Usually, the most feedback you can give a blog is comment on it. You can recommend it on your web space or tear it down with everyone you know. But with her book, Allie Brosh of Hyperbole and a Half gives us what many blogs don’t: the opportunity to tell the world how much we truly feel for her blog- the humor, the heartbreak, and the weird mind-numbing inspiration to constantly be creative.
The book starts out with familiar themes from the blog. The author’s childhood, dogs, general dysfunctionality, coping with her depression and her life, in general. For fans of the blog, the brutal honesty and crude drawings are not a surprise. Some of the material in the book is from the blog– thankfully it comprises blog posts you’ve already visited several times to help you gain courage and happiness during your day. A lot of the new stuff is brilliant. There are lots of new stories about dogs, childhood, and Hyperbole’s classic humorous self-realization in her last two chapters, ‘Identity’.
If you have never read the blog before, and are looking to read the book, prepare to read a colorful book with lots of drawings. Weird, rudimentary drawings that delight in telling complicated, obnoxious truths. Prepare to laugh until you cry and find something new to hold on to as an instant cheer-up supply. Prepare to indulge in something hard hitting and casual, an irreverence you are hooked to once you start.
For hyperbole’s strengths lay not in her complete honesty or self-awareness, not even in her nonchalance of approach; they lay in her wonderful communication. Her stories and narration are unique, relatable and overwhelming, while being effortless and still very charming.
Image source: Amazon.com
Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened, available on Amazon for $10.79.