Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal

I love audiobooking memoirs (or in this case, not a memoir?) and this one especially was produced with the listener in mind. A beautiful production thoughtfully arranged, Amy's voice and stories were poignant, timely, silly, heartwarming, and heartbreaking.

I followed up listening to this book with her NYT article “You May Want To Marry My Husband”, published 10 days prior to her passing of ovarian cancer, and her husband's response to this love letter she left for him one year later. AKR has left the world works of art to be cherished. In her words, I, too, want more.

I read this book in less than a day. It was lovely, delightful, joyful, funny, heartwarming, tender, gentle, silly & so much more.

A lovely, beautiful piecemeal memoir. That shows (me at least) that paying attention is more valuable than I sometimes think.

Very unique format I would love to see in other books again.

I am beyond grateful to have received this Advanced Reader Copy from Penguin Random House. Amy's book is a wonderful, whimsical literary adventure that reveals the meaning we can find in everyday life if we look for it and if we choose to create it. I declare this one-of-a-kind book to be an all-time favourite read! How exciting is that?! Amy just gets me. She sees the world in the same way that I do and is a mastermind at wordplay - a wordsmith, as she would preferred to be called.

This insanely creative book - set out in textbook format (but with next to no adherence to the usual layout of the text in such a book - which I loved, of course) - offers additional engagement through texting! Now, I am a mindful person and I like to focus fully on one experience at a time, so I was a tad leery about this option. Was it a gimmick? Was it something that was done just to be the first of its kind? I soon found out that this was not the case. By participating in the texting prompts that came up every now and again even more joy was added to the quirky, quick memoir. I found them to be fun little moments where I was afforded the opportunity to pretend that Amy was actually a real life friend. I even have her in my contacts as Amy “My Author Friend” Krouse Rosenthal. Haha!

The only thing that I disliked about this book is that it came to an end. Amy is a creative, beautiful soul that I would love to meet in person one day. If you don't want to buy this book then at least pick it up (when it is eventually released) at a library or at a bookstore and read the Romance Language chapter (It. Blew. My. Mind.) as this is officially one of my top 10 favourite short stories. It's simply brilliant and brilliantly simple.

Ahhhhh my words can't do this book justice.

Funny. I tell people I read just about anything but horror and textbooks.

Well, if this is a textbook, you can scratch textbooks from my do-not-read list.

How can I sum up this odd collection of vignettes, lists, photos, and miscellany?
Of course, it is a textbook and it's not a textbook. It's a memoir and it's not a memoir. It's a book and it's not a book. It's odd and it's regular. It's nothing and it's everything.

I give up. I can't really tell you anything about this book. I can't really tell you if you will like it or not. I will just say that I'm crazy about it, and if you like it, too, I'd love to hear from you, and so, in a Textbook-Amy-Krouse-Rosenthal-sort-of-way, feel free to text me your thoughts about this book: (281) 912-3412.