Reviews

Good Things Happen to People You Hate: Essays by Rebecca Fishbein

zarallee's review

2.0

I expected to like this quite a lot given how quickly I judged the book by its title and decided that the author had to be excellent. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the essays just don't really come together? I have enjoyed many similar essay collections in this niche genre of slightly quippy, personal essays by young female writers who have lived in New York, but again and again, as I got to the end of each essay/chapter, I found myself disappointed that the story had not really...had a point or shown some kind of direction within the author's life. There are some good lines and some good insights, but there is no sense of direction, purpose, centrality? I skipped around and started skimming through chapters. Despite this, I commend the author for an excellent title that sold me on the book sight unseen!

leftgrrl's review

4.0

I found so much of this book extremely relatable…
The good, the bad, and the awkward, I get it.
She is hilarious, love her!

exlibris00's review against another edition

funny reflective medium-paced

3.75

samlaffey's review

adventurous funny reflective fast-paced

4.25

sarah_toast's review

3.0

3.5 stars

sarahbarrett13's review

1.0

Wow. I mean I guess one good thing about this book is that it provides a pretty good roadmap of the type of person you should NOT aspire to be? It’s honestly shocking someone so selfish and self-absorbed exists, but here we are...

moll_reed's review

funny lighthearted slow-paced

3.0

rwitkin2's review

5.0

Rebecca is so funny and insightful and this book touches on everything that living in a big city in your twenties is, from anxiety fueled social interactions to bedbugs.

stephanoelle's review

funny lighthearted reflective medium-paced

3.5

msschaake's review

5.0

“In its early stages, as depression starts to seep in, everything is tinged with gray.You are still you, and your friends are still your friends, and your life is still your life, but it feels muddy and overcast, like you’ve relocated to the upside down or Seattle.

A few years ago, my folks burn tapes of me and my sister to DVD, and the front rivers it, unless they were taken when I was in middle school, and then I have to text my therapist.

Capitalism and taught me that I would feel better if I had a new T-shirt, and sometimes it did make me feel better. Other times I had just one more T-shirt. But there was a security and having the things. I like that they were safe with me in my apartment. I liked the things that belong to me slept near me in a drawer. We insulated each other from the outside world, heightening the difference all domesticated creatures assert —that they’re in fact is a difference between in here and out there.

In a world in which appearance is still paramount for the once deemed fair sex, being ugly is a curse, a sure fire sign that you’re an undesirable Destin for a lonely future in a silent death at the paws of your many unkempt felines.

Surely by now a well-adjusted individual would seek out a nice Tinder stranger to marry, instead of digging her claws into yet another person who is located just a few feet away from her at all times. But as I’ve already pointed out, I am not smart, and I am nowhere near well-adjusted. Having laid waste to my workplace like the ambulatory HR violation that I am, I set my stupid sites on the next closest possible location: my apartment.

I know I’m an addict. I’m not literally addicted to boots. I’m a hard and functional worker. I’m not stashing airplane bottles of Jack Daniels in my bedroom. I can go weeks without drinking and not feel any withdrawal effects safe for clarity. But I’m addicted to how I feel when I drink like I’m not me or a better me, or at least a more alive than the sober me who’s too afraid to ask the world for what she wants. When I’m drunk, I take it, even if I take it too far.

What they don’t tell you when you’re young and afraid of failing is that it’s very freeing to fail. It is even more freeing when you fail in full but then when you fail in part. It’s easier to scrap something entirely then to fix something that’s broken, which is why couples break up after their first fight and no one ever eats half a burger. If you can’t be the best, you might as will be the worst. The resignation is liberating.

I know what it says about me that I didn’t experience this kind of existential panic until Trump’s election, but for the first time in my very silly charmed life, I had to come to terms with the fact that things weren’t guaranteed to be OK. It was unfathomable to me at the time but the hot president who tried to give us healthcare and been swapped out for a racist orange blob with the Twitter addiction.”