Mimi SmartypantsResenhas

This blog turned book comes from around the same time as Julie and Julia but it neither tries to organize itself according to some overarching principle nor takes such a horrifying turn, memoir-fashion, but meanders in its own obsessive way. It's an odd memento from a time not that different from the present, with the political and economic scenes making scarcely a ripple in the hyperfocus of her attention on the mundane. She did not set out to make great art but it's comforting in its own way if you are already a reader of the blog. Otherwise, it seems unlikely that anyone would go search this book out.

I've been reading Mimi for years (since around when this book deal went through, actually) and the book does a reasonable job of capturing her wacky non-linear style. It's edited pretty heavily - each "day" is a neat little anecdote rather than her usual "here are twelve things I thought about recently" and the daily diary format is palpably fake, but I laughed pretty hard at quite a few things.

It's not bad, and it's a quick read. But, you know, it's Mimi Smartypants - her diary is still around, still updated, awesome, and free.

I love her blog. I would never read this book if I saw it on a shelf. The publishers did a real disservice to her, but on the other hand, they contacted her and said, hey can we print your blog? We will give you money. And so naturally she said yes.

I haven't got the actual book, but have read every single entry on Mimi's blog (whence these excerpts are taken). What can I say? She ranks as one of my favourite people on this planet and I haven't even met her. Two complaints: a) that horrid feet cover and b) this is tagged "chick lit"? Yeah, sure, 'cause we all know chick lit books are usually not about romance at all but full of discussions on gender roles and postmodernism and the existence of a "self", and the "logical flaws in Noam Chomsky's politics as well as in his linguistic ideas". It's a well-known fact that reading most chick lit books results in enriching your vocabulary daily, right? And, of course, I'm sure that chick lit writers habitually spew out sentences like these ones: "Infinite Jest feels very real, with the underlying premise that we MUST read, write, or talk ourselves out of the metafictional spiral; that it is actually urgent that we connect with the world, not hide from it with drink or drugs or television or literary skill; that paying attention to nothing but the movie inside one’s head will ultimately kill you. A novel about the absolute necessity of conveying our subjective consciousness to each other, that in fact IS an attempt to convey subjective consciousness to you, the reader—this feels like such a relief after decades of novels that laughingly deny the possibility." Chick lit, sure.½

Mimi wrote it on public transportation and I read it on public transportation. Mimi felt as though what she had done wasn't quite writing a book and I felt as though what I had done wasn't quite reading a book.
I'm surprised I didn't enjoy this more than I did, given how much I love reading this kind of blog. Somehow, having it in book format just wasn't the same. Or maybe it's that I would have wanted to know more about Mimi's backstory and biographical details.
There's an entry toward the end that I especially enjoyed, wherein Mimi talks about her relationship to the letters of the alphabet, and how letters with enclosed spaces, like O, are her favourites. Oh, silly, radom Mimi, what a keen observer you are!½

I really enjoyed being able to carry around a paper version of my favorite blog. It’s very light content and the story lines of course don’t always flow due to the entries being peiced together from here and there. Mimi also seems to be sick for much of the book. Still I loved it and I’m glad she agreed to put it out.