Name: Vojtech's review of Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg
Item: Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory
Rating: 5
Author: Vojtech

Raphael Bob-Waksberg

Written with all the scathing dark humor that is a hallmark of BoJack Horseman, Raphael Bob-Waksberg's stories will make you laugh, weep, and shiver in uncomfortably delicious recognition. In "A Most Blessed and Auspicious Occasion," a young couple engaged to be married is forced to deal with interfering relatives dictating the appropriate number of ritual goat sacrifices for their wedding. "Missed Connection-m4w" is the tragicomic tale of a pair of lonely commuters eternally failing to make that longed-for contact. And in "More of the You That You Already Are," a struggling employee at a theme park of dead presidents finds that love can't be genetically modified. Equally at home with the surreal and the painfully relatable (and both at once), Bob-Waksberg delivers a killer combination of humor, romance, whimsy, cultural commentary, and crushing emotional vulnerability.

Stories

Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory

Sasha Maiboroda

And I think about how loving someone is kind of like being president, in that it doesn't change you, not really. But it brings out more of the you that you already are.

Look into his eyes and tell me you don’t see what I see. 

I look into his eyes and I see love. I see hate and anger. I see revolution and honor and dishonor all at once.  

And I go, Okay, yeah, he seems like a cool guy. 

She thought about how sad it was that one day Debbie would fall in love with someone who would at first appreciate all that was special about her, but eventually learn how to take her for granted. 

And when the Sadness catches up, tracks you down — when you return home one day, arms full of groceries, to find the Sadness sit- ting at the kitchen table, casually reading a paper as ifit never let eating a muffin as if this were all perfectly natural — when the Sad- ness looks up at you and says, "What did you think, buddy? What did you think was going to happen?"when the Sadness smirks at you and says with a wry insistence that unravels you in the instant. “This is the real love story here, buddy, you and me” — when the Sadness reiterates that, sure, certain smaller sadnesses dull. but this Sadness, the Sadness, has seen you through it all; this Sad- neSs, the Sadness, has never strayed from your side, not really, and why would you want it to now, this epitome of stability in an inconsistent world? when that happens, you can put your groceries down, and walk back out the door and close the door behind you. 

And I thought about how, actually, if you wanted to, you could say the same thing about life. That life is terrifying and overwhelming and it can happen at any moment. And when you're confronted with life you can either be cowardly or you can be brave, but either way you're going to live. So you might as well be brave.

sam kruczek

Lucinda looked back at the box, then back at Debbie. She thought about how pure Debbie was, how young and unsullied. She thought about how sad it was that one day Debbie would fall in love with someone who would at first appreciate all that was special about her, but eventually learn how to take her for granted. She thought about how this person didn't deserve Debbie, this person who didn't know how rare it was to be loved by a person so tender.

Gavin just always heard accusations in everything, which would've been a good thing for him to discuss with his therapist, if he didn't also consider it an accusation of some sort every time Lucinda suggested he see a therapist.

She had trouble focusing on the movie, though, because she kept thinking about how good it was that she couldn't look at her phone during the movie, and how by the time the movie was over she would probably have a few new text messages to look at, from Gavin or anybody else who wanted to text her, but then when she turned her phone back on after the movie, she had gotten no new text messages.

you look around at your fellow audience members in this half- empty theater and you wonder if the only reason any play is ever successful at all is just on account of friends and family "being supportive."

Move across the country and hope the Sadness won't find you, won't follow you like a stray dog from coast to coast. Hope the Sadness isn’t just a fog on a leash, shadowing you always. Hope the Sadness can't be as fleer as you are, hope the Sadness is more rooted. Per haps the Sadness has friends, a family, and can't just pick up and go. Look at all this stuff the Sadness has here in San Jose or Chapel Hill or wherever you're currently leaving. How's the Sadness going to survive without all this stuff? Hope this isn't one of those any-place- hang-my-hat-is-home-type situations where the Sadness hangs its hat on you. Hope that you are not the Sadness's home, anywhere you go, no matter how far, no matter how quickly- the Sadness lives in you. Hope to God it's not that.

