How Did You Get This Number: Essays by Sloane Crosley

How Did You Get This Number: Essays Reviews

• 
  karen

  sloane crosley offends me on a number of levels.
  
  as a new yorker.*
  as a woman.
  as an american.
  as a taxpayer.
  
  and there are essays in this collection to back up each of these personal twinges of disgust.
  
  but mostly, she offends me as a bookseller. and it may not be her fault, entirely. part of the blame must rest with whatever higher-than-me part of the bn machine it is that classifies books in our system.
  
  sloane crosley is categorized as "humor".
  
  now, she is a girl with a background in publishing, so you know she knows some people in the biz. and she probably had some sort of claw in the pudding to get her book where she wanted it, but lemme just tell you emphatically- she is not funny. if i am reading a "humor" book, my expectations are that i will laugh at least one time. but no. not even a giggle.
  
  this is my second sloane crosley book, and i'm sorry, this isn't a matter of personal taste: the woman is not funny. i loved the title of her first collection, but the book did nothing for me, and this one does even less.
  
  i think david sedaris is funny. i think david rakoff is funny. barnes and noble thinks that they should be in "essays" with emerson and montaigne, while sloane "look at my perky...smile" crosley should go in humor. it makes me feel like a liar when i have to direct people toward this book in that section. it complicates my day.
  
  i don't mind if people want to write self-indulgent memoirs. that is everyone's right as a human. but i don't have as much of the voyeur spirit as a lot of people of my generation, and i don't read a lot of memoirs. but i'll read humorous essays, no problem. so to try to trick me into reading about your european jet-setting and failed relationships?? you are elizabeth gilbert with a sexier name, nothing more.
  
  this is just a book of whining.
  
  
  this review is excellent. and i totally agree with her about the "three star pity fuck." i have given my share of those before, but this time, she gets a two.and if i read another one, it will probably get a one.
  
  why would i read another one??
  i like to know my enemy.
  
  
  sara barron, please write another book, pleeeeease!
  
  
  
  
  *sigh, no i wasn't born here, but i been here 16 years, and i have more respect for the new york that was than this new new york full of bicycles and smoking regulations and double-wide baby strollers. westchester imports like sloane crosley have ruined this city.
  
  
  because, okay, here is one of my problems. she started out one essay in a way which showed promise: she discussed the different levels of tolerance new yorkers have for certain day-to-day things we have to endure. she says that some new yorkers hate the subway musicians but slow tourist street walkers don't bother them or vice versa etc. and listed a bunch of different obstacles and annoyances, and i was totally on board with that, because i have my own internal list of things that bug me daily, and i thought me and sloane were finally gonna connect. but then she lists the number one universal thing that allll new yorkers hate the most. and it is.... cab smell. now here's the problem. no one i know takes cabs every day. because they are unnecessary. even if i was rolling in money, i wouldn't take a cab ever day. because i am not a princess and i am capable of walking or riding the subway. so it's not as though i am assaulted by cab smell every day, like whiny sloane crosley who gets out of a cab a block away from where she was picked up because she can't handle the odor and refuses to give the cabbie any money. because it's his problem she's so weak.and then to turn her personal discomfort into a universal truth "this is what alll new yorkers hate the most." it's arrogant, and did i mention unfunny??
  
  i wish a hundred smelly cabs upon her.
  
  
  come to my blog!
• 
  jess

  Lately I have been really procrastinating on my goodreads reviews for no good reason. It's winter! What better thing do I have to do with my time? I am determined to break this streak with this book. Why? Because I need for this book to be completely OVER and out of my life FOREVER. Was it only six months ago that I read Sloane Crosley's other book? I think it was.
  
  
  
  
  I Was Told There'd Be Cake
  
  
  I only "sort of" liked that book, although I gave it a generous three stars rating. This is the goodreads equivalent of a pity fuck. I didn't really love the book, but I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt and shoulder the burden for the missed connection. Certainly if this lady ends up on so many year-end lists, if she has written two books in as many years, and her market saturation is, in one word, extensive, there must be something redeeming in her writing? Is it just me? Did I miss the awesomeness?
  
