Nonfiction: How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay by Jenny Lawson

This year's San Antonio Book Festival featured author and bookshop owner Jenny Lawson as one of its many presenters. Despite having three different talks that I wanted to go to that all took place around the same time (seriously, how does that happen every year?), I managed to witness Lawson's delightful humor and unique perspective as she talked about How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay. Fun story: It was Lawson and writer Lucie Frost on the stage, and there was supposed to be a moderator but they got lost??? Or something??? It did not matter because the two authors managed to hold their own just fine, and kept the audience laughing until the moderator showed up.

Genre, Themes, History: This is a work of nonfiction in which the writer/blogger/bookshop owner details her tips and tricks for staying alive, happy, and creative, which is not always easy for her due to having treatment resistant depression and anxiety. It is Lawson's first book that has been placed under the 'self-help' banner, and it truly does provide guidance and suggestions that she has used in order to keep going, in whatever way she needs it. Across 12 sections, each chapter is fairly short, and sprinkled throughout are various quotes, as well as a few illustrations like the ones that can be found in Lawson's coloring book You Are Here: An Owner's Manual for Dangerous Minds. 

My Verdict: This is the third book I have read by Lawson (if you count the coloring book, and I do), and it may be my favorite. It contains her same brand of possibly inappropriately honest humor, mixed with incredible insight and encouragement that we all need to hear at times. The advice that is given is both clear and practical - some of it even seeming obvious once you read it - with Lawson providing examples of how it has worked in her life. She makes it clear that she is very much still working on all of this and often struggles to be creative, but she does not give up, and if there is one word I would use for how I feel after reading this book it would be "encouraged."

Favorite Chapter: In the section titled "Let's Fight the Brain Weasels," there is a chapter called "Pick Your Own Labels Before They Get Assigned to You," and it contains what Lawson calls "An (incredibly) Random Title Generator." It allows the reader to generate their own title, and I went with Steward of Curious Remembrances. Oddly enough, I laughed the hardest while reading the first paragraph of the acknowledgements because of a story about Lawson and her neighbor's lime tree. Not sure why, but it really made me laugh.

Recommended Reading: I recommend Dr. Ashely Alker's 99 Ways to Die: And How to Avoid Them.