OUT OF MY MIND: A Collection of Essays, Short Stories, and Other Silly Things
Contents:
Dark matter -- An e So many stories packed into one book! Dark matter -- An extremely distracted Millennial goes to a planetarium on the weekend. He discovers the truth behind Dark Matter but the explanation is so boring that he ends up tuning out. No one goes to heaven to see Dan Fogelberg -- Well, everyone is finally dead and it's time to visit Grandma in heaven Romance, chapter one -- Incredibly short yet infinitely amusing. Here it is in full: Julie goes on a blind date with a warlord.
She just wants suss out his personality, he just wants to win a few battles. The girl who gave great advice -- hilarious and read by Katy Perry. This girl gives the absolute best advice. All you have to do -- One guy in a red shirt has really figured out the dating game. The ambulance driver -- Torn between civic duty and a whimsical dream, one ambulance driver has a great and terrible decision. The impatient billionaire and the mirror for Earth -- Self explanatory from the title.
Love how this circles back to an earlier story. Sophia -- A sex robot falls in love. Don't worry, it's definitely not going the way you think it will. Surprisingly interesting - comedians poke fun at Mandela and he fires back a few zingers of his own. They kept driving faster and outran the rain -- Title says it all. The man who invented the calendar -- An extremely comical take on a false history. Every quirk about the calendar was thoroughly explained. The beautiful girl in the bookstore -- short. I love how the name-brand vs off-brand played out! The man who posted pictures of everything he ate -- Another extremely accurately titled essay.
Closure -- Narrated by Mindy Kaling and she channels her inner Kelly for this one. She wants closure but cannot stop thinking about a very, very permanent way of doing this. Being young was her thing -- Slightly sad but still rather good. The vague restaurant critic -- This one was pretty good. It poked mostly good-natured fun at all those YELP reviews that never actually make a point.
Chris Hansen TV personality known for finding pedophiles finds himself being absolutely begged by his daughter to attend a Justin Bieber concert. He does his best to get out of it Great writers steal -- A couple of writes-turned-thieves in a pretty good misadventure. The best thing in the world awards -- An award show that revealed that the best thing in the world Is that even allowed?? The literalist's love poem -- LOL. Audetat, translator of Don Quixote -- This one was pretty good too. A translator amasses fame and fortune - only it's not what everyone thinks. There was such a variety in the short stories - some were funny and sweet, some were over in less than five minutes and some didn't seem quite right like the heaven one.
Stories like that prevented me from wanting to buy my own copy. Feb 08, Philip rated it it was amazing Shelves: The first piece of legitimate literature for the ADD generation. A fine piece of trickery: Novak makes us think it's a celebration of and homage to hedonism. A quick, light, funny read that's soon to be forgotten.
There's depth and substance here. High-brow, artsy, pretentious humor wrapped in the ephemeral humor of ADD. There's a poignancy and intelligence and, and, and It's pensive humor The first piece of legitimate literature for the ADD generation. It's pensive humor - which seems antithetical to the original premise of this review, but it's nonetheless true. Had you told me that I was about to be deeply moved by a story about a sex robot, I'd have told you I don't know what I would have told you. I probably would have walked away from the conversation, blushing awkwardly.
Because, I don't know you well enough to be talking to you about such things. Every non sequitur was brilliant. The inter-connectedness of the stories: The juxtaposing of two opposing sides to end a story - both of which make sense: And the fact that in almost every bizzaro-world situation, I find myself relating to the entire cast of characters: Some risks are worth taking. When people type "lol" these days, I can rarely picture people laughing out loud. Especially about what they post.
That picture of a cat is making you laugh out loud?
And I'm using "literally" literally here - not in its figurative sense, as in "It literally makes me want to throw myself in front of a passing train when people use literally incorrectly" - which I suppose may be true for some people. This book isn't for you unless your parents read it first.
One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories
Wait But Why - Weeks. Either they just read One More Thing, or one of the authors is secretly B. Take these quotes, for instance, view spoiler [ It kind of feels like our lives are made up of a countless number of weeks. But there they are—fully countable—staring you in the face. Does that not sound like Sophia? You should read it. View all 8 comments. May 11, Emily rated it it was ok. I don't know what I was expecting with this collection, but this sure as hell wasn't it.