  No. This book is terrible. It's barely funny. Mostly it's annoying over and over again. There was not a single essay that I didn't say "Please get over yourself" every other page. Boo hoo, my boyfriend was cheating on his girlfriend and I was the other woman and I was fencing stolen fancy home furnishings at the same time how profound. Boo hoo let me tell you about my crazy roommate, lol, roommates are crazy. Boo hoo I went to Lisbon/Alaska/Paris and the trip wasn't as perfect as it should be, let me share my trauma. I really try to find something positive in every book I read, but it's a serious challenge with this book. She's unlikeable, but not in a charming or appealing way. And I usually like unlikable people. Her life seems like it may have been interesting, but not much more interesting than any other girl you went to college with. I had to drag myself through the last 100 pages of this book, and I'm stuck paying late fines for it, and I am so indignant about that.
  
  Sloane worked in the publishing industry and that's the singular reason I can imagine for how she wrote two books and *anyone* read them. I heard she quit her day job to write full time - dear god. I hope that works out for her, but I am never reading one of her books again.
• 
  Chelsea

  I don't understand if I just share the author's sense of humor or if the other people who reviewed this book don't have a sense of humor at all, but I was absolutely entranced by Sloane Crosley.
  
  It's been a while since I've read a funny book, and her short essays about things which happen to us all are poignantly hilarious because we can relate. We understand. And we laugh along with her as she makes mistakes. Like we all do. Except for the part where we cry about the baby bear.
  
  With stories about the humiliating game "Girl Talk" and holding hands under bathroom stalls, Sloane incorporates movie references and song lyrics which fit all too well in her puzzle of Mad Hatter madness called life. "I was a good girl--but I did not love horses or Jesus and I'd burn America to the ground in exchange for a sliver of my former happiness."
  
  This book has given me faith that you CAN write a witty book and still focus on the abstract. You can have your cake and eat it too. You can confess in Notre Dame to a father who only speaks French or Japanese. And you can laugh about it. Which is what we all really need, wouldn't you say?
• 
  Oriana

  I finished this book just in the nick of time for it to get on my CCLaP
  best-of-2011 list!
  
  Here's what I said about it there:
  I am unabashedly on Team Sloane. This has a lot to do with the fact that we're so demographically aligned --suburban youth, upper-middle-class background, collegiate experimentation and self-finding, living now in the same city, about the same age, working in the same field -- to the point that her essays often feel like a rarefied version of my own life. But when she gets it right, she just nails it; she's so smart, so so wonderful with phrase-turning, so adept at pacing and style and finding the right balance of self-mockery and self-aggrandizement. The essay about how bad cabs smell was kind of awful, but the rest of the collection was just about perfect.
  
  Oh and PS: Why couldn't we have gotten the British cover? This toilet paper nonsense, as well as the stupid corny bear on the cover of the hardback, are both so old fashioned and placid and stupid. We couldn't get something just a wee bit edgier, or at least younger? Fuck, traditional publishing, you are becoming harder and harder to defend.
• 
  Left Coast Justin

  A quick glance through the reviews suggests, to me at least, that the further you are from the suffocating, incestuous and self-obsessed publishing world of Manhattan, the more you'll enjoy this book. Crosley's writing is light, incisive, amusingly self-deprecating and consistently funny -- a minor miracle, really, and something few writers can boast.
  
  And even more rare than funny writers are funny writers who actually add heart to their works. Her tribute to a friend from Alaska is truly touching and generally accurate as far as her descriptions went, and I have no trouble imagining the events up there unfolding exactly as she described them. The final essay has been justly singled out for praise, describing a period that most people suffer at about this age -- though it, too, was liberally sprinkled with funny castaway lines.
  
