I Wouldn’t Believe These Stories Either, but Hey, They Happened

You'll Never Believe
What Happened to Lacey
Crazy Stories about Racism
By Amber Ruffin & Lacey Lamar
Amazon ~ Powell's

Now a writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers and host of The Amber Ruffin Show, Amber Ruffin lives in New York, where she is no one's First Black Friend and everyone is, as she puts it, "stark raving normal." But Amber's sister Lacey? She's still living in their home state of Nebraska, and trust us, you'll never believe what happened to Lacey.

From racist donut shops to strangers putting their whole hand in her hair, from being mistaken for a prostitute to being mistaken for Harriet Tubman, Lacey is a lightning rod for hilariously ridiculous yet all-too-real anecdotes. She's the perfect mix of polite, beautiful, petite, and Black that apparently makes people think, "I can say whatever I want to this woman." And now, Amber and Lacey share these entertainingly horrifying stories through their laugh-out-loud sisterly banter. Painfully relatable or shockingly eye-opening (depending on how often you have personally been followed by security at department stores), this book tackles modern-day racism with the perfect balance of levity and gravity.


I've been watching Late Night with Seth Meyers for a few years now, and have always loved Amber's segments. Whether it's Amber Says What, Point, Counterpoint, Jokes Seth Can't Tell, or now The Amber Ruffin Show on Peacock, she is always amazing at telling stories or quips filled with heart and humor. I feel like we got our first taste of her skill with finding the humor in dark situations when she shared stories of her run-ins with police following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. So it was with both eagerness and apprehension that I found this book. Sure, I knew I was in for some entertainment, but it's one of those things where you're not sure if you're supposed to laugh or just feel horrified.

Sometimes Things Don’t Go Like They Should

~Solutions and Other Problems~
By Allie Brosh
Amazon ~ Powell's

Solutions and Other Problems includes humorous stories from Allie Brosh’s childhood; the adventures of her very bad animals; merciless dissection of her own character flaws; incisive essays on grief, loneliness, and powerlessness; as well as reflections on the absurdity of modern life.


After reading and buying the first book, I could not wait to get my hands on the next. Though the blog has been fairly dead since her first publication, I found that she's in process of uploading a truckload of pictures (both drawings and photos) to her facebook page as "an attempt to answer the question of what life was like during the seven years between books." So, yeah, not much going into reading this, just sort of a "see book, must read" kind of mindset.

I Have a Subconscious List of Rules For How Reality Should Work

~Hyperbole and a Half~
Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened
By Allie Brosh
Amazon ~ Powell's
Hyperbole and a Half Blog

From the Author:

This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative—like maybe someone who isn't me wrote it—but I soon discovered that I'm not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book:

• Pictures
• Words
• Stories about things that happened to me
• Stories about things that happened to other people because of me
• Eight billion dollars*
• Stories about dogs
• The secret to eternal happiness*

*These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!

Truthfully, I've barely read any of the Hyperbole and a Half Blog. Maybe 4 articles in total. Sure, I've seen a few of the pictures posted here and there (CLEAN ALL THE THINGS!), and I've no doubt adopted some of the more well known quotes and memes into my own vernacular (see last parentheses). But relative to the millions of fans and followers, I knew practically nothing about this blog.

I got my first real introduction when a friend or two linked to the Depression posts (which are included in the book). I read through them, laughed, cried, connected with them. Then, when a few of my friends started salivating at the mouth over this book coming out, I'll admit I kinda fed off of their hype. I visited the blog and saw the latest post, and then I laughed some more. So when the library finally sent me notice that they had a copy in, I was already pretty excited for this book.

I thought I knew what to expect. I had no idea.

There Is No Plan, Plus 5 More Career Secrets

~The Adventures of Johnny Bunko~
The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need
By Daniel H. Pink & Rob Ten Pas
Amazon ~ Powell's

The 6 career secrets no one ever told you.

Meet Johnny Bunko. He's probably a lot like you. He did what everybody—parents, teachers, counselors—told him to do. But now, stuck at a dead-end job, he's begun to suspect that what he thought he knew is just plain wrong. One bizarre night, Johnny meets Diana, the unlikeliest career advisor he's ever seen. Part Cameron Diaz, part Barbara Eden, she reveals to Johnny the six essential lessons for thriving in the world of work.

The Adventures of Johnny Bunko is America's first business book in the Japanese comic format known as manga. Packed with smart, life-changing advice you won't find anywhere else, it's the last career guide you'll ever need.


My dad picked this up as he was perusing the bookshelves at Goodwill. I was pretty surprised when I saw it since he primarily reads only non-fiction, and definitely not picture books. But he said he'd heard good things about it, and had read the author before. So I shrugged and didn't think any more of it.