I Choose Darkness by Jenny Lawson

I Choose Darkness Reviews

• 
  Andy Marr

  This was a short story. It had words in it. I did not love them. I did not hate them. By next week, I will have forgotten them. That is all I have to say.
• 
  Chrissy

  Jenny Lawson is so funny, here she writes about her Halloween childhood memories. A short, nostalgic read. Especially good if needing a laugh!
• 
  Rosh

  In a Nutshell: An essay by journalist-blogger Jenny Lawson about her favourite festival. Hint - It’s not Christmas. Humorous but not memorable.
  
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  Jenny Lawson is known for her humour blog, where she writes her thoughts on many topics in a tongue-in-cheek manner. This essay is on the same lines.
  
  Lawson begins by declaring her dislike for Christmas, Hanukkah and Thanksgiving, not because of religious reasons but because of the huge amount of planning and preparation these festivals entail. Her favourite holiday is Halloween, which she lovingly calls “the glorious dark queen of the year”. This brief 25-page essay documents, in a fun way, Lawson’s passion for Halloween, and how she celebrates it while still being incredibly lazy about the “celebration”.
  
  There wasn’t much personal connect for me with the core topic as I don’t celebrate Halloween. (Nothing against it personally; it’s just not celebrated in India.) But I do know enough about Halloween through books and movies, so Lawson’s humour made the topic entertaining. Her comments about her decorative and culinary skills are amusing. Her hilarious reminiscences about the family Halloween celebrations during her childhood in rural Texas are the best parts of this essay. It was nice to see a few photos confirming what the author wrote about the old costumes.
  
  I also loved the interludes where Lawson’s editor makes an on-page appearance, and the essay turns into script format, with the editor and the author having a discussion about getting the story back on track. These conversations were hilarious!
  
  All in all, this is a very quick read. If you go through this with an overly logical lens, you might find flaws, as often happen with humour essays. So just read it in the right spirit, as a fun memoir-like essay about why the author loves the darkness of Halloween. It is a good introduction to the wit of the author but too short to be memorable. Maybe it will establish a greater nostalgic connect with readers who celebrated Halloween before the advent of the internet.
  
  3.5 stars.
  
  
  The digital version of this essay is currently available free to Amazon Prime subscribers.
  
  
  
  
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• 
  Sadie Hartmann

  This was fucking hilarious and I'm sure that Jenny Lawson and I are the exact same age if not very close because everything about her childhood Halloween experiences were the same as mine. I absolutely love this.
• 
  Dona

  I thought I would LOVE this essay from Jenny Lawson, who is bright and funny, and who scales some of the same mountains in life that I do. It's an essay about holidays, how great is that! From October 10 to January 2nd, my house sparkles, blips, and glistens! I love the holidays. What could go wrong? Right? I mean, right? So I kind of feel bad that I didn't like it.
  
  And some of this essay is truly funny for me, like the bit about Halloween costumes in the 80s, holy cow those things were horrible! And I'm glad Lawson herself narrated the audiobook for this essay, as I don't think anyone else would have gotten it quite right. But check it:
  
  ...[T]echnically, wrapping paper is there only to hide the present until Christmas. If you hide everything behind the couch and then scream the name of your family member while you pull the gift out and launch it at them, it’s just as much of a surprise (possibly more if they’re not paying attention). It’s also ecologically friendly. You are saving paper—shiny, petroleum-based paper. So maybe I’m not only lazy. I’m carbon neutral. pp3-4
  
  I have so many responses to this paragraph, but I'm going to keep it focused to the primary reason it's the perfect example for why I couldn't connect with this piece: it was the tone! Lawson employs a stridently cheerful tone throughout while expressing fundamentally uncheerful ideas, like wrapping up gifts destroys the earth. Thanks for a dose of cognitive dissonance, but I came for the humor and holiday love. Unfortunately in this essay, Lawson has love for only one holiday and slings poop at the others. The subtitle should be "A Halloween Essay" and that elf on the cover should be a skeleton.
  
  Halloween is already awesome. It doesn't need to eat Christmas to stay that way.
  
