I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies): True Tales of a Loudmouth Girl

This book proved for me an overstatement of the obvious--how subjective (our reaction to) the arts really is. (And the value of a really good manuscript editor.) I have a frustrating inability to stop reading a book I don't like. I have to see it through to its bitter end. Part of the reason for such self-punishment is hope that eventually the book or the author's style will eventually grow on me, or that I will come across a jewel of a line so funny or well-written, or insightful to the point I pump my fist in the air and say, "Yes!!" and so there's a payoff finally. I have not given myself further eyestrain in vain. The other reason is the consumer-competitor/nature lover angle. I paid X amount for a book and darn it, I Will Finish It. I will not let it defeat me, make me a quitter. And I think too of the tree cut down to make the book--yet another squirrel left homeless when winter comes. One less branch from which birds perch, waiting to take a dump on my just-washed car. And so I carry on, heave a sigh of relief when I finally hit the last page.But don't you hate feeling cheated? I try to keep in mind the old saw, "If you think it's so easy to write a book, why haven't you written one?" I KNOW how hard it is to write a book (yes, I am an editor, but not in the trade industry). But that doesn't mean I have to like a book or say only positive things about it. I try to balance out what I don't like with what I do like. And this book hit both notes, so to speak. There were several very funny bits, but overall the humor throughout struck me as forced. The writing also sagged under the weight of an amazing number of run-on sentences (one had 77(!) words) with stingy punctuation. At times I had to fight the urge to reach out to Vanna White and ask if I could buy not a vowel but punctuation.I had some favorites bits, though. Like when she gets summoned to the office of her new boss and her allergies are raging a jihad in her head. "My sinuses felt like someone poured the foundation to a house into them." Classic! Who hasn't felt that way when allergies or a really bad cold have you in their grip? It was a funny line. Except that that particular sentence had SEVENTY-SEVEN WORDS and only NINE punctuation points (ten if you count the em dash). I felt myself gasping for air when I finally came to the end of the sentence. And because the sentence was so endless, that truly funny line was drowned by all the verbiage around it. The line about the "rectal expression on his face" was a good one too, but it also is half-swallowed by the truckload of words that came after it.Another laugh-out-loud moment was when she is talking about eating corn and asserts, "If something leaves my body, I pretty much figure that my relationship with it has reached the end." LOL!! I loved that one, enough I both highlighted it and copied it into a journal I keep of especially poignant or funny lines. Just as I did with her comment comparing the lack of movement of Tori Spelling's implants to a "set of gravestones." Or the "constant presence of a single roll of toilet paper that appears to simply roam about the house on its own." LOL! Again, a genuinely funny line, and visual. But my personal favorite line was her observation about her new editor, Three-Faces-of-Eve Gretchen, and how over time she came to the conclusion that "...there was a high possibility that Gretchen had tenants. In her body." In defense, she was "going to need to develop some of [her] own auxiliary personalities as a psychological defense mechanism." LOL! The problem, again, though, was you had to read through an endless series of run-on sentences to reach the 'prize.'Unfortunately, there is so much verbiage (coupled with a punctuation drought) throughout that the payoff of genuinely hysterical lines lose some of their punch under the weight of all those words. It gets so a voice in your head starts chanting, "edit! edit!" Take The Sims game part, for instance. That part is like a short story of its very own tucked into the book. It goes on FOREVER and is so over the top that it isn't funny, but silly. And not good-silly. And that was my problem with the book overall. The going-for-the-big-laugh incidents, of which is about three-fourths of the book, seemed forced, desperate attempts to intentionally BE funny instead of the humor coming organically. Take the (endless) scene where she goes to her nephew's (Nicholas) preschool to be a helper for "Harvest Festival" (the more PC term for Halloween). Again, these are PRESCHOOLERS. But she ends up arguing with 5 year olds over the high cost of make-believe apples in their make-believe grocery store. As with other scenes, this one lasted absurd paragraph after absurd paragraph. Not a funny scene but a silly one, one in dire need of editing or outright elimination.Maybe I am unfairly, unconsciously comparing her writing with that of Jen Lancaster (Jen's first few books, at least). Both Notaro and Lancaster are in the same genre, although I think Notaro was published first? In any case, there is a more organic pace, rhythm to Lancaster's books. Laugh-out-loud moments that come across as more authentic somehow, without all the unnecessary verbiage. I will give Notaro another try, though, as there were parts of the book I DID enjoy. But I will borrow them first. As for recommendations, I put all books into four categories: so good I buy the hardcover (or paperback) version AND the Kindle version; good enough to buy the Kindle version; borrow/download it from my public library or through Amazon Prime's free loan program; so bad I stay far away from any other books by the author. I would put I Love Everybody/Notaro in the third category--borrow first. Obviously I am in the minority on Notaro given the glowing reviews she's received and her NY Times status (though being on the NY Times list does not necessarily mean a book is great; it does mean it's moved a lot of units--rather like music and the Billboard chart). And though this book didn't do much for me, I truly congratulate Notaro on her best-selling status. And how wonderful it must have felt not just to have brought the "dynamite" for the bridge of her last columnist job, but to also have annihilated that sucker! :)