 Sitting in the bath, listening to "California," you thought about your temporary cells and you thought about how one day you would change; you would wake up one morning and all of a sudden everything would be different and all the things that used to make you cry would make you roll your eyes and all the things that used to make you roll your eyes would make you cry. But, of course, that would all be many many years from now. 

. And it kills me that this is all the normal, typical people-in-love stuff, because I want to believe our love is special - that it's bigger and more interesting than any love that anyone else has had before-but the heartbreaking truth is my love for you is so consistent and predictable and boring."

We do know how she spend her last moments; the autopsy confirmed it: she flew straight up into the night sky, as far as she could go, as far away from everything as she could get, and then when the air got too thin to breathe she passed out and gravity dragged her tumbling back down to Earth. 

The way your mother rolls her eyes at you, your sudden decision to stop eating red meat, the immediate unexplainable sadness you felt when you saw your father's shirt draped over the back of a chair. You can write it all down, you can put it in your book of facts, but the truth is no one can ever really understand the tangle of experiences and passions that makes you who you are. It's a secret collection, a private language, a pebble in your pocket that you play with when you're anxious, hard as geometry, smooth as soap.

But here I was, sitting in my childhood bedroom with a guitar. The Up-and-Comers were over and done with and it was just Lizzy and me and it was the afternoon and it was summer in Tulsa and Lizzy was lying on my bed, looking as calm and beautiful as I had ever seen her, and she was asking me to play her something I had written.

And I thought about how, actually, if you wanted to, you could say the same thing about life. That 

is terrifying and overwhelming and it can happen at any moment. And when you're confronted with life you can either be cowardly or you can be brave, but either way you're going to live.

Caitlin

For some reason I had this idea that I was really special and that I was put here to do something really great and important, but the longer I kept living the more it just seemed like nope, I'm just kind of a normal person just like everybody else.

And you thought about how even though this scenario was made up, there was something so truthful about it because FACT: The things that are the most important aren't shared; they are important only to us.

I’ll be sitting on a train. I’ll be lying awake in bed. I'll be watching a movie; I’ll be laughing. And then, all of a sudden, I'l be struck by the paralyzing truth: It's not what we do that makes us who we are. It's what we don't do that defines us. 

“If the two of us are ever going to move forward, at some point, you're going to have to stop looking backward."

"I don't think you really love me; I think you're just terrified of being alone," and you, gesticulating wildly with the spatula, spat back without thinking, "I am alone; you have no idea how alone I am," as if that were some kind of comeback. 

𝓬𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓮

He had this really amazing party trick where sometimes he could go a full hour without even once being suddenly reminded of the paralyzing truth that his life was finite and unrepeatable.

Maybe you are right to be cautious. You have been lied to before, after all. Your heart is weathered and scarred, mishandled by many, eroded by time. You're no dummy, and yet repeatedly, you stumble over the cracks of your cobblestone heart, you let your naked foolish hopes get the better of you. Perhaps every can of cashews has a fake snake lurking, but you keep opening them, stupidly, because in your heart of hearts you still believe in cashews. And every time you discover the cruel fiction of the cashew can, you swear to yourself you'll trust a little less next time, you'll be a little less open, a little more hard. It's not worth it, you say. It just isn't worth it. You're smarter than all that. From now on, you're going to be smarter. Well, I'm here to tell you that this time will be different, even though I have absolutely no evidence to support that claim. Open this can and everything will be okay. The salted circus cashews are waiting. They are so savory and delicious. You will be so glad you put your faith in me. This time is different; I promise you it's different. Why would I lie to you? Why would I want to hurt you? This time there is no snake waiting. This time things are going to be wonderful.

Elizabeth Denny

3. "You're not like other girls," he said to every girl.

Vojtech

Loved it with all my tiered bittersweet heart (Even acknowledgments! Have someone ever loved book’s acknowledgments? Is it legal?)

So so good. a book similar to everything i know about love but kurt vonnegut esque. love love and now i feel like i need to watch bojack horseman 

In my mind I read this in the voice of BoJack Horseman. Weird, witty, and fun collection of short stories. 

If I ranked the books I have read this year, this would be an easy top 2 (sorry, alone with you in the ether has my heart)

Cat Tang

Read this after reading my ex’s review. 

Favorites:
- The Average of All Possible Things - Cold capture of a breakup's details, wrapped in internal monologue
- short stories - I read this in a Barnes and Noble a year ago and the lines never really left my brain
- We Men of Science - Curious story on what we’re missing and what we want

Next tier:
- We will be close on Friday 18 July - Reminds me of the short passages you’d read for SAT prep. Pretty and sad.
- You Want to Know What Plays Are Like? - I liked this almost exclusively because some of my friends are theater majors
- Missed Connection - Made me smile
- A Most Blessed and Auspicious Occasion - Made me laugh

Read this after reading the reviews of: two friends who broke up and my boyfriend who joined the plot.

This collection is entertaining and upbeat. My favs and reasons:

- A Most Blessed and Auspicious Occasion: expectations and nosy questions that are relatable even at a scale smaller than marriage. you went on your first date? how was xyz? oh y wasn't sufficient? you'd better abc. this story made me laugh the most.

- Missed Connection—m4w: holy shit this is the emblem story of the collection.

- The Serial Monogamist's Guide to Important NYC Landmarks: nyc is my dream city so naturally this had to make it to my favs. completely applicable anywhere — seeing ghosts from classroom to bedroom and from tokyo to la. nostalgia at its most brutal

- We Men of Science: wonderfully nerdy but infinitely deep. makes me fear that unmet needs have to be suppressed because of circumstance

- Lunch with the Person Who Dumped You: unexamined truth

- Rufus: love any story with uncommon perspectives. anyone who loved Rufus should read Room.

- We will be close on Friday 18 July: ah, the could've beens

- Salted Circus Cashews, Swear to God: trust dwindles after hurt, sad story masked with exaggeration and humor

- short stories: oddly detailed cliches that are a package of truth when put together

- Lies We Told Each Other: some are out of care ("I love them (re: earrings)")?

- Rules for Taboo: interesting way of unfolding a plot

- Up-and-Comers: this story scared me in how much our minds can destroy ourselves

- Move Across the Country: spelled out my life — cycle of unfamiliarity, routine, happiness, change, sadness

- You Want to Know What Plays are Like?: not familiar with play culture

- the poem: author's style flexibility is insane

- The Average of All Possible Things: not really relatable

- More of the You that You Already Are: haha interesting park concept and scifi hypothetical (combining genes and 4D printing)

Xin Ma

Read this after reading the reviews of: two friends who broke up and my boyfriend who joined the plot.

This collection is entertaining and upbeat. My favs and reasons:

- A Most Blessed and Auspicious Occasion: expectations and nosy questions that are relatable even at a scale smaller than marriage. you went on your first date? how was xyz? oh y wasn't sufficient? you'd better abc. this story made me laugh the most.
- Missed Connection—m4w: holy shit this is the emblem story of the collection.
- The Serial Monogamist's Guide to Important NYC Landmarks: nyc is my dream city so naturally this had to make it to my favs. completely applicable anywhere — seeing ghosts from classroom to bedroom and from tokyo to la. nostalgia at its most brutal
- We Men of Science: wonderfully nerdy but infinitely deep. makes me fear that unmet needs have to be suppressed because of circumstance
- Lunch with the Person Who Dumped You: unexamined truth
- Rufus: love any story with uncommon perspectives. anyone who loved Rufus should read Room.
interesting wya of putting decorum
- We will be close on Friday 18 July: ah, the could've beens

Other comments:

