Hyperbole and a Half
Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened.
By Allie Brosh
Touchstone, Simon and Schuster, 2013
Hyperbole and a Half is one of the best-known blogs around today, and one of the funniest. Hyperbole and a Half, The Book is about 50% material that appears on the blog and about 50% original material. It is all written in the same style -- humorous essays liberally illustrated with very badly-done drawings. (Really bad. But they are also funny, so that's okay).
Obviously, you can go and read a lot of this book for free... which makes a review a bit redundant. So, yes, go read the blog, it is very good. In fact, some of the essays in the book include This is Why I'll Never be an Adult (source of the Clean All the Things meme), The Party, God of Cake, Dog, Dogs Don't Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving, Adventures in Depression, and Depression Part Two. You should read these whether you buy the book or not.
The new essays, by my count, include four about her childhood, two (quite excellent) stories about the dogs, four about negative personality traits, and one about a goose in the house. In general these are as good as what has been published on-line, although I found the ones about being a horrible person to be sub-par. As far as actual valuable (as opposed to comedic) content goes, her two classic essays on depression are excellent, but there is nothing new in this book that compares to them. This book is also entirely limited to writings about her life; there are no Alots or Pain Charts.
Well, obviously, if you like Hyperbole and a Half and you like books... you should get this. And if you are not entirely sold on the idea of reading on dead trees, e-book versions are available.
ISBN-10: 1451666179
ISBN-13: 978-1451666175