  I'm puzzled that the book leads off with the weakest essay in the collection, a totally flat and pointless story about Portugal, but it quickly picks up speed and offers a fine way to spend an afternoon or two.
• 
  Alana

  Sloane Crosley's debut novel I Was Told There'd Be Cake earned her a spot on the "writers to watch" list for many people, myself included. Now I can say without a doubt that I will purchase anything Sloane Crosley happens to publish from here on out, I don't care if it's a grocery list. She's a delight, a fantastic wordsmith whose small observations are to be cherished as comic gold. Indeed, it's often the sentences spoken as asides that have me laughing out loud in the presence of strangers. Her command of language means that she always seems to have the perfect phrasing for the most bizarre or whimsical circumstance... and she knows when to let the simple description of a thing speak for itself. She, herself, is credibly droll even in the moment (as opposed to reflectively looking back on the event) with a knack for locating the absurd and mapcap in everyday situations... though her own poor luck (or good luck as far as the reader goes) does tend to stretch these scenarios into the farcical. As a twenty-something New Yorker with thirty looming on the horizon, she strikes an obvious chord with me, but I think that her humor should be accessible to anyone... or at least any reasonably intelligent person who understands that we all have our own flaws and if we can't laugh at them once in a while, then we're in for a long, dull ride.
  
  I Was Told There'd Be Cake was so fresh and funny that I worried that there might be too much pressure placed on Crosley for book two, but if anything, I think she's gotten better. As with all delicious things, there is the dangerous tendency to gobble down How Did You Get This Number without any time to breathe. Try to take some time between stories so you can savor the humor... or maybe just re-read it all over again as soon as you finish the first read-through. The stories seem a bit longer, but that's only because she takes her time with each, exploring multiple emotions and ideas that can all be wrapped up in a single experience. She's a little older and a little wiser, so there are fewer foolish events and a greater number of wry observations, though there's still plenty of ridiculous inner turmoil. Part of Crosley's charm for me is the fact that she's very much a New Yorker and the stories in this collection are often set in New York, though she ventures out for various reasons, ultimately always desperate to get back. She starts off with "Show Me on the Doll," describing an impromptu solo journey to Lisbon that gives us all ample justification for not taking more impromptu solo journeys the way our ten-year-old selves might have thought we would when the definition of adulthood encompassed doing whatever we wanted. "Le Paris!" discusses two different trips to Paris, one of which involves a contender for "most awkward conversation" in Crosley's life as she finds herself in confession at Notre Dame, despite the fact that she's Jewish and the priest only speaks French and Japanese. In "Lost In Space," Crosley describes her mother's dreams of a genius child quickly thwarted after discovering that Sloane has a learning disability resulting in terrible spatial relation skills. You might not think this is funny, but wait until you read about Crosley's method for cheating at the SATs which involves padding her bra with post-its. "Take a Stab at It" and "It's Always Home You Miss" are both very New York tales of apartment woe and cab smells, respectively, while "Light Pollution" sees Crosley head to Alaska for a friend's wedding (where "bear bells" are part of the wedding favors). "If You Sprinkle" is a story that any girl can relate to, describing the horror of middle school and then "An Abbreviated Gift of Tongues" is for everyone with a catalog of family pets buried in the backyard, though the Crosley family pets are all interred in duct-tape sealed tupperware. The final story, "Off the Back of a Truck," is perhaps the most poignant of all as a shady arrangement to furnish her apartment with stolen merchandise is described alongside a doomed love affair. This might be the true gem of the collection, for while Crosley often admits to faults and flaws, in "Off the Back of a Truck," she manages to convey emotional vulnerability, heightened by the sense that the wound hasn't quite healed. Through it all, Crosley presents a fantastic image of a strong and independent Manhattan woman... who never has it all quite as together as she might wish. It's easy to relate to Crosley on nearly every level and by the end of each story, you feel as though you've just been told a hilarious story by an old friend over cocktails.
  
