Customer Reviews

We Thought You Would Be Prettier: True Tales of the Dorkiest Girl Alive

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I had mixed feelings about the first book I read by Laurie Notaro, Autobiography of a Fat Bride. I thought she relied too much on making herself to be the fat, ugly, stupid girl to get laughs, and that it was almost a throwback to the Phyllis Diller-type comediennes of the Sixties. But it was funny enough that I wanted to read more.

In We Thought You Would Be Prettier, Notaro still is the often the butt of her own jokes, but somehow now she seems more Roseanne than Phyllis Diller. Even her bio at the end of the book is good for a laugh. My favorites were the story of the flippy-haired guy at the supermarket and her description of her day at driving school.

I was also pleased to find her website (LaurieNotaro dot com) where there was a very funny piece about her misadventures with the supermarket self-check-out machine. There you can also read the story of how her first book was rejected seventy times before she finally self-published and then she was almost immediately contacted by an agent who sold that book and her unpublished second book. I love that story. And she has a new book coming out in November!

The wonderful thing about Laurie Notaro is that she taps into the 30 something year old strapped into a totally inappropriate but oh so much fun pink prom dress. She's bitter, she's funny, she's not perfect and willing to share just how much NOT perfect she is with the rest of us losers so we don't feel quite so bad. I really like her writing. It's frothy, somewhat shallow, and sometimes so mean (and usually about herself!) that I cringe, but that is what makes it so good.

Picked this book up browsing at Costco. It looked interesting, but once I started reading I couldn't stop. At one point my husband (who was up at 2:30 am to go to work) came in the bedroom thinking the dog was having convulsions. It was just me trying hard not to pee my pants as I was reading.

Some of the essays in the book were a little over done for me. Almost like she was trying too hard to be funny. But there were several that just hit a nerve - that I could relate to - that had me laughing so hard I was crying & couldn't see the page. I loved reading a book like that - it felt good to lose myself in the humor. And I'd recommend it - in fact, my sister in law has it now.

For fans of The Idiot Girls' Action Adventure Club, this book opens with Notaro recounting the days of her cross-country tour to support her breakout hit of a first novel. While Idiot Girls' centered on a single, drinking, avoiding-growing-up life, in this look Notaro has definitely aged, as she writes about marriage, being an aunt, buying clothes for the middle-aged body, using eBay, and working out at the YMCA.

There are several very moving "This Is Your Life" segments that reveal Notaro's roots with humor and wit. In "Moving Day," Notaro relives all her memories of her grandparents' house and what it was like to interact with them. In "Last Night at Long Wong's," she attends the closing party for the bar in which many of her Idiot Girls' adventures took place. She had't been there in years, and she was too tired/responsible to go to the all-night after-party, something she would have been the life of in her Idiot Girls' days.

For readers who have grown with Notaro, from being a reckless Idiot Girl to becoming the Dorkiest Girl Alice, this will be a surefire hit.

I have read a few books in my day, and I can honestly say that I have never read anything that almost made me wet myself laughing the way Laurie Notaro's books do. She is the girl you knew in high school, your best friend, maybe even you. Loud and lively, with a biting wit. She's the girl you go out for drinks with on Friday night and share a pack of cigarettes with.

Her first book so artfully introduced her world, a world with an Italian family that could put the Sopranos to shame, a Catholic mother who makes the reader feel guilty just for reading the "filth" that only her daughter could come up with, and some of the best friends a girl could have. If there had been an Idiot Girl's Action Adventure Club in my town, I would have been the first to sign up.

Her second book introduced us to the lifetime of heart ache the male species gave our heroine. But lo and behold, she finds love and marriage with a man she flashed her unharnessed breast at in their shared work environment (and he still married her). The third book continues her adventures in marriage, friendship, family, and the ungratifying work of being a journalist. Giving up her job after she publishes her book, she leads us right to the next chapter in her life.....the book tour.

I think that by far the most recent book really takes us to some pretty scary places, whether that be a squinky eye, or feral cats in the neighbors yard, but it also gives a lot more emotion to the voice that in the past has been funny but not necessarily nice. The sorrow of moving, seeing old friends, the everyday reality of married life, she relays all these things poignantly.

I have given these books as gifts and loans to all the girls I know. Laurie Notaro finally gives a voice to our pathetic band of idiots. We have a mantra, you know. "Egg, bread crumbs, frying pan!" Long live the Idiot Girls!

I loved this book, laughed out loud from cover to cover. She really might be the funniest author ever. I love David Sedaris and can honestly say her books are as good if not better. She's consistent and I have laughed genuinely throughout all of them. Her observations are priceless and she is every woman. Who can't relate to traffic tickets and e-bay? I didn't like that she bashed on skinny chicks as I am a skinny tiny thing, but I still loved all her stories. And Laurie, girls picking out a size zero have it just as hard. I never find my size. Never Ever. But I still loved the book.

A self-proclaimed cranky lady, Notaro takes on Stupid Hair, book tours, and more in this collection of essays. I enjoyed many of her rants (who can't identify with those "idiot" moments, like leaving your wallet in a taxi or locking yourself outside?). But after 100 pages, I got tired. Very, very tired. While she has an acerbic wit she doesn't hesitate to turn on anyone (including herself), Notaro has no finesse. Everything is a baseball bat, even when a fly swatter would do. By the end of the book, I felt like I'd spent four hours stuck in an elevator with Sam Kennison. Maybe as Notaro matures, she'll learn that she really is funny -- she doesn't need a blowhorn to tell us so.

I've read all of Laurie Notaro's books and this one was quite simply the greatest collection of hilarious stories yet. She had me laughing to the point of convulsions. She is the soul sister for countless women out there - and not to be missed for anyone with a sense of dry sense of humor that borders on sick. Laurie, you are my hero.

I laughed so hard, tears ran down my face. I laughed so hard, I nearly wet my pants. My husband asked me one night if I was okay because I tried to tell him about a chapter I had just read and I got choked; therefore, I was laughing and coughing at the same time. There is absolutely no way to read this book and not laugh! Some chapters are funnier than others; but, overall they are all hiralous! Need to laugh - buy this book!

I have to preface this review by saying that I have read Laurie Notaro's previous books (The Idiot Girls' Action Adventure Club, Autobiography of a Fat Bride, and I Love Everybody and Other Atrocious Lies) at least three or four times each. It never ceases to amaze my husband that, despite the fact that each book is well-traveled territory for me, he finds me giggling hysterically, with tears streaming down my face, each and every time I crack one of her books open. It was no different yesterday, when I ran to my nearest bookstore after work to buy a copy of We Thought You Would Be Prettier and started reading it the minute I got home. I can't get enough of Laurie Notaro's books. Beyond the laughing-out-loud factor, I am left with an overwhelming feeling of "Thank God, somebody else understands!!" Her observations are dead-on, and her writing reflects what the rest of us (at least, those of us Idiot Girls) are thinking. I've passed her books on to friends, relatives, and co-workers, and none of them have been disappointed!