Cannonball Read 3 - Review #4 - How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley

There are a lot of people out there who think they're funny and interesting, and they have blogs or Twitter accounts where they write about their lives. Some of them are legitimately amusing, but let's face it, most of them aren't. Both of Sloane Crosley's collections of essays, I Was Told There'd Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number, read like a friend telling you about funny, absurd, and out of the ordinary stories from her life in her twenties...your eloquent, self-deprecating, and genuinely likable friend.

I Was Told There'd Be Cake was laugh-out-loud funny, full of absurd stories of a woman in her early twenties trying to figure life out with mixed results. However, in How Did You Get This Number, there's a little more poignancy with her humor, because as we get older, the stakes get a little higher. Our mistakes carry a little more weight, and we're a little more on our own when things go wrong. I recognize myself in these stories, also as a twenty-something out of college and trying to figure out my life and facing my inadequacies. Crosley is a great writer, deftly weaving so many funny, ridiculous observations into these small vignettes. She writes about searching for the perfect apartment, strangers' bathroom habits, and the fate of her many family pets, but at the same time is telling you so much more about herself, the people she knows, and the people we all know. I don't want to get too detailed about any of the individual stories, because they're so great when you don't quite know what you're getting into.

Crosley's writing is a pleasure to read. She never struck me as smug or self-indulgent like so many can seem while writing about their lives for everyone to read. She's that girl who can give you all of these reasons why she's not cool or together, but really, she's the coolest person in the room. Who wants to hear Elizabeth Gilbert go on about her perfect journey to happiness? A lot of people, apparently, but I like Sloane Crosley and the glimpses into her own flawed, funny, familiar path to being grown-up.