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booksare42's Reviews (608)
I’ve been a fan of Allie Brosh and Hyperbole and a Half since I discovered the alot in high school. I adored the Hyperbole and a Half book, and I waited seven years for Solutions and Other Problems to be released, and it was worth the wait.
If you aren’t familiar with Allie Brosh and Hyperbole and a Half, I recommend scrolling through her blog. She doesn’t use it anymore, but it will give you a sense of her style of art and sense of humour. I adore Allie Brosh’s artwork, and reading a book with more than 1600 more drawings in it was delightful.
My favourite thing about this book is how it was both laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreaking. Allie Brosh has a talent for mixing humour and heartache, and it makes things relatable. She deals with heavy topics like mental health, depression, illness, and suicide in a way that’s easy to digest and might even make you crack a smile.
I also like how this book contains a little bit of everything. It has dogs. It has depression. It has children duct-taped to chairs in driveways. It has death. It has overly persistent and demanding children. It has drug-fuelled adventures. It has strange birds. It has medical scares. It has it all.
One of the heavier comics in this book starts with a few delightful pages of illustrations of my favourite Bird of Paradise, the greater lophorina, a.k.a. that black and blue dancing bird with the strange mating dance on Planet Earth. These pictures made me laugh out loud, but the comic quickly took a heavier turn as it talked about depression and mental health. Combining something light and feathery with something so heavy is a real talent, and Allie Brosh has that talent.
Overall, this book was worth the wait. It was my first read of 2021, and I’ll probably flick through it many times when I need to smile. I hope that this time around, Allie Brosh doesn’t disappear for as long, and I hope that she continues to be okay.
If you aren’t familiar with Allie Brosh and Hyperbole and a Half, I recommend scrolling through her blog. She doesn’t use it anymore, but it will give you a sense of her style of art and sense of humour. I adore Allie Brosh’s artwork, and reading a book with more than 1600 more drawings in it was delightful.
My favourite thing about this book is how it was both laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreaking. Allie Brosh has a talent for mixing humour and heartache, and it makes things relatable. She deals with heavy topics like mental health, depression, illness, and suicide in a way that’s easy to digest and might even make you crack a smile.
I also like how this book contains a little bit of everything. It has dogs. It has depression. It has children duct-taped to chairs in driveways. It has death. It has overly persistent and demanding children. It has drug-fuelled adventures. It has strange birds. It has medical scares. It has it all.
One of the heavier comics in this book starts with a few delightful pages of illustrations of my favourite Bird of Paradise, the greater lophorina, a.k.a. that black and blue dancing bird with the strange mating dance on Planet Earth. These pictures made me laugh out loud, but the comic quickly took a heavier turn as it talked about depression and mental health. Combining something light and feathery with something so heavy is a real talent, and Allie Brosh has that talent.
Overall, this book was worth the wait. It was my first read of 2021, and I’ll probably flick through it many times when I need to smile. I hope that this time around, Allie Brosh doesn’t disappear for as long, and I hope that she continues to be okay.
Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I apologize for taking such a long time to read and review it.
I read this book a few months ago with some other bloggers, and I am incredibly grateful for them and our weekly discussions because I don’t think I would have finished this book without them.
I went into this book not remembering what it was about, but I was expecting some nice Historical Fiction with lots of art thrown in. What I got instead was sections with some nice Historical Fiction and art and other sections that were ripped out of an episode of Criminal Minds.
I want to start off by talking about the characters. I have mixed feelings about Iris. At some moments, I loved her, and I was in awe of her independence and determination. At other points, I wanted to scream because she was making some awful decisions. I liked Louis, and though he had his frustrating moments, I thought he was a fairly consistent character. Albie was an absolute sweetheart, and I was rooting for him throughout the book. Silas is by far one of the most repulsive and horrendous characters I have ever encountered, and as far as I’m concerned, he has no redeeming qualities. The best character in this book is Guinevere, she is a wombat, and she is delightful.
As far as the plot goes, I loved some parts of the story and hated other parts. I loved the parts told from Iris’s perspective that focused on art, Louis, and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. I loved reading the scenes where Iris and Louis were painting and watching Iris improve as an artist. I don’t know very much about art, but parts of this book made me want to look into the Pre-Raphaelite movement. I also enjoyed reading a book set in London during the 1850s because this is a period I’m not very familiar with.
I absolutely hated the parts told from Silas’s perspective. He is such a creepy and unlikable character, and his parts made me want to stop reading the book. I generally find taxidermy to be creepy, but reading about it from his perspective, turned me off completely. There were far too many dead animals in his section, and it made me uncomfortable. His obsession with Iris was something pulled out of an episode of Criminal Minds, and I’m surprised that I didn’t give up on this book.
Another thing that bothered me about this book was the number of characters thrown in just to create conflict or move the story along. It was a lot to keep track of at times, especially because some characters appeared for a few pages and then wouldn’t show up again until 100 pages later.
Overall, I have mixed feelings about this book. If the parts with Silas were removed, I’d probably give it 4 or 4.5 stars because the art aspect was wonderful. However, Silas plays a huge role in this book, and his creepiness was too much for me. I also found the ending to be underwhelming, and it made me want to throw my Kindle across the room.
I read this book a few months ago with some other bloggers, and I am incredibly grateful for them and our weekly discussions because I don’t think I would have finished this book without them.
I went into this book not remembering what it was about, but I was expecting some nice Historical Fiction with lots of art thrown in. What I got instead was sections with some nice Historical Fiction and art and other sections that were ripped out of an episode of Criminal Minds.
I want to start off by talking about the characters. I have mixed feelings about Iris. At some moments, I loved her, and I was in awe of her independence and determination. At other points, I wanted to scream because she was making some awful decisions. I liked Louis, and though he had his frustrating moments, I thought he was a fairly consistent character. Albie was an absolute sweetheart, and I was rooting for him throughout the book. Silas is by far one of the most repulsive and horrendous characters I have ever encountered, and as far as I’m concerned, he has no redeeming qualities. The best character in this book is Guinevere, she is a wombat, and she is delightful.
As far as the plot goes, I loved some parts of the story and hated other parts. I loved the parts told from Iris’s perspective that focused on art, Louis, and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. I loved reading the scenes where Iris and Louis were painting and watching Iris improve as an artist. I don’t know very much about art, but parts of this book made me want to look into the Pre-Raphaelite movement. I also enjoyed reading a book set in London during the 1850s because this is a period I’m not very familiar with.
I absolutely hated the parts told from Silas’s perspective. He is such a creepy and unlikable character, and his parts made me want to stop reading the book. I generally find taxidermy to be creepy, but reading about it from his perspective, turned me off completely. There were far too many dead animals in his section, and it made me uncomfortable. His obsession with Iris was something pulled out of an episode of Criminal Minds, and I’m surprised that I didn’t give up on this book.
Another thing that bothered me about this book was the number of characters thrown in just to create conflict or move the story along. It was a lot to keep track of at times, especially because some characters appeared for a few pages and then wouldn’t show up again until 100 pages later.
Overall, I have mixed feelings about this book. If the parts with Silas were removed, I’d probably give it 4 or 4.5 stars because the art aspect was wonderful. However, Silas plays a huge role in this book, and his creepiness was too much for me. I also found the ending to be underwhelming, and it made me want to throw my Kindle across the room.