Julie's Reviews: Jeneration X

Summary: In Such a Pretty Fat, Jen Lancaster learned how to come to terms with her body. In My Fair Lazy, she expanded her mind. Now the New York Times bestselling author gives herself—and her generation—a kick in the X, by facing her greatest challenge to date: acting her age. Jen is finally ready to put away childish things (except her Barbie Styling Head, of course) and embrace the investment-making, mortgage-carrying, life-insurance-having adult she’s become. From getting a mammogram to volunteering at a halfway house, she tackles the grown-up activities she’s resisted for years, and with each rite of passage she completes, she’ll uncover a valuable—and probably humiliating—life lesson that will ease her path to full-fledged, if reluctant, adulthood. ~amazon.com

Review: I really don't read memoirs. I don't. I don't want to read about how horrible some one's childhood is or how they got through a tough time and persevered. Jen Lancaster's memoirs are nothing of the sort. Frankly, she's funny as shit. Bitter is the New Black wasn't my favorite read but obviously something brings me back to her. Oh yeah, it's because she's funny as shit. She says everything I would like to be able to say. She puts herself in situations so that she can mock herself and maybe learn a little something on the way.

In this book she made me cry too (see her story about Thanksgiving) but mainly I couldn't stop laughing. Not giggle, but full out laugh out loud in public and at home. I was often quoting this book to my husband, who didn't quite get it. I guess you can't take everything out of context or maybe if he had read her before he'd find my snippets more entertaining.

She is one person that I would love to have a bunch of drinks with and listen to her talk. She is my kind of person. She speaks her mind even if it gets her in trouble at times. She's real and honest and that comes through in her books.

In each of her memoirs, she's trying to better herself. In Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never Too Late for Her Dumb Ass to Learn Why Froot Loops Are Not for Dinner, she's taking steps to becoming a full-fledged adult. They buy a house, a generator and she quits snooping on her neighbors. She realizes that she likes where she's at in her life and that maybe being a grown up isn't so bad after all.

I still have a back log of her memoirs that I will definitely be making my way towards. Ms. Lancaster is perfect for laughs but there is always something you can learn from her as well. It's her journey to bettering herself that most of us can identify.

Sidenote:  I will be seeing Ms. Lancaster speak again along with Jennifer Weiner, Sarah Pekkanen and Stacey Ballis in July. Color me excited!!

Final Take: 4.5/5

Thanks to Penguin for sending me the book and having the Twitter chat with Ms. Lancaster.