Samantha Irby's writing gets better with every collection. With as much wit as ever, she takes on heavy topics like anaphylaxis, step-parenting, and watching one's own parent die... and even while reflecting sincerely, makes me laugh SO HARD. I'm a forever-fan of her work, and I'll recommend this book to anyone who will listen.

Samantha Irby is absolutely hilarious. This was another amazing collection of essays. Some pieces were funnier than others, but none of them disappointed me.

She’s an icon, she’s a legend, she’s Samantha Irby. As with her previous three books, this essay collection was a compulsive read that had me laughing out loud while walking my dog, driving my car, and taking shower (thanks, audiobooks!). I love when a book can make me look shamelessly unhinged. While I admittedly skipped over some of the more visceral body horror content, my favorite essays were I Like It!, David Matthews’s Greatest Romantic Hits, QVC ILYSM, and How to Look Cool in Front of Teens? I have no idea how she continues to come up with truly humorous content, but I hope Irby manages to keep it coming forever because I’m not sure I’ll ever have enough.

I’m a fan of Samantha Irby but this book just didn’t resonate with me this time. Irby always gives stories/essays about her life in her books. This time it was the same but it had a different tone. I didn’t care for the nun story at all, but felt I needed to read it to make an honest review on the book. I just didn’t care for so much negativity towards herself either. The Sex and the City chapter ran on and on and on. I know the title is Quietly Hostile, but Hostile would be better.

Excuse my French, but Samantha Irby is fucking hysterical, and Quietly Hostile is absolutely no exception. This book is a riot and will have you laughing out loud, yelling out loud, and crying out loud -- often at the same time.

Today is the day! Today is the day! Welcome to the world QUIETLY HOSTILE by Samantha Irby (bitchesgottaeat). Thank you dearly to @netgalley and the publisher @doubledaybooks for the e-ARC.

Listen up bookbots - do you like to laugh? I mean, like laugh until you cry (and maybe some actual crying mixed in)? Do you feel seen when someone identifies with one of your deepest darkest secrets such as eating corn dogs alone in a car at the Indiana state fair, or realizing you are a frivolous human when forced to pack in a hurry, or that your favorite thing about pandemic times was the lack of traffic?

Samantha Irby makes me cackle while also making me feel seen and it is EVERYTHING! If you have not read any of her books yet, you are doing yourself a disservice. She has a way of weaving comedy, vulnerability, social issues, the uncanny and the mundane (there is a whole chapter on Sex in the City which Irby was a writer on - not my favorite part of the book but still funny!).

In this book she taught me to say "I like it" when someone tries to yuck your yum, to not absorb the news directly but just have it playing somewhere in the background and absorb through osmosis - less stressful, intravenous fluids are in, and the startling realization that somehow we do not have "dot cum" yet as an internet porn hub.

She also validated my new agoraphobia toward large gatherings (the pandemic ruined me!) and my fear of public gestures of affection (proposals and the like). She just gets me.💚

Anyway, this beauty is finally out in the world today so get out there and get yourself a copy! You won't regret it if you like laughter, self deprecating humor, beautiful comic insights and awkward situations.

Have you ever read any Sam Irby books? If not, do you read any humor books?

💚SMASHBOT💚

#booknerd #booklover #bookmaniac #reader #bibliophile #instabooks #bookreview #netgalley #quietlyhostile #bitchesgottaeat #doubledaybooks

First up a thank you to allowing me to read this. Even though in the end I bought my own copy as the ebook just didn't work out for me and I really wanted this one for my collection.. But I am DNF-ing this book. Sadly. It was just not my cup of tea this one. I really enjoyed the previous one... but this one just felt not like Samantha Irby at points. The essays really lacked for me and there were things I just couldn't care about. Telling us about all your favourite band songs? I don't care, I don't even know the band. Going into your porn and masturbation stories, NO thank you. I don't need to read how you peed into someone's mouth (pukes). I don't need to read 40 pages about Sex and the City and all the seasons and various episodes that you would edit if you could. That commercial one was a struggle. I don't need to know where you left your body fluids on. It was such a shame, Over the course of the twee/three weeks I had the book I kept stopping and then going again giving it another try only to stop again. I hope that her next essay collection will be better! I will definitely give it another shot.

I think I may not be the target audience for this book, since I didn’t find it funny at all. I appreciate some of her insights but I often found myself skimming, hoping to reach the end faster.

Samantha Irby has a cult following and has written so many books. She is fantastic and her writing will crack you up! So if you read anything by her before, you’ll probably enjoy this one to.