Just about everything about this book bothered me. The stories were snarky, tongue-in-cheek, sardonic, sarcastic, biting. Yup, I think that about sums it up. Every story was like a clever boy's "oh, wouldn't this be witty? Some of thes Oh, BJ. Some of these stories read like the response to a bad creative writing prompt.
Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections
I get that part of humor writing is twisting the knife, giving stories an unexpected turn right at the end, something surprising and unpredictable. The twist shouldn't be "X is dead," "Y doesn't love you," or "Z doesn't matter," which is all these stories were. How can you write or speak when your tongue is so stuck in your cheek? Many people are praising BJ for his original thought and unique style. Of the 64 stories included in this volume, I think I liked a whopping two of them.
The one about the man who invented the most famous math problem and the one about the translator. But that's inherently the problem! Each of these are "the one about the [insert unusual idea].
Some of them ones that never needed to be fleshed out in prose. View all 6 comments. Feb 19, Jennifer rated it did not like it. If I could give this book zero stars I would. Obviously I'm missing what a lot of other people are getting with this. Somebody, please tell me what's funny here?? I get that he sees himself as a more elevated "intellectual" humorist, and while a few if his ideas do have potential for hilarious insight, he never got past the idea, for me. At a certain point I was saying to myself, "Come on, there are so many funny places to go with this.
And I didn't laugh once, out loud or otherw If I could give this book zero stars I would. And I didn't laugh once, out loud or otherwise. View all 3 comments. Jul 23, Clumsy Storyteller rated it really liked it Shelves: Dark matter was my favorite, i think some of the stories had really deep meaning and hidden messages, and the rest were just random and silly. Why or why not? If you don't love something, definitely let it go. Basically, just drop everything, who cares.
He did it because it made him feel like he was eating his meals with more people. Oct 28, Madeline rated it liked it. But I was happy that it was over for my enemies, too. I imagine that your reaction was similar to mine when I first read it - you probably smiled a little, maybe did one of those almost-laughs where you just blow air out your nose, and thought, "Oh, th "The Walk to School on the Day After Labor Day I was sad that summer was over.
I imagine that your reaction was similar to mine when I first read it - you probably smiled a little, maybe did one of those almost-laughs where you just blow air out your nose, and thought, "Oh, that's clever" and then immediately forgot about it. That's the experience I had reading this book, repeated for several dozen stories. There's nothing particularly bad about any of the stories, and I giggled a couple of times while reading, but that's about it.
The collection isn't awful, but it's nothing special. It's funny, but a pretentious kind of funny, and it's clever, but mostly for the sake of cleverness. And most of the stories are not stories so much as they're half-baked ideas that needed more love and attention. Some of the stories were fun in an absurdist way, like the one about Johnny Depp deciding to crash his motorcycle in front of a Hollywood tour bus, and many of them read like first drafts of a stand-up routine - like "Chris Hansen at the Justin Bieber Concert," where Hansen explains to his teenage daughter the numerous reasons he can't go to the concert with her.
Others are more like little snippets of larger stories, like "Julie and the Warlord," where a woman goes on a date with an African warlord and debates ethics with him. This story is a lot more fun if you mentally cast Mindy Kaling as Julie - in fact, I'm ashamed to admit that I spent a lot of the book searching for evidence that proves my long-standing theory that Novak and Kaling are soulmates and need to get married yesterday in response to the question of whether it's creepy to ship real people: Mostly though, I spent my reading time thinking about how much better these ideas would be in the hands of another writer.
Sometimes they just fall flat: And sometimes they feel like they've been recycled from somewhere else. He's not great at forming full stories, but Novak excels at sharp humor and realistic portrayals of modern life - at its best, his writing resembles Dorothy Parker and her acidic one-liners, like here: Like I said - that's about the best you can hope for with this book. Reading it wasn't a waste of an afternoon, but I'm glad I got it from the library instead of buying it. As an added bonus, please watch this trailer for One More Thing because apparently book trailers is a thing now?
View all 5 comments. Mar 09, Whitney Atkinson rated it really liked it Shelves: A lot of them interconnected, surprisingly. I enjoyed the majority of them, but there were some longer ones that just seemed to go on too long. I tried listening to this on audio, but the jokes were lost on me when I tried it that way, so I wouldn' 3.
