Solutions and Other Problems

I loved her blog, before her first book. For some reason I never got the first book. I think at the time I thought if I was going to get a book and call it a book, it had to be a traditionally proper book. With a coherent storyline and a linear progression and a sense of closure at the end. This felt instead like a long journal entry. This reads kind of like my journals. Some things are spelled out more because it's someone else's mind and they're trying to bring me into it.....vs it being my own mind. But the flow felt the same. Very familiar and much easier to step into as something to just accept. Without trying to find a point or coherence to it. It just is. There's a good bit of heavy stuff the author's hashing through in this book. Whatever her reasons are for sharing her life and her thoughts about her life with the world, I'm glad that she chose to do it again. I expected some laughs, no question the author's got a flair for humor. And the not funny stuff....like yeah she's selling this book....but it's her life. You know? It's her dealing with her life in words and pictures. She's at where she's at. This book's documenting a life over a long period of time. It's got all the randomness and sweetness and unanswered questions and sudden tragedies that life gives. It's authentic. It's something real at a time when alot seems surreal. And that was very comforting for me to experience. This author has been through A LOT and whether she did it for the world or for herself she's created something touching and timeless in this book in response to all of that. I can't remember the last time I've felt so powerfully the grief over a lost loved one as I did from the drawings of her memories In this book. The way the author talks about herself to herself may seem brutal and sad to some. Anyone who's been there knows what a fight it is on the inside to live day to day in the way she ends this book. It takes a lot of love and hope to be in that place and tell everyone, including yourself, to keep going. Yeah. I think that's what's touched me to the point of crying long after I finished reading. This book has alot of earnest lighthearted laughs, and some deeply cynical self-loathing laughs, and some unequivocally heartbreaking events. I don't know that it's meant to have a formal point/message. But I hope if you give this book a shot you can take away from it that the author is actively and intentionally appreciating herself for who she is while encouraging us all to do the same with ourselves. That's what I took from the ending, and that's motivational. Don't know if you read comments but on the off chance you do and on the even more off chance you see this review - thank you for publishing this book, Allie Brosh.

An image appears, portraying a lonely country road with signs in the distance. The colours are dusty and muted, and handwritten atop is a simple truth. "The main conflicts in life are: food; power; what to do about the unavoidable realization that nothing is fair or means anything. I don't know what to do about these. I just wanted to tell you." Another image appears. In it, a half-cartoon, half-stick-figure woman hunches over in maniacal fashion, holding a banana with a face drawn on it. In the sky is a handwritten message: "If you can't win, start playing a different game and score just as many points." What do these things have in common? They're examples of how humour and honest exasperation with the world blend to create an entertaining and relatable experience in the form of a book that's half blog and half comic with a bit of novella sprinkled atop. This book is just... it's good. I could come up with a more elaborate term and try to be a pretentious book reviewer for this one, but it's 2020 and I'm exhausted. I don't need to sound pretentious. I just need to say: I absolutely love this book. It's brilliant. It's fun. It's heartbreaking. It's relatable. It made me smile and laugh so hard my ribs hurt... and then it made me want to reach out and hug Allie (the author) because I felt as if I were reading the confessions of an estranged friend. She has been through so much in life, some of which I can relate to and some of which I luckily can't, and reading this book made me feel less alone. For a brief time, I escaped the real world and entered a world populated by delightfully simple drawings which managed to convey paragraphs worth of exposition with things as simple as posture. Even the sad bits weren't overwhelming, as there were still threads of humour in the darkness. I know this isn't a very elaborate review. You'll probably find some better ones elsewhere. And that's okay. Just know that I love this book so much that I'm proud to have pre-ordered it on a friend's recommendation. My literal only complaint is that the kindle edition is somewhat clunky and unattractively laid out, often requiring zooming on images to read them. I think that's a limitation of the format more than an oversight, so I'm not penalizing the rating. If you're looking for a way to escape the world without completely leaving reality behind - a way to find humour in even the darkest of places and feel less alone - then I highly recommend this book.

I don't know that any person can make me laugh as hard as Allie Brosh and her demented, wonderful stories. This book is just as good as her first, and may even be better, which is saying something. I was laughing so hard I couldn't breath in one chapter, only to have the next one hit like a gut punch. She is honest and vulnerable in her storytelling, and completely truthful in her observations, which are always oddly relatable. (I didn't know that others made that "visualization exercise" mistake until I read chapter17, which was almost perversely hilarious.) Fantastic read!

I loved the first one and I wasn't disappointed by the sequel. It made me laugh (and sometimes cry) a lot. Very cathartic ! I don't know how she manages to express so many emotions with such simple drawings.

I'm a big fan of her, her cartoons and overall her humor. I was very excited to read this book, and while there were parts that were okay, overall the book felt short for me. Get the first book though, it's really really good :)

Back of the net! Allie Brosh, bless you, you have scored again! Fans of Hyperbole and a Half will know that this book has been a long time in the making, Allie Brosh has had some truly heartbreaking events in her time away and she touches upon it during the book. The book itself was definitely worth the wait , first of all its massive. Hyperbole was a good size but this is just over 500 pages long. Stupidly as soon as saw it was properly available, (fans will know it’s been on and off Amazon for years so I wasn’t taking any chances), I clicked order not realising I had ordered the hardback which weighs a ton and for some reason came from Germany, I then panicked thinking I’d also ordered the German version, thankfully not! Allie’s signature style still makes me chuckle, her cartoon self with fin ponytail, big eyes and wonderful facial expressions is just pure gold. I especially love her drawings as a child when she is sneaking about. Her animal drawings especially the dogs are fab, these sections had me sniggering away as the mannerisms of the dogs was spot on, it was almost as if she’d used my dog as her model. As I said above she also touches upon her personal life, she is open about her struggles with anxiety and depression and the tragic lost of her sister. It’s heartbreaking but Allie also takes us back to their childhood and it’s lovely to see her reminiscing about the crazy stuff they got up, there is a chapter about her sister and her friend which is incredibly funny. Fans of Hyperbole will love this and I hope she gains some new fans too, Allie I’ve missed you!

Love the book