My Horizontal Life – Chelsea Handler

Jun 7, 2009 by shanyn

Title: My Horizontal Life
Author: Chelsea Handler

In this raucous collection of true-life stories, actress and comedian Chelsea Handler recounts her time spent in the social trenches with that wild, strange, irresistible, and often gratifying beast: the one-night stand.

After reading my last book (Anybody Out There), I was looking for a good comedy to pick up my mood. Luckily, I had requested this book a few weeks earlier via inter-library loan and was able to pick it up a few days ago – and I ended up finishing it in about a day. Many had suggested Chelsea Handler to me after I expressed interest in Laurie Notaro and Jen Lancaster, so I thought I would try it – my library didn’t have it, so it probably prevented me from reading it as quickly as I would have had it been accessible.

Each story pulled me in, with enough introduction and background to build up a great short story (sometimes I can’t stand short story type books because they feel like they jump around a lot), and had continuity through the characters so that it was hard for me to stop reading in between story changes. The best thing of all, which I didn’t expect, was that Chelsea seemed to learn some lessons in the end – as the pages were dwindling, I kind of expected it to end with a “well, what do you expect when you have one-night stands?” or some other similar quip. After the end, I am encouraged to read her other book (Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea), which my sister loaned me. Looking for a humor pick-me-up? Try this one out.

Click here to buy My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands