2022 EDIT: Still very funny and relatable. However, I don't know, maybe time is a terror and I don't find it as funny as the first time around. I won't be revisiting it, that's for sure. I don't feel like it. Perhaps this kind of book is no longer for me; that I now find it a little overly-long, and too prosy, random, rough and cynical. I might now be wanting more - more diversity - since 2012.
And why does Allie Brosh name only, like, one loved one in her life but not any of the others?
I need to get picky about my reads for my massive clean-up and culling of books anyway.
'Hyperbole and a Half' - recommended for a laugh and some insights, that are not too dated.
Final Score: 3/5
Original Review:
One of the funniest things I've ever read. 'Hyperbole and a Half' had me laughing long into the night, no doubt giving my family a cause for concern.
Allie Brosh's life - the episodes of her life which she tells using hilarious prose and scribbles - seems outlandish, yet entirely, 100% ordinary and plausible. And 100% relatable. The way she tells it, she seems a natural comedienne.
Her stories about her dogs; about finding her time capsule letter from her ten-year-old self; her letters to her several stages of her childhood; the story of how she and her boyfriend got randomly attacked by a goose at the dead of night in their own home; the story of her cheeky parrot toy (yep, whoever got her and her sister that must have hated her parents); her procrastination and motivation woes; the poor hot sauce episode from her childhood; and her lessons to her severely stupid and quite frankly disturbed dogs - I haven't had so much fun in ages. Humour isn't dead after all.
Ms. Brosh's chapters describing her depression are also very harrowing and eye-opening. Not everything in 'Hyperbole and a Half' is meant to tickle your funny bone. It is meant to educate you; help you to understand someone's pain, perhaps even your own.
But maybe humour - maybe finding a reason to live life and find meaning in existing again - can be found in the littlest things; in the strangest and most unexpected of places...
'Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened' - An internet success turned into a paperback comic book. It'll make you laugh, cry, and love the bizarre little things that happen in our existence that is life. It is also the only time that I've found the use of the ableist R-word to be funny, in this context where it describes Allie Brosh's... special and adorable dog.
The book will also make you aware that humans are fundamentally flawed. Go too deep into finding yourself, and you will likely be shocked and horrified by what you will discover consciously. Our human brains are so complicated it's scary. We are inherently selfish, even cruel, and without the vital needs of self-control, conscience, civilization and order, we'd go mad. Inhibitions are also inherently intact in us, or they should be. It'd be anarchy otherwise, and not of the revolutionary and progressive kind. The world would just be in chaos. Shame, guilt and self-loathing shouldn't be our motivators, though. Especially not our main ones.
But 'Hyperbole and a Half' is so lovable and hopeful, as well. A deeply personal passion project. Allie Brosh is a treasure of a normal human being, whom rather effed-up things often happen to.
It took me a while to pick this particular book up. If anyone else hasn't yet, they'd be doing themselves a great favour in reading it too.
Final Score: 5/5
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