  Rating 2 stars
  Finished November 2022
  Recommended for fans of essays, nonfiction, dark fiction, dark humor, Halloween, horror comedy, memoir
• 
  Melki

  It's always a treat to read anything by Jenny Lawson, and this short essay is no exception. Here Lawson shambles down memory lane as she waxes rhapsodic about her favorite holiday (and mine) - Halloween.
  
  Though Jenny's younger than me, we both seem to have had virtually the same childhood choices when it came to drugstore costumes. I remember the Princess and the Bride, boxed to sell with the "enticing" mask covering the hideous synthetic sheath that dwelled beneath. Boys had a slightly better selection of superheroes or firemen. I recall wearing this one once to beg for candy.
  
  And, Jenny and I both suffered from our creative mothers' festive "concoctions." I trick-or-treated as a tube of toothpaste, and a flamenco dancer. (Mom sewed black lace onto a red gingham dress. Olé!)
  
  Jenny also spills the beans on the thrills and chills to be had at her local fall festival. As her writing always does, she triggered my own memory machine. My fall fest was held at the elementary school behind my house, and involved such wholesome activities as dropping clothespins into glass milk bottles, and throwing handfuls of hay at the principal. There was a white elephant sale in the gym where I bought my mom (as a way of thanking her for all the costumes) a pink cat spoon-rest, even though her kitchen was all done up in the trendy-at-the-time harvest gold/burnt orange/avocado green color scheme. I also bought a box of six homemade cupcakes which turned out to be more decorative than tasty. After several unsuccessful attempts at pawning them off on my friends, I left them neatly arranged in a semicircle on one of the toilet seats in an unoccupied rest room. Why? Because throwing them away seemed wasteful, I guess?
  
  Anyway - thanks for the memories, Jenny, both yours and mine.
  
  
  
  You definitely look like a gal who knows how to make the most out of October the 31st.
• 
  Blaine

  I understand this may not be normal for anyone else. But, technically, wrapping paper is there only to hide the present until Christmas. If you hide everything behind the couch and then scream the name of your family member while you pull the gift out and launch it at them, it’s just as much of a surprise (possibly more if they’re not paying attention).
  …
  I am one of the small group of people who go to Halloween stores not for temporary plastic decorations but for actual interior design ideas.

  
  I Choose Darkness is a short essay by Ms. Lawson about her love of Halloween above all other holidays. As with many of her essays, it revolves around stories from her East Texas childhood. I’m not sure why it’s been released on its own, rather than as part of one of her other essay collections, but I’m sure there are reasons (and they are probably capitalism, lol). It’s solid. Hopefully it will be included in an essay collection in the future so that non-Amazon Prime members can read it too.
• 
  Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨ Campbell

  
  
  
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  I CHOOSE DARKNESS is a very short essay about why Halloween is better than Christmas. In typical Jenny fashion, she meanders from topic to topic, before eventually settling on what Halloween was like for her as a kid in her rural religious community. There's a description (and photographs!) of some of the costumes her mother made for her (or that she made for herself), and a sort of taste of what the fall fair was like, which was probably the best part.
  
  
  
  This is VERY short but I think if you enjoy reading comedic memoir-essays and also enjoy Halloween (and not Christmas), you'll like this, too.
  
  
  
  3 stars
• 
  Kelly (and the Book Boar)

  Here’s an embarrassing little confession: We have had Prime for two or three years, but it was under my husband’s name and I did not learn until last month that I could link my Kindle to that account via the family sharing feature. Sooooooo I never got a Kindle Firstread or any of the other freebies (like this one) until now.
  
  This is Jenny Lawson’s take on . . . .
  
  Halloween, vintage rural-Texas-style
  
  Available as both a Kindle version or on audio (highly recommend – Jenny has a great voice for narration), this little nugget won’t take but a few minutes to read, but definitely delivers on the nostalgia of a bygone era. Especially in the form of the cakewalk . . . .
  
  
  
  
  See that kid lusting over the cake table there? Yeah, that’s what I was like. I guess I was always destined to be a fat girl because THAT’S what I saved my money for when it came to the school “Fall Festival” and refused to leave the gymnasium until I won. I also refused to share even a piece of my major award with anyone else in my family because IT. WAS. MINE. AND. I. WON. IT. Ahhhhh, childhood in the 1980s. A simpler time when you ate cake because – duh, cake is life – and you didn’t question the baker. A time before I experienced a case of explosive diarrhea food poisoning from a work potluck so severe that I will never eat off a communal table again.
  