- Salted Circus Cashews, Swear to God: trust dwindles after hurt, sad story masked with exaggeration and humor
- short stories: oddly detailed cliches that are a package of truth when put together
- Lies We Told Each Other: some are out of care ("I love them (re: earrings)")?
- These are Facts: chaos
- Rules for Taboo: interesting way of unfolding a plot
- Up-and-Comers: this story scared me in how much our minds can destroy ourselves
- Move Across the Country: spelled out my life — cycle of unfamiliarity, routine, happiness, change, sadness
- You Want to Know What Plays are Like?: not familiar with play culture
- the poem: author's style flexibility is insane
- The Average of All Possible Things: not really relatable
- More of the You that You Already Are: haha interesting park concept and scifi hypothetical (combining genes and 4D printing)




Faith Ho 

it takes a certain brain to create bojack horseman and this is almostly certainly that brain. it's an eclectic, funny collection of stories that belies deeper ideas of humans and relationships and love — though probably most relatable to a very specific demographic, my guess being twenty-something millennial americans. 

there's a good mix of short stories and experimental shorts, with a very distinct writing style and voice that runs through. he both takes the “mundane” and writes something out of it (a breakup, a relationship from the perspective of a dog) as well as writes the most exaggerated fantastical stories that ultimately mask the simple human complexities, fundamental relationship struggles (a superhero team, president town). most of the collection was me wondering - who thinks of that?? creative writing indeed, to say the least. 

my favourite stories:
- a most blessed and auspicious occasion: so so so funny. pokes fun at the ostentatiousness of weddings (but think sacrificing goats, and a shrieking choir) 
- missed connection - m4w: two people sit on a train and never meet but never get off. stretching the norm to the extreme and subverting that hyperbole
- the serial monogamist’s guide to important new york landmarks: written in second person, short continuations of protagonist's relationship with various guys. 
- we men of science: man goes into parallel, opposite world. 
- up-and-comers: superheroes but also they must be drunk to have powers 
moving across the country: Sadness follows. short but poignant.
- the average of all possible things: “a person as unexceptional as lucinda doesn't live a life as much as a life just floods in around her, filling up any empty space a life should be occupying.” “gavin continued to exist in the world, which lucinda thought was very rude.” (mood)

(also, the title is brilliant imo, and matches the contents very well)

Joana da Silva

This book was a ride with 3 turns along the way. At first, I thought "ok, this is nice", which then led to a "what the actual fuck, I thought this was a book about regular human relationships and love, what am I reading" and finally ended at "ok, I get it, that's the whole magic, Picasso, I like it". To be fair, I could've predicted that from the start given that this man gave us BoJack Horseman, right, there's no way he would just tell boring and mundane love stories. Although sometimes he does and does it in the most exquisite way!!! Great book, had so much fun and recommended it to so many friends.

sarah stevenson

this collection of short stories was unique, witty, and extremely entertaining. Waksberg tackles complex ideas such as existentialism, love, goat sacrifices, genetically modified presidents, etc. if you’re looking for a book filled with satire and stories to make you question your existence, this is the one for you.

Alexa M

"You deserve someone who will love you in all your damaged glory." 

 yeah wow. 

this was equally hilarious and gut-punching. one page i would be laughing and the next i would feel so Seen it's not even FUNNY. every single story in here was enjoyable, some were funnier than others and some hurt more than others, but i liked all of them! soo glad i picked this up.

From the creator of the beloved and universally acclaimed television series BoJack Horseman, a fabulously off-beat collection of short stories about love--the best and worst thing in the universe. Written with all the scathing dark humor that is a hallmark of BoJack Horseman, Raphael Bob-Waksberg's stories will make you laugh, weep, and shiver in uncomfortably delicious recognition. In "A Most Blessed and Auspicious Occasion," a young couple engaged to be married is forced to deal with interfering relatives dictating the appropriate number of ritual goat sacrifices for their wedding. "Missed Connection--m4w" is the tragicomic tale of a pair of lonely commuters eternally failing to make that longed-for contact. And in "More of the You That You Already Are," a struggling employee at a theme park of dead presidents finds that love can't be genetically modified. Equally at home with the surreal and the painfully relatable (and both at once), Bob-Waksberg delivers a killer combination of humor, romance, whimsy, cultural commentary, and crushing emotional vulnerability.