Unfortunately DNFing at 25%

I'm sure, very sure, this book has an audience, but it is not me. I just didn't find it funny or interesting, and it was repetitive in the 1/4 that I read. Self-deprecating humor is popular, but when it's the only mechanism for jokes it fails me.

Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC for this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Samantha Irby's stories are laugh-out-loud funny. She is relatable, like a friend you meet for coffee. When I recognize some of myself in her stories, I feel connection and judge myself a little less. Removed one star because of too much bathroom humor.

Not my favorite from Samantha Irby but I always appreciate her humor. These essays were good for little pick-me-ups. Some were straight up hilarious and relatable, and others were a bit too niche.

Thank you to Vintage Anchor and Libro FM for the arcs of Samantha Irby’s latest essay collection, Quietly Hostile. For the purposes of this review, I listed to the audio arc read by the author.

Samantha Irby is one of my favorite humor writers. She’s just absolutely hilarious and never holds back from sharing intimate details of her life, especially if they have to do with something embarrassing involving the bathroom. I have to confess that this particular collection should not be read or listened to while you are eating, as it goes to rather gross places and you might spit up some food or liquids from laughter.

As a Sex and the City fan, I enjoyed her chapter on writing for the reboot (And Just Like That) and also her analysis of the original show. She even got threats from rabid fans who were concerned for Carrie Bradshaw’s love life. I’m not exactly team Aidan, but still…Carrie’s not real! C’mon people!

By far, the biggest impression was made during the chapter Body Horror, when Irby describes a former sexual relationship with a man who had certain bodily function related kinks. I’m not going to spoil it, but I was not prepared for the gross-factor or just the violation of it all. I found this so disturbing that I couldn’t stop telling everyone about it, including coworkers at the bookstore where I work. If Irby happens to read this review (highly unlikely), I am so sorry that happened to you.

I just love everything Irby writes and I will read it all. Also, how can you resist her covers? They are my all-time favorite book covers. Quietly Hostile is another win for Irby.

If you're a Samantha Irby fan, you'll love these self-deprecating & hilarious essays. I have read one of her other collections and loved it, but this collection was hit or miss for me. Definitely a few I skipped over, but overall a wonderful collection.

Quietly Hostile is my second (or third?) book by Samantha Irby, and it brought the same joy as the first book I read, We are never meeting in real life. I think what I loved most about this book was the randomness of the essays all put together. It felt like I was thinking how she thought. One second, we were talking about Dave Matthews greatest love songs (and now I have a list of songs to look up), and the next moment, we were reflecting on the Sam Irby TV Show that never got to be. It. was an enjoyable mix.

My favorite essay was probably her take on impressing teenagers (Spoiler: you can’t) because it feels a lot like how I feel when I try to connect with my younger sister. Sam Irby sometimes drops a hard truth in between two funny lines and causes you to pause and think, at least for a second.

My least favorite was the one about how she would ruin the show Sex and the City. I passed most of it because I didn’t want any spoilers, but I’m excited to revisit in 2-8 years when I finally watch the series and I can understand all the references.

I also am not a huge fan of bathroom jokes, but I accepted them.

All in all, really enjoyed, and I need to catch up with the ones I miss.

4.5 rounded to 5

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

I LOVE SAMANTHA IRBY. She makes me giggle inside and chuckle out loud, and I would dearly love to be her friend. Her essays are written with such finesse and ease that I never ever get that wooden "I. AM. READING. A. BOOK." feeling (don't you hate that feeling??) when reading any of her books, and this new gem is no exception!

I was already a fan of Samantha Irby's other writing—this new collection delivers exactly the kind of snarky, yet breathtakingly (often brutally) honest commentary on life I've come to expect. The only caveat I will give is that I had no idea Irby worked on the Sex and the City reboot, (which I haven't seen) so the pages devoted to her rewrite of the original seasons were funny and often spot-on indictments, but went far beyond my memory of the original series. So, perfect for a true fan, just not me. Her section on how to/not to deal with teenagers in the house is also spot-on, right down to the seltzer cans with one sip taken out of each of them scattered throughout the house. By the time she got to "Why you should invite me to your party", I thought Irby had some real momentum going, and I would have happily read more.