  If you have Prime and want to take a little trip on the Halloween wayback machine go grab this one. 3 Stars because I really could live without the supposed exchanges between her and her editor.
  
  Oh, and Mitchell said I need to tell Jenny he loves her.
• 
  Theresa Alan

  This is short, fun, and chuckle-out-loud hilarious.
• 
  Chantal

  Funny, short and sweet. A bit of honesty we usually feel embarrassed to admit.
• 
  Dez the Bookworm

  Mostly entertaining, ending was a little abrupt.
  
  I mostly liked this “essay” if you will. It was wildly entertaining at points because we shared similar childhood experiences. I laughed out loud a couple times, but kinda wondered where this all was headed. It wasn’t. Which is ok, but would have liked a little smoother ending. I will try another “essay” from this author to see if its a trend.
  
  Overall, kinda liked the trip down memory lane. If you weren’t in this particular timeframe…you may not enjoy it as much.
• 
  Jamie

  Fantastic, as always. I'm pretty sure that Jenny Lawson is my spirit animal.
• 
  Rachelle

  "To me ..there is only one holiday that reigns Supreme, the glorious dark Queen of the year, Halloween."
  
  Jenny Lawson nails it again! This essay is hilarious and absolutely delightful!!
• 
  Ellen Gail

  This was exactly like reliving the horrors and delights of childhood Halloweens past with an old friend.
  
  100% what I needed to read today.
• 
  TL

  *read for free with Kindle Unlimited and audible audio *
  
  Miss Lawson delivers again:)
  
  Desperately needed after a frustrating day... would highly recommend the audiobook (read by Jenny herself), you can tell she had fun recording it.
  
  Anything by her has never failed to make me feel seen and/or brighten my day 💖
  
  
• 
  Alan Teder

  Halloween Misadventures
  Review of the Amazon Original Kindle eBook (September 29, 2022), released simultaneously with the Audible Original audiobook.
  
  I've never read any Jenny Lawson previously, although I thought the cover of one of her previous memoirs
  Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things (2015) looked hilarious. Reviews from GR Friends and Follows were mixed though, ranging from 2 stars to 5 stars. So her humour is an acquired taste and not for everyone. I Choose Darkness is a mini-memoir about her rural Texas upbringing and her family's cheapish methods of Halloween costume creations and hand-me-downs. As the home was isolated, instead of trick or treating at neighbours, Lawson and her sister would circle the family home and each time their mother would meet them at the door and pretend to be a different character. That was the most charming story of the book. The Kindle edition includes a selection of photographs of the young Lawson sisters in various Halloween costumes. In small doses, Lawson can be funny.
  
  I Choose Darkness is a one-off Amazon Original Kindle eBooks/Audible Audio audiobooks released on September 29, 2022 as a
  Kindle Single where "This essay takes Jenny back to where it all started, from her humble beginnings as a trick-or-treater in the 1980s, on high alert for (logistically improbable) candy laced with razor blades and the (allegedly) ever-present threat of satanists on the loose. From there, she has risen from the candy-wrapper ashes of her childhood to claim her rightful lifestyle as the queen of Halloween.".
  
  Trivia and Link
  You can watch for current and past Amazon Original Kindle short stories which are usually paired with their Audible Original narrations at an Amazon page
  here (link goes to Amazon US, adjust for your own country or region).
• 
  Ashley

  Oh, dang. I wonder whatever happened to my giant Raggedy Ann dolls?
• 
  Deacon Tom F

  A waste of my time.
• 
  Kay Oliver

  Thanksgiving 2022 Read #16
  
  "to me, there is only one holiday that reigns supreme. The glorious, dark queen of the year, Halloween."
  
  I love, love, LOVE the hot mess that is Jenny Lawson. So, of course, this essay will wrap up my Thanksgiving season in an off-colored, taxidermied-squirrel-patterned, smelling faintly of take out tacos bow with a tag from Easter seven years ago.
  
  “'I was Mrs. E.T. in 1982 too! SISTER WIVES!' but I can’t do that because my mother saw us and was like, “'Ew. No. Put those down before you get mouth herpes.'”
  