  If you need to compare Sloane Crosley to any other popular writer out there, then the closest you'd get is David Sedaris... except Crosley is female, straight, and the epitome of the neurotic New Yorker. She also manages to tell hysterical stories without giving the impression that she's completely exploiting her family and friends. Indeed, despite the presence of those people in her stories, somehow it's Crosley that always comes out as the ridiculous one or, more often, the situation itself is hilarious without injuring or offending any named parties (well, except the one about a bitchy classmate in grade school, but she deserved it). You can toss in some comparisons to Dorothy Parker, but Crosley retains her optimism and sense of whimsy as opposed to cynicism (though there certainly is enough of a New Yorker's suspicion). If you have not yet been privileged enough to read a book by Sloane Crosley, I pity you... but consider this your chance to set things right. Go out to get How Did You Get This Number and pick up I Was Told There'd Be Cake for good measure. I dare you to glance at the first page of either one and not get sucked in by her wit and charm.
• 
  Bevin

  Unlike many of my fellow reviewers, I laughed out loud several times while reading this book. Once, startling my cat so forcefully he ran out of the room.
  Crosley's first book may have been more accessable to the late 20s-early 30s crowd than this one, with its pop culture and coming of age anecdotes. However, she really blossoms as a story teller here.
  
  Crosley's problems are what are referred to in my neighborhood as "white girl problems". The idea being that they are beyond the reach of most people. Personally, I'm so fascinated by how people view their world it doesn't bother me. I haven't traveled abroad as much as she has, but I relish the chance to see these cities through a snap shot of experience and not a sugar coated post card home or travel log. Whether you like in New York or Madison, Wisconsin; you probably have one or two roommate from hell stories.
  
  So, if you enjoyed her first book or if you enjoy humorist memoirs of the thirty something crowd, this is a book you must check out!
• 
  christa

  I am going to write something here that applies to Sloane Crosley and only Sloane Crosley, and God help us all please don't let anyone else take this bit of advice and apply it:
  
  Sloane, you need to write more about your personal life. Dates and dudes. Relationships that lean horizontal. Getting dumped and squeezing the living shit out of a bunch of oranges that are mucking up your new juicer, the second-cheapest one at the store. I know this is problematic: You live in New York, and when a young woman lives in New York and writes essays she gets Carrie Bradshaw'ed into a little pink box. Even if the writer spends 200-plus pages riffing on everything but shoes. But I believe in you, Sloane. I think you can do it in a respectable way, and never have to say the words: "Hm ... I guess we should go with the lipstick font for this book. Is there any way to make it look like I'm lounging in a martini glass?"
  
  Crosley's second book of essays "How Did You Get This Number," is at its best in the finale of the nine-chapter follow up to the extraordinarily meh, albeit critically well-received debut, "I Was Told There Would Be Cake." The essay "Off the Back of a Truck" is a story of a) meeting and falling for Ben, who is so entrenched in her social circle that it seems impossible they had never met before; b) browsing in an up-scale furniture store, and falling face-first into connection from the stock room who scores her discounted goods with some back alley wheeling that involves envelopes filled with cash. She weaves these two stories in a deliciously teasey way under the umbrella: "If you have to ask, you probably can't afford it." The relationship is void of cliche. She reluctantly reveals his eye color, straying to Crayola Big Box depths for "a dirty peridot color" but admits she has forced her brain to compartmentalize his image. And the rug, dresser and other luxury pieces she scores for fast-food prices is just so bizarre and shady and stars such a likable criminal.
  
  As for the other eight essays: They're fine. Just like they were fine in her last book. There is no doubt that she has led an interesting life. On the cusp of her 30th birthday she makes travel plans by sliding her finger aimlessly along a globe, which is how she ends up in Lisbon, playing a version of "Win, Lose, or Draw" to communicate. In another essay she has a super awkward exchange in a confessional at Notre Dame Cathedral, Crosley being Jewish and all. There is a trip to Alaska where she witnesses the execution of a bear cub, the victim of a hit-n-run. Unfortunately, these stories are so controlled, so antiseptic, so public relations and so not risky. She writes like her mom is reading over her shoulder. Even when she mentions smoking weed out of her apartment window, it seems more of a ploy, a purposefully dropped mention, than a revelation.
  