Lynette Pedersen

If you are a fan of BoJack, this book will definitely not disappoint you. There are even a couple stories that you could read in his voice if you tried hard enough. That isn't to say all the stories are so-very-BoJack because they aren't, but there's a style here that is recognizable. 

Most of the stories have this melancholy shade to them, but even through that melancholy there is a humor that feels not so much warm but familiar and inclusive--like we are all laughing together at the stupid shit we humans do. The characters have this depth that isn't really in what is explicitly written but in the way you can relate to them. You may not be sacrificing goats for your wedding, for example, but you understand the impulse to give in to tradition and superstition. And the love. The love is there too.

My favorite story is the second to last and (I think) the longest called "More of the You That You Already Are." It was charming and funny and weird and as close to a happy ending as you get with this collection. Not that a happy ending is a requirement or anything, just that the story was a nice upswing there at the end that left me smiling. 

The info on the jacket says this is Bob-Waksberg's first book. I hope it is not his last!

From the creator of the beloved and universally acclaimed television series BoJack Horseman, a fabulously off-beat collection of short stories about love—the best and worst thing in the universe. “Complex, daring, emotional, and unique, with notes of melancholic brilliance and an aftertaste of subtle elation: it is hard to describe the writing of Raphael Bob-Waksberg without sounding like Frasier discussing wine.” —B. J. Novak, author of One More Thing Written with all the scathing dark humor that is a hallmark of BoJack Horseman, Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s stories will make you laugh, weep, and shiver in uncomfortably delicious recognition. In “A Most Blessed and Auspicious Occasion,” a young couple engaged to be married is forced to deal with interfering relatives dictating the appropriate number of ritual goat sacrifices for their wedding. “Missed Connection—m4w” is the tragicomic tale of a pair of lonely commuters eternally failing to make that longed-for contact. And in “More of the You That You Already Are,” a struggling employee at a theme park of dead presidents finds that love can’t be genetically modified. Equally at home with the surreal and the painfully relatable (and both at once), Bob-Waksberg delivers a killer combination of humor, romance, whimsy, cultural commentary, and crushing emotional vulnerability.

jiveen liew

Midori Kobayashi

4/5stars


He had this really amazing party trick where sometimes he could go a full hour without even once being suddenly reminded of the paralyzing truth that his life was finite and unrepeatable.



This collection is so unique, so bizarrely accurate at times and makes you laugh out loud in public type of funny. A few stories did not hit the mark but the other most certainly made up for them and then some. Special mention for the audiobook, to the so many wonderful people who told these stories. The variety of the stories and the different formats used here are definitely a cherry on the cake! Loved how the author experimented with so many styles and formats in one collection only. 



You deserve someone who will love you in all your damaged glory.



There were stories about drunk superheroes, sacrificial weddings, inverted universes, missed opportunities, lost relationships, or the difficulty in communicating with each other, theme parks of dead presidents, a dog's perspective of human lives and so on and so forth. My personal favourites were "Rufus" the story from the perspective of a dog and the one about the inanity of the wedding industry. would definitely recommend listening to the audiobook for this one, if not for the book then atleast for the narrators. The whole line of narrators is AMAZING!



And I thought about how, actually, if you wanted to, you could say the same thing about life. That life is terrifying and overwhelming and it can happen at any moment. And when you’re confronted with life you can either be cowardly or you can be brave, but either way you’re going to live. So you might as well be brave.

Jeff James

I love short story collections read by more than one narrator. They’re always a good palate cleanser after a longer novel.