  A hilarious look at Lawson's childhood Halloween adventures--mishaps? And so many great jokes and one-liners. If you're not laughing out loud we can't be friends.
  
  "Angsty teen me threw away a lot of stuff that I wish I’d been a little more careful with, including rationality, perspective, and my virginity."
• 
  Jaclyn

  This essay tries to be relatable while also trying to be different. It is the story of halloweens past and an homage to fall, that comes off quirky but also lazy. There's some fall magic in here, I'm not denying that. I could have done with out the funny haha excerpts of conversation with the writers editor about extending the word count through meaningless additions. It wasn't funny or cute; it only took a way from what was already a very short piece about one of the authors seemingly favorite seasons.
  
  Not awful, but not memorable. Mediocrity celebrated.
  
  I do appreciate Ruth Bader Ginsbear.
• 
  Pam Baddeley

  I obtained this short essay/mini memoir about the author's attitude to Hallowe'en, the only holiday season she enjoys, as a free read on Amazon Prime. Some of it was amusing, such as the recollections of cheap or handmade costumes which I'm sure a lot of people can relate to (even if we didn't dress up for Hallowe'en, there were plenty of other school occasions where our Mums had to improvise with crepe paper, cardboard, poster paints and tinfoil), but other parts such as the arch asides to her editor about not being paid by the word came over as boring filler. I didn't enjoy it enough to seek out the author's other works, but it was an amusing short read so I am awarding it 3 stars.
• 
  Greg at 2 Book Lovers Reviews

  The most fun I've ever had in 25 pages.
• 
  Jess

  entertaining
  
  This was a quick relatable read. Perfect for October reading. I enjoyed it and definitely think it’s worth checking out.
• 
  Denise Lauron

  I love Jenny Lawson's writing! She writes like me - mostly off on a tangent, but gets to the point, eventually.
  
  I was expecting a Christmas essay with this latest installment, but nope! In typical Jenny Lawson style, I should have known to expect the unexpected.
  
  I highly recommend this book, short as it is. It is a lot of fun.
• 
  Rae (semi-hiatus)

  Halloween Fall Festival anyone? bahahaha
  
  I was thoroughly entertained from page 1 until the very end. I loved Jenny Lawsons humor and it was great relating to lived experiences with how batshit crazy Texas is even if we were separated by a couple decades.
  
  Halloween is the best time of year. Sucks that I didn’t read it in October, but this was so enjoyable it got me back in the spooky spirit.
• 
  Ann

  I hadn’t read Jenny Lawson before, in spite of my love for her wacky book covers. She’s younger than me but her descriptions of childhood Halloween costumes are very close to some of my own. This was hilarious.
• 
  Tanja Berg

  A very short little update on our favorite trouble author. This time revisiting some of her Halloween memories. I love how Janny rambles, and how down to earth she is. I hope there will be another full-length book soon!
• 
  Trisha

  I enjoyed as an audio - read by the author. It's very short but cute - reliving memories of Halloween festivals of the past.
• 
  Suhailah

  Let’s face it, I’m to the point now that I’m such a fan that I’d read anything Jenny Lawson wrote! This was an instant click when I saw it parading for free on Amazon short stories. Absolutely loved that it was holiday-themed and focused a lot on Halloween!
  
  It's true that holidays do take on a new meaning for those of us who aren’t so normal in terms of health, so I could relate so much to Jenny throughout the entire essay. It’s so true that you have to pick and choose how to spend your energy, and spend it wisely you must. The last year my husband and I finally got our Christmas tree up was 2020, and it ended up staying up for half the year because we just didn’t have enough energy to take it back down! Therefore, when we do have an actual Christmas, we end up going all out because it only happens every few years for us! Hehehehe!
  
  By far though, Halloween is my favorite holiday. Everyone that knows me personally can tell you how obsessed I am. It intentionally even became my wedding anniversary! I love anything Gothic, dark, haunting, or supernatural. I live for this time of the year!
  
  This quote rang for me:
  
  “I am one of the small group of people who go to Halloween stores not for temporary plastic decorations but for actual interior design ideas.”
  
  This is a hilarious essay from Jenny! Enjoy!