Customer Reviews

How Did You Get This Number

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read about this book in a magazine and thought it would be a nice, relaxing read. It turned out to be that, and terrifically funny to boot.

The book is a collection of essays that include the musings of a twentysomething on life in New York City, travel in and out of the U.S., family pets, and other subjects. The author is quite simply an incredible writer. She manages to be witty, hip, current, and laugh-out-loud hilarious, with just a touch of sweetness thrown in. There are a number of subtle and overt pop-culture references that are hidden like Easter Eggs throughout the text, so I found myself reading a paragraph and having to go back and read it again to get at all the nuances within.

The only minor problem with this book was a few instances where the sentences sort of started to wander off and I got a little lost in her thought process, but this was a small issue in my opinion.

I realize that I am gushing so much in this review that I probably sound like a friend of Ms. Crosley's or a plant of some kind. I'm not, though I can now be counted as a fan. I can't recommend this book highly enough. It was just wonderful from start to finish. I'm going to buy her other book immediately!

Sloane is back with more essays telling about her life and adventures. What happens when this city girl goes to Alaska? Why can she never return to France? Why did math class result in a doctor's appointment? The answers to these questions and more can be found in this collection of essays.

Sloane, oh Sloane. I have such a complex relationship with your work. I love love pink puffy heart love your first book. It was witty and honest. This book, well, this book just tries to hard to be as cool as her older sister. And fails miserably.

I found the majority of this book really boring. It is so "New York" that its attempts at sophistication come across as merely pretentiousness. Some of the stories induced a chuckle or two but nothing near the belly laughs that her first book elicited. It merely sounds like the whining of a relatively well adjusted girl from a stable family living in New York and trying to be edgy.

I really thought this book fell short of the benchmark and am not entirely sure if I will read more of her work. Which is absurd to me, given how much I adored her first book. Her first book inspired me to write. This book inspired me to write better that her.

Sloane Crosley is an extraordinary talent. Much like the other notorious essay writers of today (Sedaris, Vowell), her essays are private and often hilarious glimpses into her life. From encountering clowns in Lisbon to getting kicked out of Paris, Crosley has seen - and done - a lot. And her essays let you experience her life in a way that feels like you, too, were there.

How Did You Get This Number is a fantastic book, with an extraordinarily strong voice. (Which is obvious, considering her last book, the fantastically titled I Was Told There'd Be Cake, is in development as a series on HBO.) She makes the mundane interesting, the outrageous seemingly normal. Her writing is vivid, detailed and doesn't leave anything out. Her conversational tone is welcoming, and her stories addictive. And throughout it all, you just wish you were friends with her.

Show Me on the Doll, the first and my favorite essay, details her random trip to Lisbon, where she, as mentioned, met clowns, got lost and found a tower that didn't lead to anything. Still, the experience was enlightening in a way a trip to Paris wouldn't have been. Le Paris!, which chronicles two trips to the city beautiful, shows the humor in traveling, and how things aren't always how you remember them to be. Take a Stab at It is a relatable tale about crazy roommates, and If You Sprinkle is a fantastic tale about growing up and who we - and those who were cool in elementary school - become. It's about those passive-aggressive friendships, and how there's no way to predict the future, despite what the game Girl Talk may suggest. Off the Back of a Truck was incredibly surprising - in a fantastic way. While most of Crosley's essays point out her embarrassing moments, with pure self-deprecating writing, this one shows a very honest, vulnerable person getting over a relationship. None of her other essays have documented her dating life, so I found this one especially telling - in a good way. I really enjoyed it, as it shows how much you take on in a relationship, and how sometimes it's too much.

As much as I enjoyed Crosley's first book, I definitely prefer this one. I still have a thing with her last lines (I like last lines to be epic and sometimes hers left me wanting more), and some of her essays were a bit much (to the point that you wonder if it really was all true), but still I really enjoyed the book. Her essays take you through a maze and just when you think you're completely lost, they bring you right back to where you started. She's a tremendous talent, and I can't wait to see what else she has to come.

