Quietly Hostile: Essays by Samantha Irby

Quietly Hostile: Essays Reviews

• 
  Roxane

  Sam Irby is brilliant and one of the funniest people I’ve ever read. In many ways this book is quite different from the previous two (not a bad thing). The humor is as sharp and bittersweet. The essays have some different structures, very reminiscent of her excellent blog. As ever I appreciate the insights that come through the humor.
• 
  Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨ Campbell

  I feel like this title is an attack on who I am as an individual
• 
  Traci Thomas

  This book fits in line with Irby's other books. Funny, depreciating essays with keen observations, but mostly a lot of bodily humor and judgement. Yes, please.
• 
  Kelly (and the Book Boar)

  I’ve been pretty vocal about books that came to fruition during the lockdown portion of the pandemic. Even one of my favorites (Lisa Jewell) stumbled a bit with the very unnecessary The Family Remains (good news is, she has another release coming up this Summer and that one is a banger). When I saw Samantha Irby was getting ready to release her own pandemic offering, I was so there for it. I mean she’s hilarious to begin with so her take on quarantine life was sure to be a winner. Right?
  
  Unfortunately, wrong. I mean there were times when I was like oh yes bish, you are me . . . .
  
  “Quietly hostile is how I would describe my public personality. I am mild-mannered and super polite, but just beneath the surface of my skin, my blood is electrified and I am one inconsiderate driver away from a full Falling Down-style emotional collapse.”
  
  And there were the standard LOLz from stories of a weak bladder (and anal sphincter), a near-death experience via allergic reaction and how delicious a “dip dinner” can be. Buuuuuuuuuut then there was a deep dive into which Dave Matthews songs are her faves and over 20% of the word count spent analyzing porn and breaking down Sex and the City eps . . . .
  
  
  
  
  As someone who still calls it Sex IN the City – I was obviously not the target demographic for any of that. I was also not aware the Irby wrote “The Pool Episode” of Shrill (but I have actually watched it and thought it was the only 100% great one in the first season so kudos to you, Irby). Nor did I know (or really care) that she was a part of the Sex and the City reboot.
  
  I wanted an analysis of the mundane daily motions she went through to make it past Covid – not this.
  
  ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley!
• 
  Melki

  I probably shouldn't rate this book as I skimmed a lot of it. I quickly flipped through all the essays about things in which I have zero interest like Sex and the City and the Dave Matthews Band. (Can I really be the only person on the planet who has no idea what he sounds like?)
  
  But, the ones I did read were spot on. Irby is the queen of Too Much Information, and I snickered happily at her woe-filled, yet hilarious tales of indigestion, COVID-19 panic, near death experiences, and porn preferences.
  
  Let's just sum it up by saying that all the essays I did read are rated four stars.
  
  Many thanks to NetGalley and Vintage for letting me read this one.
• 
  emma

  samantha irby is the individual to go to if you want a collection of essays packed full of humour, depreciation and observations to match yours. her wit is not for all, but it is sharp, evident here. however, unlike her previous collections, this one, her newest, saw many of them fail to land. the ones that did, on the other hand, were gems. not her best, but enjoyable when good.
  
  - 2.5 stars.
• 
  Cris

  I’m a fan of Samantha Irby but this book just didn’t resonate with me this time. Irby always gives stories/essays about her life in her books. This time it was the same but it had a different tone. I didn’t care for the nun story at all, but felt I needed to read it to make an honest review on the book. I just didn’t care for so much negativity towards herself either. The Sex and the City chapter ran on and on and on. I know the title is Quietly Hostile, but Hostile would be better.
• 
  destiny ♡ howling libraries

  This was my first book of Irby's after having a lot of friends recommend her books to me for years, and I had a pretty good time with it! I definitely feel like I benefited from listening to the audiobook, and if she narrated her other books too, that's the format I'll choose for those as well.
  
  I'm not sure if I would have finished this book if it weren't for Irby's engaging narration. While there were several moments that made me smile or even chuckle a little, they were all at the very beginning of the book, and then most of the following essays kind of lost my interest. I'll most likely check out another of her books to see if it was just an issue with this one, but I was a little let down. I'm hoping it's just an issue with Quietly Hostile because Irby strikes me as the kind of author I want to love, so hopefully the next one will be a better fit for me!
  
  Thank you to the publisher and LibroFM for the audio review copy! All thoughts are honest and my own.
  
