Here's To Not Catching Our Hair On Fire

From the title (I have caught my hair on fire! And I've been distracted by a chicken too!) I thought this would be a fun read.

It was not. I'm really not sure why I finished it. I would not spend that much time listening to a person in real life who could not go 6 sentences without a string of swear words. It's even less endearing in a book. Her stories of abuse, being drugged, drinking too much, flitting from job to job, and drug use were just not funny. Her life wasn't funny. Her book isn't funny. The author thinks her life is a riot.

This book is like sitting down with a person you vaguely know, only to get their entire torrid life story, all with the attitude that none of what happens to them is in their control. Life just happens, and all the scatterbrained inability to keep a job is from a medical diagnosis, NOT from the weed they smoke. Or all the times they get drunk. Getting arrested is great fun, an adventure! (Yes, she really says this - in great detail. She also thought getting drugged was a laugh fest too, since nothing bad happened while she was drugged.)

Her inability to make a list is just how her brain works, nothing can be done about it.. and yet the same person can write an entire book.

There were parts of this book I could honestly relate to. Many of the symptoms of her ADHD, or "how her brain works", were achingly familiar to me. But those tidbits were hidden in so much junk and disaster (not funny disaster - more like "grow up already" disaster) that I found myself trying to distance myself even from the parts I could relate to. It's her life, her story, and she has a right to tell it.. I just really wish I had not wasted my time reading it.