I discovered the blog Hyperbole and a Half quite by chance about three years ago when someone I was once in contact with on Facebook at the time happened to post a comment that Allie Brosh had updated her site for the first time in a long time. I was curious, so I clicked on the link.
I think I spent the next two hours laughing until I cried and my stomach hurt.
Brosh’s blog is like many other blogs, mostly about herself and her relatively uneventful, non-celebrity life with her boyfriend and her two dogs, but she has a genius for relating the most trivial–and sometimes the most awful–experiences in a way that is both honest and incredibly funny. (Dooce’s writing has a similar quality, but lacks the fantastic illustrations.) Brosh captures this tone even in explaining and confronting her struggle with depression, which I return to every so often, particularly when I’m having a difficult week myself. The episode I find the funniest, however, is This Is Why I’ll Never Be An Adult. If you read nothing else on the site, read that episode. Cleaning *all the things* in a single go is an ambition I continue to nurse–I used to be able to manage it when I lived in a flat in Edinburgh, but the house in Atlanta is proving a different beast. (How do closets and cabinets get so dirty? They stay closed 95% of the time. It isn’t fair.)
There’s actually not a great deal I can say that wouldn’t be better captured by just going and reading the blog itself, so have at it. I know some of you reading this will already be familiar with it, but like Black Books, I find it bears many, many repeated viewings. It is safe for work in the sense of no nudity or much swearing, as far as I recall, but laughing may be a problem. She has one book out, containing the best of the blog and some new material; a second book, Solutions and Other Problems, is due out sometime soon, in which we are promised much new material. If the publisher can just settle on a release date.