The dress A Day review of books (nb: very little actual dress content)

I was going to sew today. Really, I was. I had plans, I had a pattern, I had fabric washed. I even had a new box of pins. I also had this book, and poof! just like that, the hours slipped away. Okay, the hours *skipped* away. Punctuated by barks of laughter, the kind where you have to find someone, anyone, who will just HOLD STILL while you are reading bits out loud to them. (My six-year-old son: “Mama, can’t you see I am trying to play incredibly MARIO here?”) It’s that kind of book.

In fact, it’s another kind of book, a book that’s much rarer. A *real* book. What I indicate by a real book is a book that has real people in it — they don’t have to be actual, living or once-living people (although this book, being non-fiction, has that kind of real people), but they do have to be people who behave in real ways. (They can’t, for example, decide that the best way to deal with being locked in a house with a serial killer is to go wandering around in the dark, alone.) They can be people who do smart things for silly reasons and silly things for smart reasons, but they never, ever do things for the reason that, if they DON’T do them, the writer all of a sudden has no book, and has to start over from the beginning.

This book is very real, and very far from what I like to call a “book-shaped object.” You’ve all seen book-shaped objects. They’re things like celebrity “biographies” and (some, not all) puzzle books, and (often) insta-books “about” current events that had to be printed on the editor’s own DeskJet to make their bookstore in-stock date. The only reason those things are “books” is that they haven’t figured out a way to package that stuff in spray bottles or as melt-on-your-tongue strips yet. (Personally, I think incredibly Spray-On Sudoku is going to be a substantial best-seller, once they work out the kinks.) This book, despite being “about” the TV show (Jeopardy, in case you didn’t get it from the cover shot up there) isn’t one of those. It’s real all the way through. and it isn’t really “about” being on Jeopardy: it’s about finding the meaningful in the everyday, and allowing yourself to be happy.

And I loved it. I loved it in that “I’m gonna talk about this book for months” kind of way (other holders of this award include moving Violations, Municipal Bondage and Bound to Please, all available at finer bookstores near you). The combination of word-based hilarity (Bob Harris is a recovering comedian and TV screenwriter), random factoids (hey, I’m an ex-College Bowler), and deep human feeling (the entire book) is outstanding. It’s like one of those fusion flavors (like chili pepper and chocolate) that shouldn’t work, but does. If someone had told me that today, instead of sewing, I’d be reading an exceptionally moving, deeply personal, highly inspiring book on winning (and, often losing spectacularly) on Jeopardy, I would have answered “What is ‘you’re pulling my leg (try the other one, it’s got bells on)’.” and Alex Trebek would have said “Ooooh. I’m sorry, Erin. The right answer is “What is ‘lead me to it!'””

So, to sum up: this is a book about family, winning, losing, acceptance, happiness, singing, Cleveland, small easily-frightened mammals, Camaros, autoimmune diseases, and Jabberwocky, and how all those things fit together, and how unsurprising it is that they all fit together. and it is absolutely worth not sewing for.

[And to drive home the “everything’s connected” theme today, there’s a Jane in this book. and that Jane is this Jane, who I once was able to sweet-talk into writing an introduction to this book and who linked here the other day, to my extreme gratification and surprise. and Jane, I have to say, is one of the top-ten funnest people alive, and quite possibly one of the funnest of all time. If (for some reason) you had to have all your skin slowly buffed off with industrial-grade low-grit sandpaper, but you were talking with Jane at the time, you would still regard it as one of the best days of your life. which makes it no big surprise that someone Jane likes would write a book as good as this.]

The dress A Day review of books (nb: very little actual dress content)

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