  ✨ Representation: the author is fat, disabled, chronically ill, Black, and queer
  
  ✨ Content warnings for: mentions of chronic illness, fatphobia, toxic relationships, kinks, terminal illness, death of parents, COVID
  
  ———
  
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• 
  8stitches 9lives

  Quietly Hostile is straight-talking comic and essayist Samantha Irby's third collection of witty and relatable stories that immediately have you enraptured. I aimed to read the first few pages only, just to get a flavour of it, but, like any great book, before I knew it, I had been carried away on a rather swift and rather gusty wind of complete relatability, unapologetic stances and laugh-out-loud funny moments all tied neatly into a pretty bow with each page exuding realism, emotion and often biting, acerbic wit.
  
  Drawing from as vast personal subjects as her favourite music, sexual trysts, ongoing health troubles, her complicated family dynamic and the inconvenience and stress of the coronavirus outbreak at the time, each essay is a self-contained gem and a snippet of Irby's life with each having a relatability and pure genuineness that is rarely found within the genre and that resonated with me through to the last page. The liberally interspersed sardonic, self-deprecating humour throughout is a joy to behold and had me racing through the pages which is quite unusual for an essay collection.
  
  However, I wasn't interested in the essay about Sex & the City and going through what she would change about each episode because I don't like or care about the show and going through quite a few of Dave Matthews Band tracks similarly but stating why she likes them in a separate essay also lost my attention slightly after being engrossed up until those points, but, of course, this is all subjective. For me, there was a slight lull in those sections, but in an anthology of topical writings, such as this you, will naturally find some more compulsively readable than others.
  
  That said, Irby is inimitable when she addresses topics of interest as she manages to strike the perfect balance between casual and amusing remarks, openness and honesty, emotion and apathy, light-heartedness and seriousness about her situations, feelings and thoughts. The most hilarious part of the collection in which I could barely contain my exuberant laughter was the essay entitled 'shit happens'. It had me cringing and snorting in equal measure, and in 'o brother, where art thou?' a few tears slipped down my cheek while she discussed the death of her mother which was poignant and emotional.
  
  I can't wait to read more from such a strong, fearless and unique voice; Irby fills these pages with the thoughts many of us are thinking but are often too embarrassed or shy to espouse, and she has the balls to place them in a book! Highly recommended.
• 
  Melanie Johnson

  I have read all of Samantha Irby’s books and have enjoyed all of the them. This one was more tedious for me to get through, especially the Sex in the City chapter. It was really long. This book also has a LOT of bathroom “humor” which is just not funny to me.
• 
  CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian

  Not my favourite Samantha Irby (a couple of these essays didn't actually land for me) but this was still a very funny and occasionally poignant read. My favourite one was "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?", which is about her reconnecting with a half brother she never really knew. Also, her satiric rewriting of all the original Sex and the City episodes was hilarious and especially interesting because she is a writer on the reboot!
• 
  Dona

  Audiobook DNF May 25 2023
  
  Want to reread this as a digital copy.
  
  DNF 22% on June 13 2023
  
  This humor just isn't my style.
• 
  Hannah

  I have read and loved every single one of Samantha Irby's previous collections. However, while I enjoyed this and read it compulsively, it somehow didn't always work for me. She's still funny and her essays still flow incredibly well but something was missing. The first essay was absolutely brilliant and very much captured how the beginning of the pandemic measures felt like.
• 
  Lamisa

  I think a venn diagram of my sense of humor vs samantha irby's would just be two circles that are as far away from each other as possible. simply did not enjoy or care for most of this but forced myself to finish anyway in the hopes that I would start to like it (I did not). I do appreciate that there is a lot of good stuff here it's just not for me
• 
  Lily Herman

  Annnnnd that's another fabulous essay collection by Samantha Irby under my belt! Considering I'm a long-time subscriber of her newsletter and I've watched shows she's written for, it's safe to say I'm a fan.
  
  You never know what you're gonna get from a Samantha Irby essay, and as always, these ran the gamut. All of them were strong, but some were stronger than others (as it goes for the vast majority of essay collections!); I particularly loved her writing on Dave Matthews and Sex and the City as well as her ruminations on her complicated family history.
  
  God, some of the ways she phrases mundane parts of life just live rent-free in my mind for months at a time. She has a gift!
  
  Content warning: Mentions of parental death and grief
• 
  kelseyandherbooks

  Is this my favourite Samantha Irby essay collection? I say that every time I finish one, but I’m happy for Quietly Hostile to hold that place until we are gifted another one.
  
  “I Like It” was probably my favourite essay of the bunch, because loving things loudly and unapologetically is my love language.
  
