Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson

Mental illness isn't funny ... unless maybe when it's Jenny Lawson writing about it.

Lawson is the internet-famous The Bloggess - a profane, hilarious, honest bright spot in the world. This is her second book, and I believe it's less autobiographical and more inspirational than her first. In the first book, Lawson told about growing up, about her marriage, and about their struggle to have a family. In this one, she discusses her medical records and what the myriad diagnoses mean to her everyday life. She talks about the dark times where creating physical pain is the only way to tamp down the emotional pain. She talks about the events she cannot attend due to her extreme anxiety.

And while that sounds dark and sad, this is still Lawson's typically laugh-out-loud, snorting kind of funny, too.

She tells about experiencing Australia as an official tourism visitor - and how you can't just go around hugging koala, apparently. And boomerangs don't always come back, so it's not really stealing if you throw one from the gift shop door and it doesn't return - you're just helping to weed out the defective products.

This book is truly a rollercoaster of emotions that gets to the heart of human existence - we're all just trying to get by. But what a wonderful world it is with Jenny Lawson in it.

And here I note that I listened to the audiobook READ BY THE AUTHOR and it does not not not get any better than this. Period.