Back Stories

My Horizontal Life -- A Collection of One Night Stands

Chelsea Handler

Bloomsbury

Life has been rather hectic lately and lots has been going both personally and professionally. Last week found me on a bit of a road trip and as always, I brought along a good book for the journey. "Good" in this particular case, was a novel by Donna Morrissey -- a Newfoundland author whose writing is described as moving, harrowing, gripping and insightful. Well, I got about fifty pages in, started to cry and decided that maybe I wasn't quite in the mood for moving, harrowing, gripping and insightful. Luckily, one of my coworkers rescued me and gave me something else to read. It couldn't have been more different!

My Horizontal Life is about as shallow and uncomplicated as they come. The author, Chelsea Handler, is a stand-up comedian known for her love of the drink, her sense of adventure, and her slightly slutty ways. The book is a series of vignettes about the ups and downs of being a party-seeking twenty something who has very little responsibility and a very, uh, interesting relationship with her family. There were definitely some laugh out loud moments in this memoir and its fluffiness was exactly what I needed to lighten my mood. Two moderately dirty martinis out of five.