  I resonated with her take on marriage in “My Firstborn Dog” - I like normalizing that couples who have been together for a very long time might run out of things to say sometimes!!!
  
  But the one that had me snorting with laughter the most? “What If I Died like Elvis.” I was walking my dog and thank god no one else was around, because I probably sounded clinically insane. When she “hee-haws” as she’s talking about her attempts to talk to hospital personnel?? I lost it.
  
  I am so grateful to Libro.fm for the gifted ALC and can’t wait to hold my preordering physical copy in my hands at the end of the month!!
• 
  Amanda

  Thank you #Netgalley for the advanced copy!
  
  This was my first time coming across Samantha Irby and will not be the last. Love her honest writing style and the short stories. I particularly liked her pilot for the show based on her life and how it actually connected to her experiences. Though I think my favorite, but traumatic for Sam was the removing nail polish essay ultimately leaving her in a trauma bay. Of course this would happen to her! Though I was laughing as reading, I am sure it was a traumatic time. The stories she has will have you laughing!
• 
  Andrew

  Any book Samantha Irby puts out is an auto-read for me, because I know I will be laughing at all of the marvelously relatable cringe encased within its contents. Quietly Hostile is, naturally, a hilarious and binge-able collection of essays, with enough unapolagetic wit to give you rock-hard abs in no time from busting a gut as you read it. If you also frequently waver between being very anxious and very badass, you will delight in Irby's writing and way with words.
• 
  Kyra Leseberg (Roots & Reads)

  3.5 stars
  
  A collection of often gross and/or hilarious essays, so it’s classic Irby!
  
  This time around Irby shares her love for Dave Matthews and Sex and the City in extreme detail that kind of made me scratch my head. I mean, we’re talking about breaking down lyrics from a ton of DMB songs, breaking down an obscene amount of scenes from the OG SaTC series… obviously there’s some hilarious observations here but I had to skim after I was 10+ pages into these obsessions.
  
  She’s still discussing IBS, healthcare, ageing, and plenty of relevant topics in awkward detail that leaves me cackling.
  
  Thanks to Vintage and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review. Quietly Hostile: Essays is scheduled for release on May 16, 2023.
  
  For more reviews, visit
  www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
• 
  Lisa Leone-campbell

  Samantha Irby started out as a blogger many years ago and not only has become a funny essayist but also a sought-after television writer. Her essays can be raw, but with very good reason. She seems to always find herself in the most awkward, uncomfortable situations, enough to well, write a book! I adore her! She is never afraid to tell us about the good, the bad, and the smelly!
  
  Her humor comes by way of a strange life, with a mother who was ill and a father who was gone. Later in life as she relays in this book that she discovers a stepbrother and others she never knew existed. The toll from her childhood not only formed who she is today, but estranged her from her sister, but that’s okay.
  
  Embarrassment is Irby’s middle name. And that’s what makes this book so good. Irby’s internal dialogue with herself is hysterical, enlightening but also empathizing. Her book dedication says it all…open the book, just for that!
  
  Her essays touch on very relatable topics as how she and her wife had to adjust to living with each other, such as the day Irby opened the refrigerator and discovered all these new and odd healthy food items, but she also had to get use to a couple of stepchildren and how to deal with them. Her advice is priceless!
  
  One of her essays honestly is a true test of embarrassment when she seems to have taken, eaten, or smelled something which sent her to the hospital with anaphylactic shock and all that came before her visit, and during the visit, only to find out that typical Irby, she has no idea what caused the problem.
  
  She and her wife, like many during the pandemic, decided to adopt a dog, but each time they found one it was always taken. And then her wife found one, which Irby was not too keen on and life as they knew it would never be the same!
  
  For anyone interested in writing for television, she gives a detailed description of how to write a pilot and all that entails…years and when the final production is finished only be told we’ll pass.
  
  But for me, the BEST essay is the one in which she breaks down old Sex and the City episodes. Irby, now a writer for And Just Like That, gives her take on what she believes should have happened in the episodes and why. ( I read this essay twice because it was hysterical)!
  
  The title Quietly Hostile fits Irby’s personality perfectly. She doesn’t have a lot to say outwardly, but her inside dialogue fits all of us to a tee!
  
