Spending the Holidays with People I Want to Punch in the Throat: Yuletide Yahoos, Ho-Ho-Humblebraggers, and Other Seasonal Scourges

If you're a burgeoning Martha Stewart with ten color-coordinated Christmas Pinterest boards you might want to skip this one. If, like me, you ever feel intimidated by the holiday cheer and Yuletide overachievement of others, you and Jen and I are kindred souls.

Irreverent, foul-mouthed, and brutally honest, this book covers the dark side of holidays past (begging for Guess jeans & neon in the 80s; the nasty Santa in the run-down mall), and holidays present (forgetting to move the Elf on the Shelf; wishing you could just go to a cookie exchange empty handed, hit the spiked punch, and crawl cookie-less out the back door unless someone made something with equal parts chocolate and fat).

The holiday newsletter parody alone is a laugh riot. show more Why do we DO this to ourselves, and why do we just keep upping the ante until the holidays are intolerable for anyone without a full-time household staff? Let's spend November and December on an island somewhere and skip the whole business. Except that we don't really want to, we want to have some kind of Christmas with our loved ones. Just not our mother's kind. Ain't nobody got time for that. show less

Before reading this book, I was not familiar with Jen Mann or her blog/books. Since reading this book, I have put her books in my cart on Amazon, added them to my Goodreads lists, and I now follow her blog. This book made me laugh out loud on more than one occasion. From her dislike of everything pumpkin spice, to her dread of going to cookie exchanges, Jen speaks to my underachieving soul. Pick up this book if you're looking for a light, fun, read for the holidays!

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

Perfect book for my Christmas in 2015: I’m pretty much home alone this December. Not to sound all schmaltzy or depressing, but my children (and granddaughters) aren’t coming home this year for Christmas, and my wife is out in California for most of the month helping a niece whose husband passed away this weekend after a three-year battle with cancer. So, not much holiday cheer in my household other than a Pandora Christmas station playing in the background while I’m watching NHL hockey and football bowl games (and reading, of course).

This is a drastic change. Normally, my wife and I go all out decorating the house starting on Thanksgiving evening and working all show more day Black Friday, much like the author’s over-the-top-when-it-comes-to-Christmas mother. We have the Christmas village (20 buildings and growing), snowmen, Christmas settings for the formal dining table, lights outside on the trees, all the “standard” stuff and a lot more. It's a two-hour job just to get everything out of the attic. As much as I say I don't like the work that goes into the decorating, it is worth the effort, especially when we get to see our granddaughters' eyes light up when they arrive.

The thing I liked most about the book is that while the author seems to be bashing Christmas and all that comes with it, there is a real feeling of how much she actually enjoys the season. Like rushing out with her fiancé to buy a tree when her parents decide to come to New York one year or making sure her daughter (who has the Christmas gene) is able to decorate the THREE trees in her room to her hearts content. Jen Mann may not be insanely crazy about Christmas, but she obviously loves the people around her that do, and is willing to take a step towards the extra mile to make sure their Christmases are special.

This book is light-hearted and very funny, and she highlights things that we all think at one point or another about Christmas. This is an enjoyable collection that can be read over and over again for the simple reason that it elicits our own Christmas memories. Highly recommended! show less

I wasn't really sure what I was getting into when I saw this book for review. I loved the title and though that it would be funny regardless of what it was. The way I read the title I thought it would be able various people we all want to "punch in the throat" during the holidays but was happy to find out that Jen Mann runs a blog called such and this was a collection of her stories of the holidays.

Now I have to be honest, more than once I had to stop reading and ask myself, 'oh crap is this woman in MY family?' -- sadly no, but we have lived through some very similar things especially during the holidays so I found this book VERY relatable.

Mann's tales of the holidays are laugh-out-loud funny and I found myself enjoying all of them. I show more was even sad when the book ended. I will definitely be stopping be her blog to check it out, so if you have no idea who she is and happen on this book, know that, you can still crack-up reading it. This book was a wonderful start to my holiday reading. show less

Before reading this book, I was not familiar with Jen Mann or her blog/books. Since reading this book, I have put her books in my cart on Amazon, added them to my Goodreads lists, and I now follow her blog. This book made me laugh out loud on more than one occasion. From her dislike of everything pumpkin spice, to her dread of going to cookie exchanges, Jen speaks to my underachieving soul. Pick up this book if you're looking for a light, fun, read for the holidays!

Having read a few other books that started as blogs, I didn't have high hopes. But this book surprised me- it's much funnier and heartwarming than I expected. The title suggests a level of bitching and moaning that could be rather annoying, but instead, the writing is a balance of self-deprecation, humor, and a genuine love for family and friends. Most of the chapters felt like they taken straight from her blog, but this didn't bother me like it has in some books I've read.

This is another book based on a blog, in the vein of Jenny Lawson. It's essays on the author's life as a middle aged wife and mother and member of a somewhat eccentric family. I enjoy reading books like these, because it reminds me I'm not alone! I also admire those who can turn their lives into interesting prose. So if you like Jenny Lawson or Laurie Notaro, you would like this book. She has a couple of others as well; this one is, obviously, holiday themed.