mental illness by putting a direct spotlight on her own issues, thereby illuminating an often taboo subject. Her amusing essays open up a not-so-funny topic: mental illness in its many guises. Kudos to Lawson for being a flagrant and witty spokesperson for this dark subject matter. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Summary

In Furiously Happy , #1 New York Times bestselling author Jenny Lawson explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea.

But terrible ideas are what Jenny does best.

As Jenny says :

"Some people might think that being 'furiously happy' is just an excuse to be stupid and irresponsible and invite a herd of kangaroos over to your house without telling your husband first because you suspect he would say no since he's never particularly liked kangaroos. And that would be ridiculous because no one would invite a herd of kangaroos into their house. Two is the limit. I speak from personal experience. My husband says that none is the new limit. I say he should have been clearer about that before I rented all those kangaroos.

"Most of my favorite people are dangerously fucked-up but you'd never guess because we've learned to bare it so honestly that it becomes the new normal. Like John Hughes wrote in The Breakfast Club, 'We're all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it.' Except go back and cross out the word 'hiding.'"

Furiously Happy is about "taking those moments when things are fine and making them amazing, because those moments are what make us who we are, and they're the same moments we take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence. It's the difference between "surviving life" and "living life". It's the difference between "taking a shower" and "teaching your monkey butler how to shampoo your hair." It's the difference between being "sane" and being "furiously happy."

Lawson is beloved around the world for her inimitable humor and honesty, and in Furiously Happy , she is at her snort-inducing funniest. This is a book about embracing everything that makes us who we are - the beautiful and the flawed - and then using it to find joy in fantastic and outrageous ways. Because as Jenny's mom says, "Maybe 'crazy' isn't so bad after all." Sometimes crazy is just right.

Table of Contents

	A Series of Unfortunate Disclaimers	p. xiii
	Note from the Author	p. xv
	Furiously Happy. Dangerously Sad	p. 1
	I've Found a Kindred Soul and He Has a Very Healthy Coat	p. 7
	My Phone Is More Fun to Hang Out with Than Me	p. 11
	I Have a Sleep Disorder and It's Probably Going to Kill Me or Someone Else	p. 25
	How Many Carbs Are in a Foot?	p. 43
	Pretend You're Good at It	p. 45
	George Washington's Dildo	p. 51
	I'm Not Psychotic. I Just Need to Get in Front of You in Line	p. 55
	Why Would I Want to Do More When Pm Already Doing So Well at Nothing?	p. 61
	What I Say to My Shrink vs. What I Mean	p. 69
	Look at this Giraffe	p. 73
	The Fear	p. 79
	Skinterventions and Bangtox	p. 83
	It's Like Your Pants Are Bragging at Me	p. 91
	Nice Bass	p. 95
	It's Hard to Tell Which of Us Is Mentally Ill	p. 105
	I Left My Heart in San Franco. (But Replace "San Francisco" with "Near the Lemur House" and Replace "Heart" with a Sad Question Mark.)	p. 111
	Stock Up on Snow Globes. The Zombie Apocalypse Is Coming	p. 115
	Appendix: An Interview with the Author	p. 127
	I'm Turning into a Zombie One Organ at a Time	p. 143
	Gats Are Selfish Yawners and They've Totally Getting Away with It	p. 157
	Koalas Are Full of Chlamydia	p. 161
	Voodoo Vagina	p. 189
	The World Needs to Go on a Diet. Literally	p. 193
	Crazy Like a Reverse Fox	p. 197
	An Essay on Parsley, Wasabi, Cream Cheese, and Soup	p. 199
	And Then I Got Three Dead Cats in the Mail	p. 205
	Things I May Have Accidentally Said During Uncomfortable Silences	p. 213
	My Skeleton Is Potaterrific	p. 219
	It's Called "Catouflage"	p. 229
	We're Better Than Galileo. Because He's Dead	p. 235
	Things My Father Taught Me	p. 247
	Pin Going to Die. Eventually	p. 253
	And This Is Why I Prefer to Cut My Own Hair	p. 259
	It's All in How You Look at It (The Book of Nelda)	p. 263
	Well at Least Your Nipples Are Covered	p. 267
	Death by Swans Is Not as Glamorous as You'd Expect	p. 271
	The Big Quiz	p. 283
	Cat Lamination	p. 293
	That Baby Was Delicious	p. 297
	These Cookies Know Nothing of My Work	p. 305
	It Might Be Easier. But It Wouldn't Be Better	p. 317
	Epilogue: Deep in the Trenches	p. 323
	Acknowledgments	p. 327

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