  I imagine people like Sloane Crosley because she is someone they can relate to. The horror of junior high slumber parties, and then reconnecting with the Queen Bee bully years later. The carefully laid bread crumbs that show she is quirky (She imagines keeping a midget in this strange cupboard area of her apartment!) in that way that we all need to believe that our OCD moments and guilty pleasures make us unique. But her relate-ability has such a generic-ness to it that is without soul. Like a person who is considered a great conversationalist because they listen well and remember the name of your hometown.
  
  This is why "Off the Back of the Truck" works so well. She lets her hair down. She squeezes an orange in frustration. Her mind is blown, and you can see her sweeping the pieces into a dustpan, and throwing it all away. I'm not suggesting that Crosley's next book should be a chronology of her relationships. But I do think if she should put some of the za-za-zu into everything she writes and scrap things like, oh say, the rank nature of cabs in NYC.
• 
  Danielle

  Puh-retty funny. I blew through this in a day, and found it highly amusing and occassionally insightful. Overall, I liked this collection better than
  I Was Told There'd Be Cake, although the essays in both books vary in quality. This was just a little more mature (in a good way) and less needy. I loved the final essay the most, about having her heart broken. Considering I described Crosley as writing "non-fiction chick-lit" it seems like we need more romantic content, but I actually like that in both books, her real life does not revolve around the status of her dating life. There is a lot more to her than just a single gal looking for Mr. Right. So, for this essay, which is pretty much all about this one relationship, to not ruin the book, I think Crosley had to walk a fine line. Treating a very serious subject with the humor to match the other essays, without being flippant. Also, she needed to avoid whining, or making the story so detailed that it would be self-indulgent, rather than universally applicable. Anyway, I was very impressed with the way she carried this off, and enjoyed reading it. There is also a great essay about visiting Alaska. A quick read, which I recommend (if it sounds like the kind of thing you'd like).
• 
  Michelle

  "I searched my jacket pockets, feeling for my camera. Maybe I wanted proof that I had been here so that when my body was found in the Tejo River, my camera still on my person, the police would have clues." (15)
  
  "Hola, gata!" He raised his voice. "Where are you going?" I had no idea. Oh, how you cut to the core of me, random Portuguese thief! I quickly snapped a picture of the chickens." (15)
  
  "He was close enough for me to hear the swoosh of his pants as he approached. Jesus, I thought, is he wearing a full-body tracksuit? What is that, nylon?" (16)
  
  "Don't worry about it," Mac said. "You'll get me next time." But I was worried about it. Disproportionately so. He wasn't the one with the frowning face of George Washington folded into the fetal position in his back pocket." (48)
  
  "Alas, the notes fell on deaf ears. Deaf ears with my earrings sticking through them." (51)
  
  "I couldn't have her come back to an apartment with my furniture cleared out and my closet empty. For Christs' sake, what would she wear? Of course, the real source of my hesitation was the phrase "artist's loft," which I took as a euphemism for "bad art" and "no heat." (54)
  
  "To be suddenly thrust into the space where casual acquaintances slap their alarm clocks each morning is to be given more information than your relationship requires. Yesterday you knew what department they worked in and whether they smoked cigarettes. Today you know where they get their coffee and prescription drugs, and that if you don't jiggle the toilet handle, the toilet will run all day. These descriptions are like an advertisement for the person as much as for the apartment." (57)
  
  "Every New Yorker's personal annoyance scale is best pictured as a cell phone commercial. The semipermeable bars of varying colors and heights extend up from people's heads as they move along the sidewalk." (79)
  
  "..There is a single constant that unites us all: everyone has been victimized by the smell of a taxicab. Picture it in your mind's nostril: you get a cab in time to catch two twin thugs named Vomit and Cologne assaulting a defenseless pine-tree air-freshener. This scent that does not waft in real time so much as seeps into your memory to replace every pleasant aroma you have ever smelled with its pungency." (81)
  
