In Furiously Happy, a follow-up of sorts to Let’s Pretend this Never Happened, New York Times bestselling author Jenny Lawson (aka the Bloggess) 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.
“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.'”
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.
If you love Lawson’s latest burst of hilarity, dive on into these unpredictable indies:
You’re Not Pretty Enough: Extraordinary stories from an (un) ordinary life. by Jennifer Tress
You’re Not Pretty Enough is like Let’s Pretend This Never Happened meets Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar.
From the “Sex Papers” Jen drew as a four-year-old when her mom was pregnant with her younger sister, to her sole teenage act of rebellion: going to church. “We’re very disappointed in you,” her nonreligious parents said. When she was sixteen Jennifer fell in love with Jon Bon Jovi and felt certain that if he just met her, he’d feel exactly the same way. They met all right. But that’s not what happened.
At twenty-three Jen married her college sweetheart and divorced him at twenty-six after he’d had an affair. Affairs happen every day. What doesn’t happen every day? The wife and the girlfriend meeting at a bar, discovering they liked each other, and then confronting Jen’s husband that same night.
The true stories contained here are smart, uproarious and utterly relatable. Told chronologically and chock full of truths, You’re Not Pretty Enough provides an example of how to be comfortable in your own skin and ultimately live a full life (even if you screw up, royally, along the way).
Love Like Crazy by Megan Squires
With an alcoholic father and an absentee mother, seventeen-year old Eppie Aberdeen has learned firsthand that life’s circumstances aren’t always sunshine and roses.
So Eppie doesn’t expect the fairytale, because reality certainly isn’t one. She’s not waiting on the handsome prince with his white horse to come to her rescue. But even though she’s not waiting on it, that doesn’t stop nineteen-year-old Lincoln Ross from driving straight into her heart with his teal and white campervan and his too tall stature and perpetually goofy grin.
It’s difficult to believe in a happily ever after when a happy now is quite hard to find. But Lincoln gives Eppie hope that despite the odds, a true and unconditional love might actually be out there. A revised fairytale. A new kind of love story. But then again, that might just be plain crazy.
After We Fall by Emma Kavanagh
Blood stains the carpet of an empty house. A front door slams behind a mother with a suitcase full of secrets. Someone screams. A plane falls out of the sky.
What happened the night flight 2940 crashed? And is the shocking murder of a policeman’s daughter somehow related to this tragic event-or is it simply a devastating coincidence?
Four people, who have never met but are permanently linked by these disasters, will be forced to reveal the closely guarded secrets that unlock the answers to these questions. But once the truth is exposed, it may cause even more destruction.
After We Fall weaves together the stories of those who lost something of themselves in a tragic incident and explores how swiftly everything can come crashing down.
Intensive Therapy by Jeffrey Deitz
Intensive Therapy follows the relationship of Dr. Jonas Speller and Victoria Schine-Bloch, an analyst and his patient, over twenty years in their interconnected lives. The story moves back and forth in time, alternating between the early 1980s, when both are becoming adults and professionals, and the last months of 2004, as each struggles to address ongoing family crises.
As a young woman, Victoria’s toxic relationship with her parents threatened her college education and her life, and Jonas helped her find the independence and strength to start anew. In return, her candor and insight helped the budding doctor see the flaws in his training and develop a new, better path. As mature adults with successful careers, Victoria reappears to ask for Jonas’s help with her troubled teenage daughter. When tragedy nearly takes the lives of both her children, Jonas must act quickly to save the woman who made him the man he has become.
Am I There Yet? A Journey through Marriage, Motherhood, and Miles of Minutiae by Alison Goldstein Lebovitz
In a collection of candid, hilarious essays, Chattanooga, Tennessee humor-columnist and television personality Alison Lebovitz takes us on the ride of her life.
Am I There Yet? chronicles her travels toward official adulthood, from her engagement, marriage, and budding career (milestones she wrote about for a monthly magazine in Atlanta) to pregnancies and parenthood.
The fun is in the journey, as Lebovitz embraces life’s small, awkward moments: Looking for a lunch buddy the first day at her new job. Re-mediating her reputation as the mother of the preschool “puncher.” Discovering that a dinnertime disagreement with her husband has become the topic of conversation in carpool. We’ve all had those moments—the ones that remind us that no matter how old we get or how far we go, we never quite leave our middle-school selves.
I Just Want to Pee Alone by Jen of People I Want to Punch in the Throat, Patti Ford, Karen Alpert, Susan McLean, Tara of You Know it Happens at Your House Too, Andrea of Underachiever’s Guide to Being a Domestic Goddess, Kim Bongiorno, Julianna W. Miner, Bethany Thies
A New York Times bestseller that posits that motherhood is the toughest – and funniest – job a woman will ever have (and love). Raising kids is hard work. The pay sucks, your boss is a tyrant, and the working conditions are pitiful – you can’t even take a bathroom break without being interrupted with another outrageous demand.
I Just Want to Pee Alone is a collection of hilarious essays from 37 of the most kick-ass mom bloggers on the web. Including: People I Want to Punch in the Throat, Insane in the Mom-Brain, The Divine Secrets of a Domestic Diva, Baby Sideburns, and Rants from Mommyland.
If you adore Jenny Lawson as much as we do (check out her previous contribution to IR, where she shared The Book that Changed Her Life), try these babies out. You may shake your head a few times, maybe shed a few tears of laughter while relating to these tales of life…but that’s what a good book (traditionally or self-published) is supposed to do!
Note: Many of the titles featured in this story are also available through IndieBound.