Full Title:  Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult’s Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It’s Never Too Late for Her Dumb Ass to Learn Why Froot Loops Are Not for Dinner

Summary from Amazon:  In Such a Pretty Fat, Jen Lancaster learned how to come to terms with her body. In My Fair Lazy, she expanded her mind. Now theNew York Times bestselling author gives herself—and her generation—a kick in the X, by facing her greatest challenge to date: acting her age.

Jen is finally ready to put away childish things (except her Barbie Styling Head, of course) and embrace the investment-making, mortgage-carrying, life-insurance-having adult she’s become. From getting a mammogram to volunteering at a halfway house, she tackles the grown-up activities she’s resisted for years, and with each rite of passage she completes, she’ll uncover a valuable—and probably humiliating—life lesson that will ease her path to full-fledged, if reluctant, adulthood.

So, I’m going to admit something here that I’m completely ashamed of.   I WASN’T ashamed of it until I read this book.  Which, incidentally, I bought on a whim so that The Readers Cafe would be able to write reviews AS The Readers Cafe on Amazon.   That was the only reason.  Yes, the title made me chuckle, as do most of Jen Lancaster’s titles.   i.e.  ”Bitter is the New Black:  Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass or Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Line”   However, for some reason – and this is the hard confession part – I would turn my nose up when I passed her books.   I don’t know why.  I really don’t.  The long titles, maybe?  They made me laugh but they just seemed…  over-compensating for something and I could only imagine it was for lack of content.  

I’m such a book snob.  I had to take a break from the book I was reading because it stopped, um, being good?   And figured, “well I bought it, I might as well read it”… started Jeneration X and then I laughed for 2 days straight.  While my husband watched one James Bond movie after another.  So I had to hear, “are you laughing at the movie?” like every 3.4 minutes for the entire duration of the book.  By last night I was seriously shrieking my “NO!”.   I can’t understand why he couldn’t comprehend that at no time was I watching ANY of the James Bond movies.  But I digress. 

I’m a Jen Lancaster convert.  And I suck for my preconceived notions of her books based on absolutely nothing.  Seriously.  Not a thing.  I didn’t read them because they had long titles that made me laugh.  What is that?  That’s not even a bad reason.  

At any rate, I loved it.  While not a self-help book by any means, it’s a memoir, it is an eye-opener to those of us of that certain generation who are totally supposed to be adults, but just aren’t… really…  yet…  for whatever reason.   

This may be the first Jen Lancaster book I’ve read, but it won’t be the last.  Long titles be damned…  this woman is a funny maker.   Jen Lancaster – I’m Amy – it’s nice to meet you.

4 out of 5 back-up generators.  

*Oh and also?  Seriously kicking myself in the lady ‘nads because had I just figured this out a couple months sooner, she was totally at my local bookstore May 3rd of this year… and I missed her.   Because of my book snobbery.  I’m in therapy.  There’s twelve steps…  or something.