Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Jenny Lawson Times Two!

Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson

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Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir by Jenny Lawson “In short? It is exhausting being me. Pretending to be normal is draining and requires amazing amounts of energy and Xanax.” Jenny Lawson, the Bloggess, is one of the most relateable and funny women to come out of the blog craze of the early aughts. Her debut novel, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, is a hysterical and poignant look at living with mental illness. But Jenny’s life isn’t just about managing her anxiety, OCD and […]

Aggressively whimsical

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CBR10BINGO: Cover Art I read through Jenny Lawson’s Furiously Happy in a few days, and honestly, not much of it stuck with me. Most of it was just too stream-of-consciousness and aggressively whimsical for my taste, and I found myself tuning out whole chapters, skimming over the parts that felt empty of meaning other than how self-consciously “crazy” someone can act. These parts rang false, much like those reality show contestants who do nothing but mug for the camera and show off for each other, […]

“Normal is boring. Weird is better. Goats are awesome, but only in small quantities.”

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I am not 100% sure how to rate or review this book so prepare yourselves for a bit of a ramble. I also don’t know why I decided to read Jenny Lawson’s second book before her first, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. But, I had added Furiously Happy to my to read list, someone suggested the author narrated version since it has a bonus chapter, I have an audible subscription, and here we are. I have depression, and usually I keep it on the ropes […]

It Might be Easier. But it Wouldn’t be Better.

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I wish someone had told me this simple but confusing truth: Even when everything’s going your way you can still be sad. Or anxious. Or uncomfortably numb. Because you can’t always control you brain or your emotions even when things are perfect. When I was a junior in high school I started to struggle with depression. My family has a long running history with OCD and anxiety but depression was a little bit new. My mom took it as a personal affront to her parenting […]

Let Your Freak Flag Fly

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 I had high hopes to finish this review yesterday, but I had one of my “bad days”, which is fitting in a totally weird, Bloggess way.  My bad days are the days where my depression and anxiety win and my emotions take a fun ride to Overwhelming Sadness Valley, Rage Inducing Irritability Town and Petrified by Intrusive Thoughts Commonwealth.  I am cursed with dysthymia, which is a.) a genus of moth, b.) a form of chronic depression (but ONLY MILD depression, if you are judgy Google) and […]

“‘And then Adam was like, “Who’s Jesus?” and God said, “No one yet. It’s just an idea I’m throwing around.”‘

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I admire Jenny Lawson so much, even more now that I’ve read this book. She’s frequently very open on her blog about her mental illness, but she’s never been this open before. It must have taken a great deal of courage to talk so freely about such personal things. Then again, maybe it didn’t. Jenny herself admits in the book there’s a kind of freedom that you can only achieve once you stop caring what other people think and truly accept yourself, flaws and all. […]



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