I loved Sloane Crosley's last book and so I ran out and bought a brand new copy of her latest, "How Did You Get This Number" ( I normally buy my books used on Amazon). Maybe I wasn't in the right mood when reading it but I barely laughed out loud. With her first book, I was cracking up in public reading it, tears were coming down my face from laughing so hard. This book, not so much. Is it a good read? Eh, it's okay. There was one chapter I found very funny about pets but besides that, I wasn't that impressed. Worth checking out, but don't expect it to be as funny as the first.

This is the first Sloane Crosley book I've read, and I found it completely delightful. The best stories for me were "It's Always Home You Miss," on the art of riding in taxis in New York city: the drivers continuously engaged in phone conversations with family and friends, thinking about your entire life during a traffic jam, escaping from a vomit-smelling cab, having the driver miss your destination because of your bad articulation of it when you got in. I also liked "If You Sprinkle," which gives hilarious insight into what it's like to be a girl, the mean games girls sometimes play, the complete lack of compassion: Someone you know has what talent scouts would call "Jackie-0 eyes," but your group thinks they're like Kermit the Frog's.

I also enjoyed the story of her comically bumbling through Paris and the last story, a somewhat oblique narrative of her dating a man who's already in an established relationship (unknown to her), combined with her strange relationship with a mover who hauls over clearly stolen home furnishings under the guise that they were floor models.

Crosley has a gift for images, which she suddenly throws in your face to create hilarious pictures of the situation she's in.

I would rate her writing not nearly as good as Sarah Vowell's or David Sedaris's, but surely something you want to read and a real mood brightener. Since the book consists of essays, you can put it down at any time--but you won't want to.

I'm writing to review my experience with the audio version of this book. While the author's experiences traveling the world and as a single woman in New York are at times humorous, the quirks of her voice and delivery are a distraction. Her scratchy/gravelly voice was irritating to me at times, as was her limited variety in delivering funny lines. In addition to the scratchiness of her voice, she's got no creativity or variation in the cadence of her reading--just mind-numbing repetition of the same ups and downs and....pauses. The prosody of her speech (or lack thereof) is almost hypnotic. While I can guess why authors of humorous essays are often chosen to read their own material for audio versions of their books, Ms. Crosley's publishers should have taken a pass on this one.

Sloane Crosley's collection of essays invites the readers into her life with authenticity and slightly self-deprecating humor. Her unique, personal experiences reveal universal truths about friends, relationships, and family that we can all relate to. We follow Sloane as she travels to Paris, Lisbon, and Alaska, deals with roommate and apartment woes in Manhattan, and recalls her childhood in the 'burbs.
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I went to hear Sloane Crosley read from her new book at a bookstore in DUMBO. The fragment she read was hilarious, which I totally expected since her first book was super funny and I couldn't wait to read her 2nd one (on paperback). Lamentably, the story she read for us, I found, was the only one really worth reading out of new her book. Most of her other stories were boring with little insightful and witty notes unlike her previous book. I was very disappointed when I reached the end of the book. Hopefully her 3rd collection will make up for How Did You Get This Number.

Very overwritten, in my opinion, so the funny lines get buried. It's like she's trying so hard to sound smart that the conversational tone gets lost.

Also, I didn't believe the veracity of some of the stories, such as her conversation with "Ed" on the flight to Alaska. Too pat to be believable. I really tried to read more of the book so I could change my mind, but had to just put it away unfinished and go read some classic Thurber to get my laughs.

Thought her first book was really good, laugh-out-load funny. This book is nowhere near as funny- in fact, I realized half way through the pets chapter that I was forcing myself to read the book, just to say I had finished it. What a waste of time. The stories are boring and lack the pizzazz of the stories on the first book. A sophomore slump, indeed.