  Thank you #NetGalley #Vintage #SamanthaIrby #QuietlyHostile for the advanced copy.
• 
  Lindsay Loson

  Thank you NetGalley for this ARC! God, I just love Samantha Irby so much. This book made me laugh out loud, and also laugh quietly to myself while my partner was sleeping because I couldn’t put it down!! I think she also has made me want to watch Sex and the City for the first time in my life, so that’s something too??
• 
  Gail

  There are moments in every collection of Samantha Irby essays that make me cackle, in large part because she finds the words to skewer modern-day culture in a way that has me saying out loud, "YESSSSS." Consider these few sentences by way of example:
  
  "You know how everybody now drinks old man cocktails that taste like rancid cough syrup? Or they order whatever's on the bar menu that has mezcal in it and therefore tastes like burning newspaper? When did we start doing that?"
  
  HAHAHAHA.
  
  This woman is FUNNY, even if I can admit that this latest book is not my favorite of hers. There were a few too many essays here that didn't hold my attention (see: "Two Old Nuns Having Amzing [Sic] Lesbian Sex" ... and if you're like, whoa to that title, you've clearly never been introduced to this author's work!)
  
  My favorite might have been "I Like It!"—a brilliant take down (and come back) for every person that "puts you on the defensive, that sends you down an internal spiral thinking, Why do I like the dumb shit I like?" I've jokingly used that line a few dozen times already.
  
  I also fell down a rabbit hole listening to Dave Matthew Band songs after reading Samantha's essay on her love of the band. AND knowing she loves Aidan as much as I do ("he was cuter than Big, nicer than Big, more thoughtful than Big...") I might have watched a "Best of Aidan" SATC montage on YouTube after I read her (did it really have to be that long?) essay about her experiences as a writer on "And Just Like That."
  
  Overall, it's a great day when a new Irby collection hits the shelves. Even when its contents are list-heavy and a bit niche-y, there's still much to learn
  "from an essay writer who creates literacy currency out of commiseration and coping."
• 
  britt_brooke

  This title could easily describe me. 😂 Irby is a must read, y’all. So smart, funny, and honest. Her self deprecation is relatable, too. She details bodily functions sometimes - this is nothing new, if you’ve read her previous essay collections - but it’s so damn funny, you get past the cringe. Personal essays are some of my favorite nonfiction. I just love her!
• 
  Sara Klem

  I feel like all you need to know about this book is that the essay where she goes into anaphylactic shock had me howling
• 
  K Agbebiyi

  I was given this book on NetGalley and Libro Fm in exchange for a review.
  
  Always a good time with Samantha though I fear she may be running out of things to say in essay format? I hope she gets the chance to write more TV though and it was nice to get the behind the scenes view of what goes into making (or not making) a TV show.
• 
  Tomes And Textiles

  4.5 stars
  
  Samantha is reaching middle age and this essay collection is a reckoning, of sorts. Her essays are still hysterical and SO self-deprecating, but Samantha opens up to us in vulnerable ways about family, home life, physical ailments, step-children, processing the pandemic, internet stalkers. Samantha's truths are candy coated almost in a way to protect the reader and I found myself wondering how she carries her trauma around with her and finds ways to cope. The answer is so obviously in her writing. Thoroughly enjoyable essay collection, yet again, from one of my favorite contemporary authors.
• 
  Jessica

  I have to be honest - I didn’t love this and I’m incredibly disappointed about that. I’m not sure if it’s partly my own fault because I listened to the audiobooks of all of Irby’s other books and chose a print copy for this, which is definitely a different experience, but for whatever reason this one didn’t resonate with me at all.
  
  There were a few stand out essays, but a lot of them felt like filler fluff. I think a good part of what I liked about her other work is how unflinchingly honest she is. And while she still was to an extent in this collection, it’s about unimportant and frankly boring topics.
  
  I still partially enjoyed reading this because I genuinely like Irby’s writing style and humor. I just wish this had the same heart as her earlier works.
  
  Thank you to Vintage Anchor and Netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.
  
  2.5/5
• 
  Holly

  Jesus. This bitch got me listening to Dave Mathews.
• 
  atria

  samantha irby's plan is 100% working because i do think she is the funniest & coolest person alive on earth and i love her humour because it just reassures me none of my most embarrassing moments are unique to me which is great!! high five!!
  
  favourite essays:
  
  •i like it - honestly i needed this. it soothes my anxious 'oh-my-god-i'm-so-dumb' monologue in my brain with a enthusiastic 'hell-yeah-bitch-i-AM-dumb-cheers' monologue and that's doing wonders for my mental health istg <3
  
  •my firstborn dog - duh, it's about a dog. what's not to like?
  
  •o brother, where art thou? - i thought samantha irby was a humour essayist? then why tf am i crying at 12 am wtf?
  
  *adds this to my 'fuck depression' pile*