  "Your mind does a quick calculation, multiplying the degree of stank by the distance between here and your destination, dividing the whole thing by your fear of overreacting. The idea that you might offend the driver is irrelevant. If he's going to tool around this town in an air bubble of poop, he should know there are consequences." (81)
  
  "There was something more substantial in there between the SkyMall catalog and the safety card. It was a library book. I was intrigued. It was like finding an abandoned toy in a random bathroom stall, but less creepy. On the spine in big, bold letters, it read: The Amityville Horror: A True Story. Nope, just as creepy." (97)
  
  "Usually I am hesitant about wearing my hair in a high ponytail. I didn't cheerlead for a reason. Also, I once heard that rapists prey on women with ponytails, pulling them like handles. But now that my pinnacle danger has been transferred to getting scalped by a fucking bear, I am only too quick to loop the ribbon around the tight elastic. I join the choir chorus of chiming initiated by every sharp turn the SUV makes. Safety first." (118)
  
  "Why do people insist on carrying on a conversation from the adjoining stall, forcing me to flush on them mid-sentence?" (136)
  
  "The real life physicality of Daryl had a darkness to it, a seedy underbelly that was more like an all-over-belly." (246)
  
• 
  Brittany

  I liked this book even a little bit better than
  I Was Told There'd Be Cake. The same light-hearted misadventures of a New York girl, but this time there was less of a shadow of bleakness hanging over the book. There are still sad and serious stories, but they're leavened by a little more self-awareness, and a little more humor. I particularly enjoyed the stories about Alaska, Portugal, map-reading (which had a wonderful ending) and odd pets.
• 
  Haley

  This is exactly what I would want in a memoir-based essay collection - genuinely funny, very well structured essays, and genuinely insightful. I highly recommend the audiobook (read by the author).
• 
  Peter Derk

  This book of short personal essays started out about like Crosley's first, I Was Told There Would Be Cake. They weren't everything I would hope for from David Sedaris, but then what is?
  
  The first couple essays were decent, peppered with funny moments, but they have a strong case of New-York-Itis, the disease that runs through books, the symptoms of which include referencing New York, talking about how New York is a strange and wonderful place, and attempting to describe the way in which New Yorkers are tough, savvy, or whatever (although to be fair, she does acknowledge that New Yorkers do revel in squalor at times, which was nice). I think this happens as so many publishers are in New York, and because so many writers work with publishers in some capacity before getting published, New York becomes the center of the book world. Having never been there, I hesitate to say much more about it, but I get that subways are crowded, cabs range from unpleasant to unholy, and when you concentrate a shitload of people in a tiny space you are bound to be constrained by different types of shit. However, Crosley handles most of it well, and she does some linguistic backflips that are worth a laugh on their own merit.
  
  And the book really picks up. In "Light Pollution" Crosley describes a trip made to Alaska for a wedding, and though it's already funny, it takes a turn that brings it to a very human and very dark place. And the real gem, the final essay called "Off the Back of a Truck" is one of the better chronicles of the beginning and end of a relationship. She's smart, she makes a lot of wise statements, and people will be quoting pieces of this to crying friends over the phone for years to come. And the best part is that just when she's about to break your heart, she throws in a line that makes you laugh without destroying the tension. There's a balancing act there, and she pulls it off perfectly.
  
  Read that last one first. I kid you not. If you like it, then read the rest.
• 
  Scott

  "Alaska is what happens when Willy Wonka and the witch from Hansel & Gretel elope, buy a place together upstate, renounce their sweet teeth, and turn into health fanatics." - Sloane Crosley
  
  When I began Crosley's second essay collection - after discovering, reading and liking her two other similarly-styled books in the last ten days - it was with eagerness and anticipation. (It's nice to find a 'new' author and then cheerfully buzz through their work.) Simply put, I wanted to see what she would write next. However, it took awhile for things to start firing on all cylinders in Number. Things dragged in the first ninety or so pages. Was this going to be some sort of 'sophomore slump'?
  
