Helen Ellis's essay collections are perfect summer choices for discussion groups. Ellis writes about her friendships, her marriage, and her life as a writer during the pandemic. Ellis shares her sharp wit and humor--and her compassion as she writes about her friend's breast cancer, but she pairs that with a day of screaming at a Florida Panhandle water park. Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light is a great relaxing escape read full of humor and fun.

Ellis specializes in making light of the deadly serious: bad relationships and bad mammograms, getting older and losing those we love. But she does all this with the irreverent, razor-sharp wit fans of American Housewife and Southern Lady Code will remember. I'm so happy that Helen chose to write about her professional poker experience in "There’s a Lady at the Poker Table," and as a longtime Judy Blume fan of course I giggled (and cringed, because yikes) through "Are You There Menopause? It’s Me, Helen."

Helen Ellis is hilarious. I'm glad she moved from fictional stories (American Housewife) to stories about her life. They are much better!

I really enjoyed this book!
THANK YOU FOR SHARING THIS BOOK WITH ME!
I got behind in the COVID DRAMA and missed posting about this important book when it came out.
Thank you!

I received an arc of this title from NetGalley for an honest review. I wanted to like this book so much more than I did. It was an okay, read, but not great and in the end I did not finish it.

This book was…grating. That’s the best thing I can say about it. It should’ve been something that worked for me - middle aged woman defying convention and living life her way with a bit of sass tossed in. It didn’t. At all.

My problem is that most of it doesn’t feel authentic. There are bits of life wisdom and poignant moments of friendship, but most of it reads as a caricature of any real person. Too much, too over the top, too concerned about seeming witty and oh so cool to feel real.

I have no doubt people will read this book and love it, but it wasn’t a match for me. It happens.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy that I read waaaaay too late.

I absolutely adore Helen Ellis' humor and wit and was so excited to get my hands on her latest collection of essays. This book was largely a reflection on friendship and though I am younger and not quite as southern as Ellis, it was a pure delight to read.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy.

Like many essay collections, I enjoyed some more than others, but overall I enjoyed this! I laughed out loud at times and found myself wanting to call my friends after. Most women will find things to relate to!

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Funny book of essays on friendship, family, and the struggles of being a modern woman.

I enjoyed Ellis’ other stories and this one not at all. I found it not very funny as if she was complaining about everything in her life. Not sure I’ll recommend this to readers.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for a review.

Helen Ellis has lived in New York City for a long time, since she married a native New Yorker in fact. But she was born and raised in Alabama and you can't overcome that easily. So periodically she and her four "grown-ass lady friends", most of whom she has know since at least high school, get together in "The Redneck Riviera" just to catch up and do what they want for a few days. It has been 10 years since the last get-together and a lot has happened. And Helen is not shy about telling a LOT of it.

She also has a great circle of friends in New York, some of whom still don't quite know what to make of this outspoken Southerner in their midst.

This book is a collection of 13 essays and an acknowledgement section like no other.

Read it. If you are from the South, you KNOW these women, and if you aren't, you will wish you did.

Thank you to Doubleday and Helen Ellis for an advanced review copy of this book, in exchange for an honest review.

Perhaps I'm no longer the audience for Helen Ellis. I adored American Housewife, and recommended it many times; Southern Lady Code was alright; but Bring Your Baggage fell flat for me. It's starting to feel like she's trying too hard to be zany and unconventional , and I'm not here for it.

This is another book in a genre I don’t read a lot of: essay collection and more specifically, humor essays. I rarely think people are funny when they’re trying to be funny. It often comes across as though they’re trying to hard. This collection, however, has some true gems. Like any collection, some stories will resonate with readers more than others. For me, I particularly enjoyed Grown-Ass Ladies Gone Mild mostly because I felt like I could be friends with these women and I’d like to describe my besties as Grown-Ass Ladies and the Botox discussion in I Feel Better Abuse My Neck. This is a fun book and totally relatable for anyone approaching 50.

I just love Helen Ellis because she gives women a hell of a look at themselves. Ellis cuts through her subjects to the bone with a highly polished ornate silver knife. I’d love to read a book with her and discuss characters.
Friendship and women undergo Ellis’ scrutiny as does the mythology regarding circles of women and the dysfunction women circles generate. As a woman Ellis sits on the inside. As a writer she wanders the perimeter listening in, comedically editorializing and nodding a bit toward how women become women what they struggle over together and apart and how absolutely ridiculous it is that women continue to reproduce the pack behavior that keeps them as trophy or their polar opposite. Ellis asks us to question whether this representation of women is all there is. Fun mother/daughter or inter generational read.

Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light by Helen Ellis is honest and funny. "Womanly" issues are addressed in ways that only a woman can appreciate.

I keep reading Helen Ellis hoping to recapture the joy of reading American Housewife, but sadly her personal stories don't do it for me. She has a way with words but she writes from a place of such privilege that her work is not what I'm interested in right now.

Helen and her lifetime friends are having a reunion on the Redneck Riviera. Nothing they have been through in life has ever broken the bond that these pushing 50 women have been through.
What is it like to be pushing 50? Helen takes us along on her journey with her friends. They don't see each other often, but when they do, they have fun. This book has some laugh out loud moments, I laughed quite a bit, sometimes because it was funny and sometimes because I am glad it didn't happen to me. Helen asks, "Are you there, Menopause? It's Me, Helen." You have the hot flashes and other signs, but you're waiting for menopause to get it over with. It is a reminder to lighten up, don't take life so seriously, and sometimes just go have some fun.
I received an ARC from the author through NetGalley.

This essay collection is quite humorous, and while there are occasional moments of sentiment, Helen Ellis makes sure that it never stays that way for long. It's fast paced and enjoyable, with humor that stays right on the line of not-quite-crass.

I'm not sure how I just discovered Helen Ellis--a native Alabamian now living in Manhattan who is also a professional poker player. Her biography is funny enough, but she herself is hilarious. In this collection of twelve essays, she takes on a number of topics relevant to women of a certain age (i.e., younger than me)--menopause, aging parents, garage sales, becoming a mother at 50, sagging flesh, etc. As with most books written prepandemic, there are mentions of things that now seem dangerous, i.e., taking a bus from Atlantic City to Manhattan, going out for a burger and martini...

You don't have to be Southern or a New Yorker, or probably even a woman or menopausal, to enjoy her humor. But if you are, you'll relate even more. #BringYourBaggageandDontPackLight #NetGalley

This was a laugh out loud book of essays about getting older--and I rarely laugh out loud when reading books, so you know it's a good one! I loved Helen's voice, her perspective on life and her amazing group of girl friends. I read it pretty much in one sitting, but it's a book I can see going back to read the essays again, one at a time, to laugh and smile again. Some essays were about things women in their late 40's would understand, some were more about the power of friendships, but all of them were a delight!