I tried listening to this on audio, but the jokes were lost on me when I tried it that way, so I wouldn't recommend it. But I do love how creative this entire thing is! Dec 14, Robert Wechsler rated it liked it Shelves: I was attracted to this First-Reads giveaway because of my longstanding interest in English-language humor. I take humor seriously. What Novak does best is to find the sadness in humor.
Too many younger writers think that humor is just about laughs. Smile I was attracted to this First-Reads giveaway because of my longstanding interest in English-language humor. Smiles and thought are more what humor is after. What Novak does worst is language. Most of his prose and dialogue are like the average American realistic novel: His ideas are very imaginative.
But once he has an idea, he imagines like a lawyer as a former lawyer, I mean that descriptively, not disparagingly. Novak is much more imaginative, creative, and thoughtful than that. But, most of the time, his ideas are still better than his execution. I am put off by celebrity-based humor, but Novak did manage to do an excellent job with his Elvis piece. At the micro level, translations are usually similar, and the differences can seem ridiculously minor or baffling: And as her subjects become more serious, her essays deliver not just laughs but lasting emotional heft and insight.
Crosley has taken up the gauntlets thrown by her predecessors—Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, David Sedaris—and crafted something rare, affecting, and true. With tenacity and insight, Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form.
Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne—the hero of this book—who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. She asks what our privacy, our intimacy, and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing.
Along the way, he investigates questions large and small: She learned from an early age what made her miserable, and for Scaachi anything can be cause for despair. Alongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of color: These essays are personal without being confessional and clever in a way that invites readers into the joke.
A cultural critique and a finely wrought fan letter, interwoven with stories that are achingly personal, All the Lives I Want is also an exploration of mental illness, the sex industry, and the dangers of loving too hard. How can art explode the restraining conventions of so-called realism, whether aesthetic or political, to engage in the active reinvention of the world? According to Goodreads, I must have enjoyed the last Sloane Crosley book I read - I honestly don't remember anything about it, but 4 stars for me is at least "pretty good".
I can't give this one even a 3 star rating. The essays weren't funny or even that interesting. I didn't have any empathy for Sloane, even though I wanted to like her. The writing was clunky at times. What should have been a 2 or 3 day read for me took much longer. I just wasn't motivated to pick it up. That said, I'm thankful t According to Goodreads, I must have enjoyed the last Sloane Crosley book I read - I honestly don't remember anything about it, but 4 stars for me is at least "pretty good". That said, I'm thankful to Goodreads for this giveaway and would gladly share it with any friends interested in giving it a whirl.
May 20, Alexis rated it it was amazing Shelves: Maybe I am biased, as I Was Told There'd Be Cake was one of the formative books of my young adult life, positing Sloane as my literary drunk aunt or someone like that-- but to be fair, holding her previous works to such regard made me nervous to read Look Alive Out There because what is she failed me?!? Nonetheless, Sloane did it again: This book is a tribute to the ways in which the ordinary hap Maybe I am biased, as I Was Told There'd Be Cake was one of the formative books of my young adult life, positing Sloane as my literary drunk aunt or someone like that-- but to be fair, holding her previous works to such regard made me nervous to read Look Alive Out There because what is she failed me?!?
This book is a tribute to the ways in which the ordinary happenings of life are the most brilliant, more often than not-- if only we take the time to look around and notice. Apr 09, chad morgan rated it liked it Shelves: In , Crosley published her first novel, The Clasp, a Mary McCarthy-esque riff on the Guy de Mapassant short story The Necklace that was exceedingly well-written but perhaps too hilariously funny funnier, even, than some of her essays to be taken seriously, despite its moments of deep sincerity and pathos.
Fans of Crosley will be happy to hear that her latest, Look Out Alive Out There, is for the author a sure-footed and gratifying return to the essay form. In the decade since Crosley first arrived on the literary scene she has honed her talents considerably. In Look Alive Out There, she is in full command of her talents, as mordant and caustically self-deprecating as ever. Where her earlier collections largely chronicled her social and romantic foibles as a twenty-something urbanite, these new essays find her grappling with the onslaught of her thirties and impending middle-age.
