400 pages? Pick it up around midnight? Sure! Let’s just read it straight though!

Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened is based on the blog of the same name and appears to be essentially a printing of a number of stories that have appeared there (although Menace was published after the book and is thus missing, give it a read, it’s hilarious).

It’s essentially a series of slice of life stories, describing the titular Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened. Allie Brosh is a bit screwed up, but honestly, that’s okay.

Nobody can guarantee that it’s going to be okay, but - and I don’t know if this will be comforting to anyone else - the possibility exists that there’s a piece of corn on a floor somewhere that will make you just as confused about why you were laughing as you have ever been about why you are depressed.

It makes perfect sense in context. I promise.

Well. Slightly more sense.

She’s certainly got a rather dry, cynical, absolutely ridiculous view of the world that I identify with all too much. And it’s funny. Sometimes in direct ways, sometimes surreal, sometimes in those ways that will hit you hours after you’re done reading.

No one could tell me not to eat an entire cake—not my mom, not Santa, not God—no one. It was my cake and everyone else could go fuck themselves.

Spoilers: She ate the cake.

Check it out, either the book or the blog. You’ll figure out right quick if you’ll love it or not.