Laurie Perry

A ravelry friend recommended this and Perry's follow-up book to me ages ago, and I immediately bought them. They had been sitting on my shelf since and I finally pulled down the first one. Because I'm also doing the 2016 PopSugar reading challenge and one of the items was a book with a protagonist with your occupation. I have a really oddball specialized job with basically a zero percent chance of it being shared by a main character of any book, so I went for the next best thing: a knitting crazy cat lady.

This is Laurie Perry, aka Crazy Aunt Purl, telling her story of recovering from her husband leaving her. She is pretty frank about spiraling into a depressive funk fueled by alcohol, and eventually clawing her way out via the power of good friends and discovering knitting as a hobby.

Overall, this was an okay book. I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it to anybody. It seemed more cathartic than anything for Perry to write. I'm not sure if I'll read the second book or not.… (mehr)

I love Crazy Aunt Purl, y'all. Love. Her. And I want to love her books. But...while I thought this book captured more of the magic that is her blog than did the first, it still wasn't all the way there. Like eating a low-calorie microwave meal that claims to be "Top Chef Restaurant Ready" but at the end of the day, it's still frozen chemicals in a cardboard box.

Not that this book is a microwave meal - it's very entertaining, witty, and fun - and if you're not a regular reader of the blog, it qualifies as a gourmet meal indeed. But some of Laurie's vibrant voice is missing from the book for me. Luckily, she still writes the blog so I'll see y'all over there.… (mehr)