Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
This represents humorist, podcaster, and former Daily Show contributor Hodgman's first venture into nonfiction after three books of "fake trivia." Here, Hodgman drops his customary voice of deranged authority for a much more personal, but no less funny, memoir. This set of stories about his youth in Massachusetts and his move in middle age to a small town in Maine can turn on a dime from absurd fish-out-of-water small-town adventures to surprisingly affecting meditations on mortality. Hodgman demonstrates that he's capable of turning his wit upon any target, including himself, with both skill and compassion. It's impossible to imagine anyone else but the author narrating this audiobook, given his expertise as a podcaster and performer and the autobiographical nature of the material. The author's performance is intimate, conversational, and hilarious. -VERDICT Recommended for fans of Hodgman's podcast or previous books who are interested in seeing a new side of the author; fans of intellectual humorists such as David Sedaris; and listeners interested in idiosyncratic travel memoirs. ["This comedic spin across life in the Northeast will be enjoyable for those who relish the travel disasters of others or -comedic nonfiction": LJ 10/1/17 review of the Viking hc.]-Jason Puckett, Georgia State Univ. Lib., Atlanta © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
Mild departures from the routine inspire neurotic palpitations in these dourly funny essays by humorist Hodgman (The Areas of My Expertise), who pegs his shaggy-dog stories to several unnerving locales. One is around his second home in rural Massachusetts, where he wrestles with anxiety about taking his garbage to the wrong town's dump (the right dump is a longer drive), gets high and builds witchy cairns in a river, and fights a seesaw battle against raccoon droppings on his property and field mice in his kitchen. Other essays concern his postcollege arrival in New York, where he revels in sliding-scale-priced therapy with a trainee psychologist ("I could talk about jazz violin all day long and she was professionally obligated to listen thoughtfully and pretend to be interested"), and his horrifying Maine sojourns, featuring taciturn locals, insufferable summer people, and blighted confections ("Fudge is repulsive... like a dark, impacted colon blockage that a surgeon had to remove"). Recurring themes include the yearning for perpetual adolescence, the baffling burdens of adulthood ("Homeowners advice: do not put even a single box of stale Cheerios down the garbage disposal, never mind three"), and liberal self-loathing ("There is no mansplaining like white mansplaining"). Hodgman's sketches ramble a while and then peter out, but the twists of mordant, off-kilter comedy make for entertaining excursions. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Hodgman, a writer, comedian, and actor brought to prominence by The Daily Show and TV ads for Apple, wrote three funny, best-selling books, including That Is All (2011), brimming with fake facts and invented history. But now that we're adrift in a sea of lies and Hodgman has reached his forties that alarming midpoint he offers, instead, a piquant travelogue of his long slog toward adulthood. With his signature poker-faced humor, hilarious self-deprecation, and imaginatively audacious mischief, Hodgman recounts altered states, travel misadventures, and, at two summer homes one formerly owned by his parents in rural Massachusetts, the other on his wife's home turf of Maine battles with nature (raccoon and mouse poop), technology (a septic system, propane), and unnervingly reticent neighbors. With funny tales of fatherly ineptness, a dissection of Maine humor, scouring commentary on white-male privilege, comic theories about facial hair, a tribute to a famous yet reclusive writer, and reflections on his mother's death, Hodgman is a disarmingly witty storyteller, at once waggish and incisive, droll and tender. Indeed, deep feelings flow beneath the mirth.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2017 Booklist