This collection is a good mix between comedic sketches and more traditional short stories, and a number of the pieces land little emotional gut punches, much like the disarmingly absurd Bojack Horseman. The narrators include a few famous names, some of whom are friends with or have worked for Waksburg.

I think my favorite story was “Up-and-comers,” about the members of a band who all get super powers that only work when they get drunk. “We men of science,” about a man who invents a door into an alternate universe where everything is the opposite of his own, was a close second. “You want to know what plays are like?” was especially devastating.

Highly recommended, especially in audio.

definitely now my favorite collection of short stories. dark absurd humor, some stories were slow (i hated the president, the play, and the up and comers). my fav is probably the poem, the dog, and the wedding. so very in love and so very broken. 

While it wasn’t perfect, and some stories dragged a bit, I found myself laughing out loud (or sharply exhaling through my nose in a slight giggle). There were very tender moments that made me pause and reread the line or passage over again.  Love can be great, and love can be terrible, and healing can suck, and this collection of short stories explores it all. I’m a fan.

Alex Goodwin

Siya S

Solid 4 Stars.

Wow. My shriveling, stale cashew heart is blooming with joy once more. 



Man, this might be the cleverest, most relatable, best short stories collection I've read in a really long long long time. Perhaps in a good two years. It's witty, hilarious, whimsical, bizarre, and strangely enough, romantic as hell. 

Best for a fan of Bojack Horseman (obviously), Fleabag, and perhaps Modern Love (if it was written by Douglas Adams, Nick Hornby, or Jonathan Tropper). Just....well, just imagine people in crisis who make jokes to avoid looking traumas in the eye. Yup. The sarcasm, wordplays, allegories, metaphors, and the self-deprecating humor games are extremely strong in this one. It's just brilliant. 

That being said, this book is definitely a hit or miss (extremely divisive, just like Bojack), which I think is fine. Not everyone could find a sense of humor in traumas 🙃 Although I have to mention that the humor in this book is very *American* and I don't think of this book as a comedy more than just a slice-of-life story of people who are falling apart and finding their own ways to being whole again. 

But if bizarre was your middle name or if you found yourself talking yourself in and out of feelings on a daily basis, thennnnnnn this might be your kind of thing, my friend.

renee badenoch

I enjoyed this one a lot. It was funny, absurd, and occasionally poignant (a bit like love, anyway). In here there's stories of pretty mundane things happening (a couple arguing over a dog), but also stories of rock stars whose super powers hinge on them being black-out drunk, an inter-dimensional traveler going into a different dimension to have an affair with his own wife, and a girl falling in love with presidential clone. At its best and most absurd its reminiscent of George Saunders.

Cindy Lieberman

Inventive and, at times, funny short stories about love, life and relationships. Raphael Bob-Waksberg (of BoJack Horseman fame) plumbs our emotional depths while entertaining with clever wordplay: reimagining engagement pressure in antiquity; the behind-the-scenes lives of career superheroes; our world through a dog’s perspective. He has a talent for intuiting the lies we tell to ourselves and to others. Only “We Men of Science” seemed to bog down / go on too long, as poignant as it was. Well narrated by the author and his friends.

Had to read it in bits but I enjoyed the style of writing. My favourite story was Rufus 💕

sophia n

“And I thought about how, actually, if you wanted to, you could say the same thing about life. That life is terrifying and overwhelming and it can happen at any moment. And when you’re confronted with life you can either be cowardly or you can be brave, but either way you’re going to live. So you might as well be brave.”

this was so weird and wonderful, surreal and relatable. i loved almost all the stories included in here, i feel like there were just two stories that didn’t totally land for me, but they were all so creative and fun and interesting and deep, approaching our feelings as humans and relationships from all kinds of unique and relatable angles. i also am so glad i borrowed the audiobook from the library rather than the physical book because all the various voice actors were just incredible. super glad i picked up this weird little book.

