Little Weirds

An Amazon Best Book of November 2019: Author and comedian Jenny Slate is a little weird (in a very good way). Her aptly named collection of personal essays, Little Weirds, gives readers a glimpse into her strangely funny and tender, magically delicious mind. Divorced and broken-hearted, Slate returns to her childhood home in Massachusetts—an old house haunted by the ghost of a forlorn sea captain—and mines her rich inner world for stories of birth and death, crafts outrageous dating profiles from a Color-Spirit who loves spicy food and hates rock climbing, and sends formal cease and desist letters to her own boring dreams. Slate’s writing style is deeply personal, yet her prose is crisp to the taste in her retelling of the simple joy of a well-made sardine sandwich, and there’s a heft to her language, not unlike the weight of the Meyer lemons she carries in from the backyard. In one particularly poignant story, a psychic tells her to grow up, and Slate allows herself to finally let go and listen to her soft and bruised heart, paving the way for her to become the wild, free creature she knows herself to be—the one who’s having her bona fide moment in the spotlight now. —Marlene Kelly