A couple not-necessarily-coherent thoughts on this book: very funny in places, although I suspect I would have enjoyed the reflections on pop culture more if I had ever seen a single episode of Sex & the City. VERY relatable in places, especially for millennials who are now suddenly reckoning with the mid-thirties failures of our previously invincible bodies. Also extremely gross in places; I am now deeply grateful that whatever other failings my body has, IBS isn't one of them. Weirdly frequent use of that specifically male-comic shtick about how much he sucks and how much his wife must hate him, which was peculiar and grating coming from a lesbian? Extremely internet lingo everywhere always all the time, which some may really enjoy and some may absolutely hate! Overall I enjoyed the collection although it wasn't really something I would seek out.

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley, and surprisingly, this is the first time I’ve come across Samantha Irby’s work. Reviews said it would be hysterical and it was, for the most part, but at times it ventured into being too gross for me. I found I was embarrassed for her—I’ll call her Sam because that’s what she calls herself—for all of the gastrointestinal issues she’s had. I do not know how she could so freely write about these things, but I guess that’s why this is her book and not mine.

The reason this book did not earn 5 stars from me is because it devoted way too much time to Sex in the City and the jokes required an understanding of Sex in the City. Other than recognizing the names of a few people who were in it and having a general idea of the theme, I never watched it and never wanted to. Eventually, I skipped over that portion of the book because none of it made sense to me. However, I will say this much. Apparently, she worked on the reboot, and some woman sent her a message threatening to kill her if she brought back a male character she didn’t like, and Sam thought, “I would love to die, and I especially would love to die at the hands of this deranged woman over the choices a fictional character I did not invent makes on a show that is not real regarding a man who absolutely does not exist.”

Speaking of making sense, the part of the story where she describes the pilot TV show as she envisioned became a bit confusing at times, but when I got what she was trying to say, it was perfect. It wasn’t my favorite part of the book, but it was vastly better than the Sex in the City tribute. So here are some of my favorite parts, in other words, the parts that made me laugh out loud and want to share them with someone.

Most of her jokes are made at her own self, a deeply self-depracating humor, but she’s also happy to make fun of groups of people. When she talks about dancing with her wife Kirsten, she imagines that people are asking, “Is Sam using her wife as a human walker?” And even though she acknowledges that, of course, she is, she follows up by also recognizing that nobody wants to be their “partner’s sexy cane!” That’s her exclamation point there. I think she used way too many of them, for the record. Since this was an uncorrected ecopy, maybe that will be fixed in the final proof.

Later, she describes her morning ritual on the day of her birthday, which happens to be on Superbowl Sunday: “I start the day doing a yoga sun salute, then drink a liter of warm lemon water, thanking God for allowing me to see another sunrise. I follow that by feeding myself some avocado on sprouted grain bread with fermented sprouts; which is to say that I drink a Fresca in one long swallow and take a shower just so I might feel like I put some effort into being alive before settling into the couch for thirteen straight hours of pregame coverage.”

She describes why she wouldn’t want to have a child: “Do I wish I could stand idly by and witness all the things I hate about myself manifested in, and mirrored back to me by, a person it’s against the law for me to kill?” After a hipster nutritionist on Instagram admonishes, “YOU SHOULD DRINK THREE LITERS OF WATER EVERY DAY BEFORE NOON,” her first response is, “...who is out of bed before noon, let along chugging water?” Later, when talking about porn, she wonders, “Also who’s in charge of the internet?” and “When are we gonna get dot cum?”

Sam describes in horrifying and hilarious detail that time she went into anaphylactic shock and had to rush to the emergency room, her “breath sounding like a tin can full of glass shards rolling down a mountain made of ball bearings…” In a later story about a conversation with a wealthy employer, she describes herself as “a dumb sack of potatoes stuffed into an ill-fitting buffalo plaid flannel and scuffed Doc Martens, fiddling nervously with the constrictive velvet choker cinched around my neck as my boss counted hundred-dollar bills into my other palm” so she could buy some nail polish for the woman. “‘...I have a nail appointment at six,’ she snipped, shoving a homeless man into the oven for her dinner.”

Since I no longer have young children, my car is no longer a mess. I love Sam’s explanation of the differences between her and her wife when it comes to cars, and why it’s a good thing they don’t share one, saying, “I don’t believe that the most expensive thing I’ve ever owned should also double as a rolling reusable tote bag and spilled granola dispensary…” It was things like this that had me gasping in laughter and understanding. If you liked Sex in the City, or even had more than a passing familiarity with it, you’ll probably enjoy this book even more than I did.

Samantha Irby is so funny! Some of the essay were a bit too gross for me (I don't do well with bodily fluids :O) but they still entertained me. She can write about the QVC and make it interesting!