  Fortunately, things recovered in the latter half with her pieces about a trip to the frozen 50th U.S. state ('Light Polution'), house pets ('An Abbreviated Catalogue of Tongues'), European travel on the cheap and awkward ('Le Paris!'), and the wonderfully humor-tinged dramatic finale about an ominous romantic relationship crossed with possibly stolen furniture ('Off the Back of a Truck').
  
  3.5 stars
• 
  Alexis

  When this comes out in June, buy it! Even better than its predecessor, I thought and a bit more mature too. Don't you love following young authors as they mature while still writing material you adore?
• 
  Sarah Sammis

  
  
  NPR was correct. Excellent book! Made even better as an audio read by the author.
• 
  Michael

  pro tip: go for the audiobook
• 
  Vivian

  I am aware that my patience for white, privileged writers is very short now but yiiiiikes, does this lady like to drop random racist nuggets about various Asian ethnic groups. From making fun of delivery people (they're foreigners, all of them), to Chinese names, to the conditions of a hostel being similar to the country of Thailand, it's all there and winking at you like you're somehow in on her joke (joke being that she's not actually racist so this isn't racist!).
  
  Aside from that, most of the writing is overwrought and the endings terrible if not downright nonexistent. When you set yourself to write "humor," chances are you, the reader will laugh. I don't remember even grinning or smirking once. Mostly, I was just trying to see how much longer of this "woe is me, I'm a white lady in publishing" I could take.
  
  Or perhaps I yearn for essays that actually delve deeper into, say, feelings outside of mild annoyance that your trip to Alaska/Portugal/Paris wasn't as good as you would have hoped.
  
  The one thing I got out of this: I need to fucking publish my own essays. The world needs less white whine, after all.
• 
  lp

  May I make a bold statement? Everyone who liked this book and wrote a good review, saying it was "entrancing" or that Crosley is "cute, funny, sarcastic as hell and really smart" is full of shit and fell for her little trick and wouldn't know a good book if it slapped them in the buttcheeks.
  
  It's worse then the last one because this time there aren't even funny titles. At least I Was Told There'd Be Cake had, every so often, a funny title or sentence or something.
  
  Crosley is a good writer and can describe things well, but her life is not interesting, everything she says is boring, and nothing happens to her. That is 3 ways to say the same thing, but that is how much I mean it. She even goes to fucking Lisbon to try to make her life cool but it doesn't work. The most interesting things she has going on is "boo hoo I hate weddings" (again), boo hoo, i got locked out of my apartment once. I particularly hated the part where she thought she was some awesome badass because she went to confession ('CAUSE GET THIS SHE'S NOT CATHOLIC). Guess what? Priests don't care. As a Catholic, I don't think you're going to hell for doing that, I don't think you're funny or a rebel or interesting for doing that. If anything I think, "if you're not Catholic, why the hell would you want to do that?"
  
  Finally, as
  this review points out, she's just unlikeable.
  
  I'm tired of talking about this and I don't even want to go into WHY this got published or WHY David Sedaris wrote the blurb. Life is unfair.
  
  Back to my office job now.
• 
  Kelly

  Rather than write what would essentially be a blog post tirade filled with grammatically incorrect sentences and overflowing with bitterness that stems from my own personal failures, let me simply tell you what this book is not.
  
  This book is not:
  *Funny. Though Crosley tries time and time again to balance the hipster's love of sarcastic self-awareness and pure self-absorption, she comes up wanting and, well, really whiny. Then again, her inclusion of the word "scat" did make me giggle like an eight year old upon first hearing the word "fart".
  *Well-written. While, granted, there are no text-like phrases in here (and for that I thank her), there's also a lack of individual style. Instead what you are given is a cheap imitation of David Sedaris, Laurie Notaro, Nora Ephron and Augusten Burroughs all wrapped up into one. Though I will give credit where credit is due and praise the author for her ability to bring to life random inanimate objects with creativity.
  *A fast read. Each chapter felt padded and never-ending. This could have been a much tighter book had Ms. Crosley shaved off at least 10,000 words.
  *All that interesting. You know the uncomfortable silence and polite grin you receive when you've just relayed a story that, unless had you been there, just doesn't come across as funny or even remotely odd? Yeah, here's a book filled with them.
  