I bought this book because of the title. I'm from the South, and down here we all love everybody, except for the people we don't love, but we act like we love them anyway. It IS an atrocious lie we love to tell each other.I Love Everybody starts out with the Elevator People, and that's when I realized Notaro and I are kindred spirits. She obviously stares at people and doesn't bother to look away from them even in their most vulnerable and frailest moments. I like that about her; mostly because it makes me feel a lot better about myself.At night, I pulled this book out and read it while my husband read the very dry and historically accurate book, 1453. Every time I started giggling, he asked, "What?" And I would say, "What?" Then he would ask, "What?" more emphatically and I would answer, "Nothing," and go on smugly reading.When I got to the part about passing the kidney stones, though, I laughed so hard the bed shook. This really annoyed my husband, propped up on his pillows reading fine literature and broadening his knowledge of the world. By the time I got to Jerry the tree guy I skipped all the what-what and just went ahead and read it out loud to my husband so he could enjoy it, too. Jerry reminds us very much of our very own Hank the painter.What I'm trying to say is this book is funny, not because it's Laurie Notaro's life, but because it's everybody's life. So get it, get loud and get ready to laugh at yourself.Lucy Adams, author of  Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run

F-U-N. All that's needed to enjoy this quick, pick-up and put-down-at-will collection of stories is a good sense of humor. Laurie Notaro has mastered her craft. She's a wonderful writer with a unique mind and an absolute comedienne. I continuously laughed out loud and had to reread sections to my curious ten-year-old (with only minor censorship . . .) An example of "show-don't-tell" writing: "I have to have a purse large enough so that if Nazis were advancing into my village, I'd have enough room to shove half of my household belongings in there and a bunch of snacks for the trip. It's that big." (Can't you just see it?)The stories vary in length, from pithy column-like accounts of why she "hates Kate Winslet" to more drawn out storytelling about a computer game known as "The Sims" and the title story, "I Love Everybody," which is a funny and honest take on her own personality. We get to experience her QVC-addicted mother and her lovable, nutty nana, who is hooked on Lifetime Television. Everyone and everything is fair game. And since I'm a former newspaper columnist, I especially appreciated her accounts of dealing with new editors and the implicit documentary-type tale of the evolution of her career from columnist to bestselling author.I highly recommend this book for all readers, particularly those who appreciate first-person collections like those of David Sedaris, Sandra Tsing Loh, Augusten Burroughs, to name a few. Male or female, again a good sense of humor and an appreciation of witty, well-crafted writing makes this book for you.Michele Cozzens, Author of A Line Between Friends and The Things I Wish I'd Said.

I love this literary form - the humorous personal essay. Notaro is competent at it, but not a patch on David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs or Jonathan Ames. Maybe this comparison is a little unfair. These guys are the masters of their form and their topics are often a little more salacious; Notaro's subject matter tends to be more innocuous, family-friendly and "clean". I found her prose style to be a little annoying at times and there is lots of dialogue that lacks sincerity. Maybe she appeals to women more?

I just couldn't stop reading it ever since I started reading this book. This book gives you big smile on your face for sure. I was even laughing so bad.