4.5 stars rounded down 

yes, i am done so i feel like i should do a story-by-story review of the anthology to truly hone in for the essence for when i read this review later.

  thoughts : overall  
i really like it. i am not going to oversell it and say there are no lulls when there are - not every story is as well-written but every story is so fucking brilliant. part of the appeal for this book for me is just the humor and metaphors in each story - bojack horseman is a testament to the sort of dry humor i enjoy, the slow but eventual reveal of what the creator wants to tell you and lines delivered both direct and indirect that make me feel so seen and understood for a minute so i am not surprised this work is making me feel the same.

  salted circus cashews, swear to god   5 stars 
this is not a short story, at least i don't think so. to be honest, i am not too sure what clarifies as a story here but i think of this as the introduction to the entire book. this piece is most direct in what it's trying to convey - an allegory on relationships and how love is essentially putting blind faith into someone who might as well be a stranger, trusting them to treat you well and hoping this doesn't lead to heartbreak. most young adults have been through the cyclical facade of love - falling in and out, exhausted by yet another attempt at understanding another human and being disappointed when you find yourself crying over the same person who once gave you butterflies. it takes a fool to not turn a cynic in times like this, constantly cautious of what this new person could be in another day, week, month or year's time and you want to believe all their promises but somewhere deep down, you know these promises are the same one you make to others with no knowing if you can back them up in the future. god, i love this so much i could write a whole essay on the clever symbolism of the use of 'snake in a can' gag and marketing pitch to allude to vulnerability in relationships and the leap you essentially take, not knowing if you'll have a safe landing or if you'll fall in the cliff below. 

here are my favorite excerpts from the piece below : 

   Maybe you are right to be cautious. You have been lied to before, after all. Your heart is weathered and scarred, mishandled by many, eroded by time. You’re no dummy, and yet repeatedly, you stumble over the cracks of your cobblestone heart, you let your naked foolish hopes get the better of you. 
 And every time you discover the cruel fiction of the cashew can, you swear to yourself you’ll trust a little less next time, you’ll be a little less open, a little more hard. It’s not worth it, you say. It just isn’t worth it. You’re smarter than all that. From now on, you’re going to be smarter. Well, I’m here to tell you that this time will be different, even though I have absolutely no evidence to support that claim. Open this can and everything will be okay. 


  short stories   3 stars 
this was okay. nothing to write home about, we are presented with 10 loosely related vignettes that present to us the inherent contradictory and absurd nature of dating. some of these were so apt to my life at the moment and heartbreaking that it felt like a tumblr post you find at random which suddenly describes all the feelings you've had in perfect sentences while others were cliches and jokes you'd hear in a bojack horseman episode, oh wait, of course they were. my favorite was the audible narrators for these - with the specific ones they narrated, i felt we had an inkling to a larger story the readers weren't seeing because they were focused on the lies of it all.

my favorites (by which i mean they feel like a specific callout to me) - 

  
4. She told him she loved him and cared about him, and he was so dizzy in love himself he didn’t realize she was breaking up with him.
8.He had this really amazing party trick where sometimes he could go a full hour without even once being suddenly reminded of the paralyzing truth that his life was finite and unrepeatable.
9. It occurred to her that she loved the idea of her husband and children and all her friends and her job and her life. She loved the idea of everything.



  A Most BLESSED and AUSPICIOUS OCCASION   4 stars 
this was hilarious. the satiricial take on wedding culture and the absurdity that comes with it in the form of relatives, weird traditions and expectations was so apt for someone who's grown in a desi family where the couple essentially gets no choice and has to go along with their family witnessing a definite exhaustion of their budget and gossip of everything and the one thing that always has to go wrong. it is peak bojack humor (can we get a counter for the amount of times i type bojack in this one review?) in the way it's so over-the-top with characters who'd much rather be doing anything else and the weird shame that comes in these situations and the hiliarity in the mundane and the absurd of it all. i just think if someone's never been to a wedding, they could read this and understand the ins-and-outs of weddings which is pretty great.

