REVIEW: Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

Humor by Jenny Lawson

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things is the second humor memoir from popular blogger Jenny Lawson (The Blogess). In it, Lawson addresses topics light and serious with her signature cringingly honest, self-deprecating humor. Lawson has a heaping dose of mental illness (anxiety and depression top the list), and she’s not afraid to talk—and joke–about it. She decided, in the wake of a major depressive episode, to take every opportunity to be “furiously happy.” This involved carrying out a lot of pranks on her husband, but also some poignant reflection on living with mental illness. This book’s mission, then, is twofold: make readers laugh and combat the stigma around discussing mental illness openly. (And also maybe to promote the sale of taxidermy?).

To conclude, there are some additional things you should know about this book: (1) You don’t have to have read Lawson’s blog or her first book, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, to appreciate this one—and in fact I had read neither when I started reading this book. (2) You might laugh so much you cry and totally alarm the people around you—I am also speaking from experience here. (3) There are way more taxidermied animals than you’d expect. (4) Taxidermy can be funny.

— Sarah Burriss, Main Library, Charleston, S.C.

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