I decided to read this because I massively enjoyed the "Man Seeking Woman" series which was based on this book. Weirdly, I ended up liking the book a lot less. It felt like a sloppily strung together series of what-if jokes, more like a first draft than a finished product. The ideas behind it are still very funny, but the execution lacked something that should have made me laugh out loud. ( )

Okay, so The Last Girlfriend on Earth: And Other Love Stories is a book of short stories about love, but really about relationships, mostly (if I'm being entirely honest) failed ones. Not a lot of them had happy endings, but a few were really sweet and they were quite short (and thus easy to get through). All in all, it was a pretty good book, and I liked a lot of the stories. Yup. Oh and I got this book for free through Goodreads First Reads. ( )

I'm a fan of the show Man Seeking Woman, so when I learned that showrunner Simon Rich based its concept on one of his books I checked it out. If you've seen the show, many of the book's absurd dating/romantic premises will be instantly familiar (the sex aliens, dating Hitler, exorcising the ex's possessions out of the apartment, etc), but the majority will be new to you. Even if not, each chapter is short, focused, and usually funny or at least grin-worthy. The pacing is fast enough to where even if you don't like the premise of one story, it'll be over in three pages and you're on to something else. I liked the range of the stories, and you could definitely mine the setups here for a show for a while without having to go back to the well.

One notable aspect of the book, especially when compared to the show, is that cumulatively these pieces make the author himself seem like a real loser. On the show, the main character is a hapless dimwit, but a lovable hapless dimwit; here, Rich occasionally gives off telltale "hasn't been on a date in a while" vibes, particularly after the third or fourth story in a row about how girls are lying, jealous, untrustworthy, irrational (etc) whores. It's one thing to use sexual frustration as an artistic muse (and, arguably, a vast percentage of art throughout history has been created solely to impress chicks), it's another thing to watch some dude whine in print about how he can't get laid, even using a few dozen fictional characters as mouthpieces. In fairness to Rich, the challenge of presenting an unpleasant aspect of yourself without actually embodying that aspect is difficult for anyone, but I can see the average woman reacting to these stories a bit differently than the average man.

But of course as a guy I can definitely relate to a lot of what's in here. Anyone who's been in a relationship will be empathize with a great deal of the worries and insecurities that Rich presents in his stories; only a liar would find the whole thing totally foreign. The lighthearted, jokey tone makes each story of dating woe go down easy, but the emotions he dissects will strike more than a few chords. Some of these are genuinely great writing, such as the poignant O'Henry-ish "The Present", and "Trade", which has a clever sports metaphor at its core, ends the whole thing on a surprisingly upbeat note. While it's not great literature on the level of, say, Alasdair Gray's Lanark, it's a funny look at the more pathetic side of the male ego. ( )

Super Sounds of the Short Story weekend continues. This guy is smart and funny. ( )

some of these were really funny, but for the most part these are sketches rather than stories, and have an unfinished quality to them. ( )