Hyperbole and a Half comes from the blog that shares the same name. It’s not every day you discover a 15-year-old blog, binge-read the whole thing, and learn that the author also wrote a book. The book is my kind of funny, like the blog.
It is unassumingly introspective—which I should have known after reading some of the posts on the blog (Depression Part One and Two)—but refreshingly unique. I hadn’t stumbled across the blog back then when I was in my early teens, but I do feel the zeitgeist of the 2010s.
My peers would recognize many of the comics used by OG meme communities in the mid-to-late 2010s throughout this book. Each pane feels like a meme template. My favorites were the lighter childhood stories. They are really funny.
Maybe this book is not meant to be read continuously. Maybe the right format for consumption is still the blog. That is perhaps the only reason I would give it four stars.