  Missed Connection- m4w  3.5 stars 
a story in the form of a craigslist missed connection ad and what happens when your inability to act on your feelings leaves you on the cusp of something great, almost in your hands but not quite. i don't think there was a lot to it being pretty straightforward but i recognised the frustration brimming in my mind as more and more time passed and the two made no effort to converse with a varied list of excuses at their disposal such as 'too much time had passed, i didn't know what to say anymore' and this frustration is probably something every 3rd person can feel when someone is so very clearly pining over someone else, as i have done, but don't act on it. my favorite line probably was - And I thought about how amazing it is that you can know somebody for sixty years and yet still not really know that person at all.

  The Serial Monogamist's Guide to Important New York City Landmarks  3.5 stars 

The concept of this isn't all too original, I reckon, I've read quite a few like this piece but it was incredibly well-written in the same snarky style i've come to attach with raphael. beyond that, i am a sucker for stories about people who attach memories to places and objects with people in their life, especially those who are no longer a part of it and the very real descriptions of how if you do it enough, you'll soon find yourself in a ghost town where every other place has a memory attached to it and a whisper of the person you once used to be and the person you once loved - it's exhausting and tiring and saps at your emotional energy. 

  We Men of Science   5 stars 
i really liked this - of course, it was no salted circus cashews but it was science-y, multiple universes and had cats so i am going to be a nerd about it. i just think this was so relatable in a way that every person could probably agree to this line of thought - have you ever thought if there was another universe out there? if so, how do you think you exist in that universe? do you think you are better in that universe? make better choices, donate more, laugh a little louder, smile more often and are overall, everything you want to be right now? it's so comforting to think maybe in another universe, things are aligned enough for you to be the best self you can be and you can blame the state of your current universe for things not working out for you. it's such an easy way out to blame external factors for life not being easy (and i know genuinely there are external factors which prevent us from all of it) but sometimes, we are all that we can be. it's funny, biting, sad and beautiful in the most bojack-y possible - this is the perfect introduction to the show, if you like this, you'll like the show and it was such a beautiful read, oh god. i specifically loved the idea that the anti-yoni was the anti-thesis of everything yoni was and hence, he was good at hoops but eventually we learn, yoni is good at basketball, he just never gave it or himself a shot, convincing himself he's really not all that good which is just to say the potential lies with us (this is so optimistic, what happend to me? i am a cynic)

my favorites (by which i mean they feel like a specific callout to me) - 

  
Or, worst of all, what if the world on the other side of the door was no better or worse than our own, just different? What if it was just as heavy with war and famine and iniquity and cowardice?

I don’t know what would be sadder: that I would now be a third as happy as I was before, or the realization that what I was before—that is to say, what I am now—is three-quarters as happy as I could possibly get.What if I was zero percent happy, and I walked through the door to find that a hundred percent happy still isn’t all that happy?

but I am only as good as I am, and I could only do what the person as good as I am could do.

I often wonder if we aren’t likewise shaped by the qualities we lack, outlined by the empty space where the marble used to be. I’ll be sitting on a train. I’ll be lying awake in bed. I’ll be watching a movie; I’ll be laughing.And then, all of a sudden, I’ll be struck by the paralyzing truth: It’s not what we do that makes us who we are. It’s what we don’t do that defines us.

And I imagined that if I were in some other, better universe, there’d be someone who could tell me, It’s okay, or You’ll get ’em next time, tiger. Someone would tell me that all the stupid things I’d done, all my mistakes, they didn’t matter.This someone would say that, no matter what, she was proud of me, that I filled her heart with warmth, and that that’s really the most you could hope for in life—to just for an instant make somebody else just a little bit happier.She would tell me that—guess what!—everything was going to be all right.

Katie Chua

just like a really really good and long episode of bojack

brendan sudol

Every story is great. Funny, touching, and creative.

Vojtech &
Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg

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Vojtech &Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg

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Join the club

Vojtech &
Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg