Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

Rating:
Summary: ordinary can be extraordinary
Review: Amy (I feel like perhaps we are on a first name basis after examining her Encyclopedia entries) has managed to have an ordinary life, just like mine, only hers is so much funnier, very well remembered, written down in an alphabetic format, and involves friends who have friends who win the Nobel Prize. This book will make you smile, think, laugh, wonder, be glad that you never admited to your entire class that you sometimes pee in the bathtub , and be thankful for your own little moments of Wabi-Sabi. Read it today (or tomorrow if you are really busy with the laundry, I don't want to be overly pushy).

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't think of a clever title, just read this great book!
Review: Amy Krouse Rosenthal has written a great book about Amy Krouse Rosenthal, and all the trappings that come with her as a subject (and they are profound, funny, random, simple, complex and more all at once). At a time when seemingly everyone wants to be a reality Television star it's more than a little comforting to stop and look for a perspective on our own lives. We might not be on T.V. eating worms and hanging from planes, but we should be "thank you Amy" just as important as those who are. Our lives are touched by those around us, and in turn we impart something to those that we meet. Amy doesn't answer any great questions about the meaning of life but then she shouldn't have to. She offers us an honest look her life so we in turn can look at our own, in maybe a new and accepting way. I don't know how you could come away without hoping that you could spend time with this new friend again.

Rating:
Summary: The One Book to Read and Savor Right Now
Review: I love to peruse bookstores, online and off, and read on average a book a day. On my nightstand are many truly wonderful partly-read tomes, each crying out in its own distinctive voice for my limited attention, including:

Crossing California
The Lie That Tells A Truth
Frank O'Connor: Collected Stories
Coming to Our Senses
Moneyball
House of Sand and Fog
and yes, thanks to this book's recommendation,
On Grief and Reason: Essays

And at the top of this heap is Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life (EOAOL.) I find myself returning to her book again and again. The insights are refreshingly warped while also being strangely familiar. Her honesty is at once delisciously audacious and disarming. You don't have to flip through pages looking for the "good stuff" - there's good stuff on every page. Throughout the book her word choice is as telling as a storyteller's and as precise as a favorite comedian's. As a designed object - it is a delight to hold this book in your hand, to appreciate the quirky illustrations, to dip in almost anywhere into this anti-memoir memoir. As an encyclopedia, what more really is there to know? What a pleasure to read such a well written and well-made book.

How will our age be best represented? How will others remember this time in our history? Here's my vote: Forget time capsules. Just put a copy of EOAOL on the next Sputnik or better yet get yourself three copies: one to read, one to give away to a friend or stranger, and one to bury in your backyard for future generations to discover and marvel at. It is that good, that insightful, that wise beyond the author's apparent years. This is a book to come home to, to pick up anywhere, but most of all a book to cherish. It is a book you will have wished you had written and will be grateful to have read and shared and even to have buried in your backyard.






Rating:
Summary: Only A Teeny Tiny Bit Clever
Review: I wouldn't really consider this a book...it's a collection of random thoughts and observations, the better ones realistic and relate-able, the majority just filler to complete a BOOK. Ultimately, it's incredibly self-indulgent. If you have no attention span whatsoever, and like to read "books" that you'll forget the second you're done with them, then this book is for you.

Rating:
Summary: Give This Book To Everyone You Know
Review: My first thought on reading this book was "This is genius." My second thought was "Damn, wish I'd written it first." Perhaps that's because Amy Krouse Rosenthal is a combination of everything we want to be - witty, wise and warm - along with everything we are - funny, fallible and fumbling. The alternate laughter and wincing at self recognition (who DOES remember which side the gas tank is on?) kept me going throughout this cleverly conceived encyclopedic memoir. Many props to this everywoman for making a seemingly random collection of thoughts so profound.

Rating:
Summary: Genius. Read it and pass it around.
Review: Remember when you read Bridget Jones' Diary? Do you remember how fantastic her voice was? If you were anything like I was, you went around thinking things were v. this and v. that for weeks and weeks because you read that book and you just KNEW Bridget Jones and you knew her voice and you loved her. Well, this book is like that to me. In the weeks since I've read it, I find myself thinking about how the ordinary things you do everyday can define and inspire you. Having a cup of coffee or picking up your dry cleaning can be more than just the transactions that occur -- you can learn about trust and kindness and be inspired (or depressed) about the whole world from them. We all have these thoughts as we move through our days but Rosenthal was clever enough to get them down on paper.

This book is funny and it's poignant and the minute you finish reading it, you're going to think of two or three people that you immediately have to share it with. You should do that.



Rating:
Summary: Creativity at its Best
Review: So often societal "rules" tend to dilute individual creativity, even in creative writing. Amy Krouse Rosenthal broke the rules and avoided the dilution to produce a brilliant life encyclopedia. One entry, that still makes me giggle, is about her brother wearing his towel up around his chest thinking it was necessary having only sisters to watch! I am sure very soon English teachers will be assigning young writers to write their own encyclopedia. Very enjoyable read and the little tidbits of her life are smellable!

Rating:
Summary: Not of interest to everyone
Review: Some people will find this book howlingly funny- and perhaps there is a kinship amongst those who do. However, there are some of us who find it less than funny, and annoying in a sort of cutesy sort of way. Perhaps this website has more of an interest in this book than other books. Some have noticed that for some reason, every negative review of this book has disappeared from this website after about one day. That's not very ordinary.

Rating:
Summary: ordinary is the new extraordinary
Review: Somehow I feel as though Amy Krouse Rosenthal crawled inside my brain to capture the randomness, poignance, beauty,and humor of the everyday things that connect us and define our lives. With brief often hilarious, sometimes tender, and always completely honest entries, Amy lets us into her heart and soul and offers an eccentric yet completely identifiable point of view. You'll feel like you've known her your whole life...or that she's been secretly spying on you for all of it. You'll say "Yes, I do that" or "I feel exactly like that" on practically every page of this laugh-out-loud completely original and thoroughly lovable book. And if anyone deserves the underused phrase "Ta Da!" (see p.170) it's Amy for putting her life on paper in a form and voice that makes us look at our own existence and find that we are all anything but ordinary.

Rating:
Summary: Not Everyone's Life Should Be Examined
Review: This book is infuriating. It promised so much and delivered so little.

The author reveals more about her artistic laziness than she might have hoped when she admits that when, as an adolescent, she was criticized by her boss at a gift shop for creating sloppy work: "She agrees, but doesn't like the executing part of it, just the idea part of it."

...

By limiting her work to short one to two paragraph entries, which, as the author admits, bear no relationship to one another, Ms. Rosenthal avoids the need to explore any of the truly human struggles that her readers might identify with. Just when it seems that she has stumbled on to something meaningful, she stops short of exploration and goes on to tell us that she is "not tempted by pastries." Who cares Amy? Not us.

Perhaps there is a reason that most compelling books are about people who have "survived against all oods," who have "lived to tell," and who have "witnessed the extraordinary."

...

Not everyone will think it's cute that Ms. Rosenthal blames her Maid for stealing anything she can't find in her house. Not everyone has a maid.