Such predicaments are not the purview of a slightly neurotic twenty-something who keeps a secret drawer full of toy ponies in her kitchen or travels impulsively to Lisbon to get drunk with a troupe of aspiring clowns. This maturity is not unwelcome, or at all ineffective: She wrote a letter, then watched as Jared and his mother laughed about it in their kitchen. Inspired by an art installation exhibit, she bought a set of watt halogen spotlights and aimed them at the neighboring backyard. The spotlights are successful, and Crosley, officially Over It, yawns at their resultant objections and insults.
They were forever behind me in time, as unable to catch up as I was to wait for them. One aspect of Look Alive Out There that struck me is the absence of virtually any engagement with current events. Slipping into the book was somewhat like slipping through a portal or a time-warp and being transported to a world not villainized by totalitarian-leaning oligarchs and Russian e-espionage, where black men are routinely executed in the streets and children are gunned down in schools.
Out Of My Mind: A Collection Of Essays, Short Stories, And Other Silly Things [ Gary Jacobs] on www.farmersmarketmusic.com *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. OUT OF MY . OUT OF MY MIND: A Collection of Essays, Short Stories, and Other Silly Things - Kindle edition by Gary Jacobs. Download it once and read it on your Kindle.
Nevertheless, Look Alive Out There is as charming and delightful a book as one is likely to come across, at turns beguiling and shrewd, flippant and discerning, funny and revealing. That self is spared the fate of caricature because it is so deliberately and meticulously constructed, and so inimitably precocious.
Aug 17, Andres Eguiguren rated it liked it. I read Crosley's previous collection of personal essays, How Did You Get This Number , right before reading this newly published collection. While the former comes across as the wacky musings of someone in her late 20s, this one has the veneer of maturity that comes from being in one's mids. The former also has several travel pieces, while this one has a couple of long medical ones, and as Sloane herself points out, the latter is a much tougher sell.
A bar in Lisbon just seems in I read Crosley's previous collection of personal essays, How Did You Get This Number , right before reading this newly published collection. A bar in Lisbon just seems inherently more likely to be funny when compared to a fertility clinic in the Upper West Side. Also, while all the essays in How Did You Get This Number seemed to be roughly of the same length, Sloane here mixes some very short pieces with some much longer ones; while this is not a problem per se, at least one or two of the shorter pieces come to a somewhat abrupt end, to my mind, just as she seems to be getting started.
There are still plenty of funny nuggets here to recommend this, but if you haven't read Sloane yet then I would recommend starting with her earlier work. Aug 14, Jaclyn sixminutesforme rated it liked it. The collection reads almost like a stand-up comedy script, some of the stories had me laughing out loud and others had me nodding along in agreement! Jun 11, Danielle rated it really liked it. Hilarious and snarky, literally laugh-out-loud funny She has a gift for turning seemingly mundane experiences into hilarious stories with the best self-deprecating tone that somehow speaks to us all even if we will never have a walk-on role on Gossip Girl.
I still connect with every word Hilarious and snarky, literally laugh-out-loud funny I still connect with every word and feeling. I especially love her travel stories because I, too, have had so many ridiculous things happen to me while traveling but my retellings are never as hysterical as hers.
I really feel like we could should? Did I mention I just love her so much?! Jun 03, Jim rated it liked it Shelves: For me, a mixed bag. Some essays I really liked, like the one about her gardening downstairs neighbor. Others, not so much. The humor was understated, no real guffaws, but sometimes amusing. Some stories, such as the one about her porn-star distant "uncle," I was surprised she chose to write about or that her family didn't try to discourage. Her disastrous hiking trip in South America was funny.
Some of the more "personal" stories I didn't get into as much.
Jul 20, Lynnie rated it liked it Shelves: Dec 15, Mila Menna rated it really liked it. I found Sloane's stories about climbing the mountain in Ecuador aha kinda and getting her eggs harvested to be very interesting! I know this is a compilation of crazy or fun stuff that's happened, but she's really out there. Meeting Chuck Bass and getting her domain stolen by a creepo. Jul 02, Rachel rated it it was amazing. These are not amusing tics. They are instead reflections on the personality of the packer.