The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club: True Tales from a Magnificent and Clumsy Life

I saw the cover, and I laughed. I read an excerpt online, and I laughed. I *had* to have this book. Once I got it, I kept it on my desk at work so I could read it during lunch. Eventually I had to take it home because my constant chuckling disturbed my coworker.

Laurie Notaro has a gift, and bless her heart for sharing it with us. She takes the most hideously embarrassing moments of her life and the lives of her friends and family, and publishes them for our amusement. This girl will expose any flaw for a laugh. She's the kind of hard-drinking life-of-the-party gal you would love to have as a friend, except you know you'd only wind up as fodder for her next collection of stories.

Some of my favorite moments were in the restaurant where she thinks she sees her eighth grade math teacher-the one who made her add fractions in front of the Slow Class until she cried-and offers to figure their tip to prove that she can. And when she goes to the gym and is shocked to see women roaming around the locker room with their "lentils" exposed, she asks, "Who has that much self-esteem that they could bare it all and not burst into tears?"

I hear she's finishing her next book, Autobiography of a Fat Bride, and I plan to snap it right up.

It should be clear that Idiot Girls Action-Adventure Club is not a novel, and while some of the stories are related, many are not. It's the kind of book you can pick up any time, turn to any page and be assured of disturbing your co-worker.

This book has appealed to everyone in their 20's and 30's I've given it to. It is laugh out loud funny, and one of the early lines that grabbed me was on p.3, "Somewhere in between being drunk yesterday and sober today, my keys disappeared." Notaro has hilarious adventures on the dating scene, the bar scene (she warns against the pitfalls of DWI's, dialing while intoxicated), dealing with her mother, finding yourself post-college, and much more. Each essay is short and can stand alone. I never wanted this book to end!

A terrific companion to this book is Notaro's 2004 book I Love Everybody (And Other Atrocious Lies). In that, Notaro writes about the process of getting Idiot Girls' published and how her newspaper career was completely unraveling during the writing of Idiot Girls. There's lots more from Notaro, and another author that Notaro fans might enjoy is Sandra Tsing Loh. Los Angelinos will especially appreciate her take on their city.

You know how you're reading something really funny in a public place (like the El train commuting home after work), and you don't want to laugh out loud, so you just sit there and shake with tears running down your face? That is what Laurie Notaro's "The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club" did to me.

I nearly wet myself laughing at this book.

Notaro discards all things ladylike and P.C to talk about life as it really is with family, dating, drinking and using public restrooms make her a unique and refreshing read. She is unashamed to talk about the vices she embraces, and she has a knack for finding the hilarity in universal stories such as driving a grandparent to the store or sixth grade health class.

I often found myself pausing while reading just to catch my breath.

I had no idea what this book was about when I bought it, but a friend recommended it and said it was pretty funny. But as soon as I started to read it, I started to think that Laurie Notaro and I were living the same life. I love her caustic sense of humor and her take on the everyday things in life that she somehow turns into hilarious little sitcoms in her short essays. Her exploits with her friends, her mom and even her Nana prove to be a nice break from the Bridget Jones era we're in, and she hands out a dose of reality--even as in one of her stories she's trapped in a bathroom stall by a transvestite, thinks her doctor has exploded her uterus during a pap smear in another one and is mistaken for a special needs person when she tries to talk with a mouth full of food in yet another. If she's an idiot girl, then I want to be member of the club, too. A great book, an easy fun read. I noticed a couple of typos, but other than that, I really enjoyed it.

Did you ever love a book so much that as soon as you finished it
you started reading it over again? This is one of those books!
Laurie Notaro's self-deprecating humor and unique slant on life are a wonderful way to spend a few reading hours. Reading about Ms. Notaro making fun of not just herself but others including friends, neighbors, family and the occasional fellow bar patron made me laugh so hard I shook the bed and scared the cat. If you are an internet chat user of much duration you are familiar with the expression ROFLMAOSTC which is short for rolling on floor, laughing my a-- off, scaring the cat and the chapter on Laurie's mom's attempts to learn how to use the internet will in particular strike home. I found her website which has more articles but I can't wait for her next book. It won't come soon enough.