John Hodgman

A memoir of the author's cursed travels through the woods of Massachusetts and coastal Maine, describing his midlife transformation from an idealistic youth to an eccentric family man.

True Stories from Painful Beaches

Vacationland

Patrick Book

This was truly and immensely charming! As self-aware as it is self-deprecating and very funny.

“I love everything about this hilarious book except the font size.” —Jon Stewart Although his career as a bestselling author and on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart was founded on fake news and invented facts, in 2016 that routine didn’t seem as funny to John Hodgman anymore. Everyone is doing it now. Disarmed of falsehood, he was left only with the awful truth: John Hodgman is an older white male monster with bad facial hair, wandering like a privileged Sasquatch through three wildernesses: the hills of Western Massachusetts where he spent much of his youth; the painful beaches of Maine that want to kill him (and some day will); and the metaphoric haunted forest of middle age that connects them. Vacationland collects these real life wanderings, and through them you learn of the horror of freshwater clams, the evolutionary purpose of the mustache, and which animals to keep as pets and which to kill with traps and poison. There is also some advice on how to react when the people of coastal Maine try to sacrifice you to their strange god. Though wildly, Hodgmaniacally funny as usual, it is also a poignant and sincere account of one human facing his forties, those years when men in particular must stop pretending to be the children of bright potential they were and settle into the failing bodies of the wiser, weird dads that they are.

Jeff James

I really love Hodgman’s work. He’s got a great comedic sensibility, and he’s the perfect narrator for his own stories. This is his first book without made-up facts, focusing instead on short memoirs of his life on vacation and how things changed for him after his sudden fame. These aren’t particularly eventful stories, and they probably won’t blow your mind with their unique insights, but they’re well-told and entertaining, and I loved every minute of the audio version. I just hope he decides to write a novel some day, if only because I love him best when he takes flights of fancy.

Didi Chanoch

After three books of fake world knowledge, John Hodgman goes the complete other way, with a book of true, personal essays. About growth and loss and strangeness and family and neighbors and fame and privilege. 

Hodgman is extremely aware of his own fortune and pokes fun at his own relatability, or lack thereof, as a cis het white man who went to Yale and made a bunch of money playing a PC in a series of ads.

But fortunately, he makes his story relatable, because he is funny and wise. The same qualities that make him the world's finest fake internet judge on his podcast, Judge John Hodgman make him a wonderful storyteller. 

This book reminded me of the works of my favorite non-fiction author and his fellow This American Life alumn, Sarah Vowell. Vowell's books about history are always really books about the here and now, and about herself. Hodgman, single child that he is, dispenses with the history part. But the wit and wisdom remain.

Samuel Linde

I count Hodgman as one of the finest humorists we've got. I'm constantly revisiting his trilogy of almanacs of complete (fake) world knowledge whenever I want to laugh at the absurd humor his quirky brain has produced.

Vacationland is different. It's funny, thoughtful and touching all at the same time, with a huge dose of self deprecating humor.

I loved it.

Vacationland True Stories from Painful Beaches

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