Reviews for I Might Regret This
by Abbi Jacobson
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
The Broad City cocreator embarks upon a cross-country solo road trip to clear her head after a breakup and takes the opportunity to ruminate on relationships, family, loss, and work. It's an exercise in purposeful vulnerability, as Jacobson puts all her insecurities front and center and invites the reader along as she examines them in meticulous but loving detail. (The story is punctuated by "sleep studies" as the author attempts to fall asleep in hotel rooms nationwide, invaded by a parade of intrusive non sequiturs.) A mid-book exploration of Jacobson's origin story as a comedy writer and performer, and the tale of her partnership with Ilana Glazer and the start of Broad City will be highlights for fans of the show. It's hard to imagine a narrator besides Jacobson reading this very personal audio title; she gives the material the intimate and idiosyncratic narration it needs. VERDICT Recommended for fans of comedic memoirs such as Jenny Lawson's Let's Pretend This Never Happened or H. Jon Benjamin's Failure Is an Option.—Jason Puckett, Georgia State Univ. Lib., Atlanta
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
The actor, producer, and series creator turns in a series of sketches, some brilliant and some pedestrian, chronicling episodes in her life to date.With her friend Ilana Glazer"a bacon egg and cheese with Ilana, anywhere, anytime," she writes in an essay on bagels, this one decidedly nonkosherJacobson (Carry This Book, 2016, etc.) crafted the hilarious, edgy Comedy Central series Broad City. As she notes in passing, it morphed into something more than just a TV show: "It's become a visual diagram of sorts in which I track my own life, where I've been and where I'm goinga reproduction of my reality." Many of the pieces are set in far-flung places between the twin poles of Los Angeles and New Yorkin Santa Fe, say, which Jacobson worries isn't really real, and Marfa, Texas, which is "so cute." A common theme throughout the book is ceiling-studying insomnia as the author restlessly travels from town to town; another is wrestling to the point of fretfulness with mundane and big-picture worries alike: "Maybe I'm more Jewish than I think?" As she drives from Santa Fe to Kanab, Utah, she ponders such things as how often she ought to be changing her shoelaces, death and dying, aging, love, missing out on key events, and "if scrunchies are back and why." Some of Jacobson's observations are too casually tossed-off"Starbucks might be more known for their bathrooms than their coffee"; "Do you think Ross-and-Rachel situations are happening all over the place?"but many of the sketches are reminiscent of Nora Ephron in their sharp-edged goofiness, as when she concludes a piece on failed love with this: "I did what any intelligent, responsible, sane person would do. I got a dog."Charting the charms and obstacles in the everyday, Jacobson's book wobbles here and there, but it's mostly a pleasure to read. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
If heartbreak sent Jacobson hurtling across the country on a road trip of self-discovery in the summer of 2017, she knew she was also craving the time alone to contemplate her life after Broad City. She'd just wrapped up the second-to-last season of the show the culmination of so much creative dreaming and hard work that made her and her real-life and onscreen best friend, Ilana Glazer, famous. Taking the southern route from New York to L.A., Jacobson pauses in places like Memphis, Austin, Marfa, and Santa Fe, and she has her aura read in Sedona. Blending memoir into her road-trip diary-of-sorts (which features her own illustrations), she walks readers through the time-stamped inanities of her persistent insomnia, some of which involve the heartbreaking ex, a woman who introduced Jacobson to a new and deeper sexual self-identity. Readers should expect to laugh; Jacobson frequently interrupts herself to tell jokes, which, unerringly, land. But her familiar voice comes across even more affectingly in passages about her admiration for her mom and best friend, and how she's learning to better love herself.--Annie Bostrom Copyright 2018 Booklist
