Staff Pick
This dazzling and appropriately titled essay collection from Jenny Slate is everything you might expect from the whip-smart actress/comedian/voice of an anthropomorphic seashell, and probably also a few things you might not. No two vignettes are alike — some are fleeting, some panoramic; there’s effervescence and melancholy and bravery and make-believe — but all showcase Slate’s unique and frankly beautiful way of interpreting the world around her. I was charmed, inspired, and more than once moved to tears by this book, and will be foisting it upon unsuspecting loved ones for years to come. Recommended By Tove H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
One of Vanity Fair's Great Quarantine Reads: Step into Jenny Slate's wild imagination in this "magical" (Mindy Kaling), "delicious" (Amy Sedaris), and "poignant" (John Mulaney) New York Times bestseller about love, heartbreak, and being alive — "this book is something new and wonderful" (George Saunders).
You may "know" Jenny Slate from her new Netflix special,
Stage Fright, or as the creator of Marcel the Shell, or as the star of
Obvious Child. But you don't really
know Jenny Slate until you get bonked on the head by her absolutely singular writing style. To see the world through Jenny's eyes is to see it as though for the first time, shimmering with strangeness and possibility.
As she will remind you, we live on an ancient ball that rotates around a bigger ball made up of lights and gasses that are science gasses, not farts (don't be immature). Heartbreak, confusion, and misogyny stalk this blue-green sphere, yes, but it is also a place of wild delight and unconstrained vitality, a place where we can start living as soon as we are born, and we can be born at any time. In her dazzling, impossible-to-categorize debut, Jenny channels the pain and beauty of life in writing so fresh, so new, and so burstingly alive, we catch her vision like a fever and bring it back out into the bright day with us, and everything has changed.
Review
"Little Weirds isn't the typical comedian's memoir, but it's the rare work of art that's somehow both delightfully bizarre and totally universal." Bust Magazine
Review
"Little Weirds is full of soft and lovely moments...Slate beautifully evokes the pleasures of female friendship." NPR.ORG
Review
"Little Weirds explores the oddities-and magic-of everyday life...Less an essay collection and more a map of her brain...Little Weirds chattily chronicles Slate's highs and lows and dips and swoops as if the actress is absorbing sunshine through an I.V." Marie Claire
Review
"Humorous, whimsical essays about things that are on Jenny Slate's mind. With a light touch, she tells us honestly what it's like to be her and how she sees the world, one little, weird piece of it at a time." Bookriot
Review
"Across pieces that vary in tone and style, a vulnerable account of losing love and wanting desperately to re-find it emerges...This unconventional collection gives true insight into Slate as both an artist and a person." Booklist (Starred Review)
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"Jenny Slate, the polymathic actress, writer and comic, presents a delightfully odd assemblage of vignettes whose magical-realist absurdity is a style all her own." Los Angeles Times
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"If you hadn't previously been aware of Slate's dexterity as a storyteller, [Little Weirds] will be your awakening...The thing about Jenny Slate is that her warmth doesn't just come from her openness. It also comes from her ability to say, with her whole chest, something others would keep hushed away.” InStyle
Review
"A poetic and dreamlike book, a testament to the power of fantasy and language to hit your feelings where facts and pictures can't…Slate's voice never loses its capacity for strangeness, for finding it in the littlest, weirdest corners.” Teen Vogue
Review
"A singularly hilarious and horny, but also poignant and tender, collection of writing that beautifully captures Slate's inimitable voice, which is one that, once you've heard it, you want to listen to forever." Nylon
Review
"Jenny's writing is wide open, tuneful, tender. She sees the world (and feels the world) like a bug might, two antennae poking out from her head like sensory wands. Reading Little Weirds made me feel tipsy." Durga Chew-Bose, author of Too Much and Not the Mood
Review
"Indescribable, but eminently readable, the actor-comedian's book consists of a carnival of observations, ideas and events that may or may not make up a memoir. Basically, Little Weirds is performance art in high-caliber prose." The Washington Post
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"She can act! She can do stand-up! And yes: Jenny Slate can write, too. Slate gets vulnerable in Little Weirds, a memoir that touches on her first marriage, her post-election anxiety, and new beginnings." Refinery29
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"Every so often, someone will decide to stray from the outline and gift us with something so unexpected that it may not tickle our funny bone but it might tickle us pink. Jenny Slate's nonfiction collection Little Weirds is one such book." AV Club
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"This book is like a stovetop goulash, delicious and varied ingredients, prepared perfectly and excellent with bread...I'm sorry, I lost track of the simile." Amy Sedaris
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"Slate invites us for a glorious swim inside her imagination as she explores romance, heartbreak and self-love in this poetry-memoir-fiction mash-up. It's a work that breaks the mold." PEOPLE
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"Reading Jenny Slate's Little Weirds is like digesting Shakespearean sonnets: It's different enough from ordinary English that it takes your brain a few, very-long sentences to adjust to its sweet, flowery prose. But once you've recalibrated, the actress/comedian's book becomes a dreamy dessert for the eyeballs that uses playful language to express deep sentiments about heartbreak, anger, wonder and friendship." USA TODAY
Review
"Luminous, emotional, lovely, and a little mysterious, this book is something you will savor like a half-remembered, gorgeous dream. You'll finish it feeling like Jenny Slate is your new best friend." Susan Orlean
About the Author
Jenny Slate is an actress, stand-up comedian, and the New York Times bestselling author of the children's book Marcel The Shell with Shoes On. She has been in many movies and TV shows and also plays many cartoon animals. Jenny is a graduate of Columbia University and has a young heart and an antique soul. She lives in a 100-year-old house in the bizarre and fun city Los Angeles, where nobody ever gets old at all.