  Even with all that said, I still think Ms. Crosley deserves props. No matter how many people blast her for already having a foot in the publishing door (ie. starting at the mailroom and working her way up the corporate ladder - you know, the way God and CEO's intended for it to happen), you have to at least give her credit for accomplishing her goal...she got my money.
• 
  Aaron

  Loved the shit out of every essay. Feminine without turning into derivative chick-lit, just beautifully crafted.
• 
  Cynthia

  I love Sloane Crosley. I want her to be my friend. If I were I writer,
  this is how I would write. I feel somehow sympatico with this girl who
  is at least 15 years my junior....
  
  This is her second book of short stories, most seemingly autobiographical
  about a 20 something and what befalls her in life. Working, finding jobs,
  travelling. Yet she manages to try to be somewhat philosophical in some way,
  and is just a smarter than normal girl making her way in the world.
  
  Sloane cracks me up. She's trying to, and she succeeds. Sometimes I read
  to learn, sometimes I read to be transported to a new and different place,
  and sometimes I read to be amused. This is when she is perfect - when I
  want to be amused, this girl amuses the shit out of me. I giggle on the bus
  reading her words.
  
• 
  Kimberly Broihahn

  Funny, easy read, and Sloane’s writing style made me feel like I was in places like Alaska or Portugal when she wrote about them.
• 
  Elizabeth

  I said this about her previous collection, and I'll say it again now: I wish I'd discovered Crosley sooner. It's not that her work doesn't stand the test of time as much as how our proximity in age would have made reading these essays closer to when they were published that much more poignant for me. This holds especially true for the brilliant final essay in this collection, which manages to contain multitudes. She's an essayist of the very best type--instrospective, funny, searching, and smart.
• 
  Holly

  Christ. What was I thinking?
• 
  Jenny

  I hate this book and I really really dislike Sloane Crosley.
  
  I confess, I hated her first book so I don't really know what possessed me to read her second one. It was a library book so maybe that's it? It was free. It wasn't checked out by anyone else. It has a clever title and it sounds like something I'd like but it is not. It is not something I like.
  
  This book is naval-gazing and boring. I'd forgive naval-gazing if it's at least interesting or funny. This is neither of those things. Sloane is not a terribly interesting person. In almost every single essay I'd flip ahead to see how many pages she is going to blather on without a point. Also, she is not nice. She is extremely snotty about anyone who does not live in New York as if there was some sort of test that she passed and we failed and now she's going to rub our noses in it. Plus, she's just nasty generally. There's a chapter about a friend of hers from middle school and when she runs into her again as an adult, she ponders the idea that she heard this girl was a slut and has had a couple of abortions. What? Seriously? Am I supposed to root for you? Am I supposed to nod my head and say "Oh yes, she sounds like a slut" instead of wondering where you even got this information and what sort of grown-up calls another grown woman a slut and makes fun of her (rumored) medical decisions?
  
  Terrible.
• 
  Sarah

  Sloane Crosley, you sound kind of like a typical Manhattanite living that "New York is the center of it all" kind of life, but I won't hold that against you: can we be friends, please?
  
  Crosley's essays are humorous without being over the top. There were many moments and sentiments I related to, despite being relegated to the rural NC mountains and very far removed from her own world. It's a testiment to her skill as an essayist that this happens -- making her individual experiences relatable on a much larger level. Her snarky sense of humor is one that aligns almost perfectly with my own, so if you like dry witicisms that originated in an 80s childhood, this might also be for you.
• 
  Elizabeth Mills

  If I ever wrote a book, I would want it to be even half as witty, hilarious, observant, and satisfying as this one. I can't wait to read her other book and anything else she blesses us with. If you love David Sedaris or Augusten Burroughs, you will enjoy this tremendously.
  
  I haven't read I Was Told There'd Be Cake, but it looks to be almost unanimously adored way more than this one, so I have that to look forward to!!