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Published Feb 2020
256 pages
Genre: Essays
Publication Information
From the writer of Slate's "Dear Prudence" column and "literally the funniest person on the internet" (Rachel Fershleiser, coeditor of the New York Times bestseller Not Quite What I Was Planning) comes a witty and clever collection of essays and cultural observations spanning pop culture - from the endearingly popular to the staggeringly obscure.
Sometimes you just have to yell. New York Times bestselling author of Texts from Jane Eyre Daniel Mallory Ortberg has mastered the art of "poetic yelling," a genre surely familiar to fans of his cult-favorite website The Toast.
In this irreverent essay collection, Ortberg expands on this concept with in-depth and hilarious studies of all things pop culture, from the high to low brow. From a thoughtful analysis on the beauty of William Shatner to a sinister reimagining of HGTV's House Hunters, Something That May Shock and Discredit You is a laugh-out-loud funny and whip-smart collection for those who don't take anything—including themselves—much too seriously.
"Throughout, Ortberg's writing is vulnerable but confident, specific but never narrow, literal and lyrical. The author is refreshingly unafraid of his own uncertainty, but he's always definitive where it counts....You'll laugh, you'll cry, often both at once. Everyone should read this extraordinary book." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Slate advice columnist Ortberg brings the full force of his wit and literary depth to this genre-bending essay collection...[A]n often hilarious, sometimes discomfiting, but invariably honest account of one man's becoming." - Publishers Weekly
"Like all of his work, Something That May Shock and Discredit You is a stand-alone pillar in Ortberg's remarkable canon, one in which the lines typically drawn around topic and genre are obliterated, resulting in a wide-open field of possibility." - Electric Literature
"Ortberg gracefully slips between the memoirist's lucid personal narrative and the essayist's more topical ruminations...Discarding any distinction between high and low cultures, Ortberg's Something That May Shock and Discredit You most certainly astonishes and amazes—it may even be transformative." - Shelf Awareness
"This book is clever and strange and lovely and sad and hysterical and poignant. These are the qualities that make up most of my favorite people and all of my favorite books. You really need to read this now." - Jenny Lawson, New York Times bestselling author of Let's Pretend This Never Happened and Furiously Happy
This information about Something That May Shock and Discredit You was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Daniel Mallory Ortberg is the "Dear Prudence" advice columnist at Slate, the cofounder of The Toast, and the New York Times bestselling author of Texts From Jane Eyre and The Merry Spinster.
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