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Hyperbole and a Half: A Review
A long time ago, someone (I don’t remember who) posted (I don’t remember where) one of the longer sections/comics from this book about depression. Much like Jenny Lawson, Allie Brosh suffers from mental illness including depression. Also, like Jenny, Allie deals with her condition via humor. She also has a penchant for animals no one else could possibly want.
I’d long forgotten who had draw/written the cartoon I’d read until I was half-way through this book and ran across it. I’m glad I picked up this book (and I will pick up the sequel). There were several parts where I laughed out loud at the absurdity of what Allie wrote about and could entirely envision her doing these things.
I’m sure there’s embellishment here and there throughout the book, but the stories feel grounded in reality.
One of my favorite artistic details of the book is how each story is on a different color paper. Makes me want to display the book on my shelf backward. I’ll always know what book it is. It also helped me assess how much longer it’d take to get to the next story and if I wanted to begin another (I almost always did).
If you’re looking for something to tickle your funny bone while addressing important issues, like dogs and mental health, this is a wonderful book.
Lazy Sunday.
Oh, these two have the right idea. The small one is Koda, our dog. The bigger puppy is Mya. Mya is sleeping, Koda was sleeping. Took this picture a few days ago.
Mya is the one that found the tennis ball with a plant growing out of it.
Spent the morning listening to a Pop-Up course from Dean Wesley Smith. Now I’ve got a story in my head that I must write. Darn it. I’m sure that’ll happen with the other pop-ups as well. This isn’t a bad thing. I want to write, on average, two short stories per month.
The biggest take away from Dean’s pop-up, for me, was building the world in small bits. Not trying to do it all in one chapter. That’s something I tried to do with past books and that always failed. Tell the story first, let the world flesh itself out around the story.
The short story I’m going to write will take place in the Of Gnomes And Dwarves universe as the pop-up was for Epic Fantasy. In fact, I think I’ll be doing a number of short stories based around Of Gnomes And Dwarves to help me build up that world and get ready to write those books. Should be interesting.
I had written a short story that was supposed to take place in that world. Kance Encounter. Kance is an assassin/thief character who ends up doing odd jobs for a wizard. I blame Piers Anthony for me wanting to write stories with punny names and punny titles.
At any rate, I’m off to do some reading. I finished I Am The Man by Scott Ian this morning, read a few Tobias Buckell short stories I’ve been collecting from Patreon over the years, and I’m about to dig into something else. Suggestions?
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
J.R. Murdock 