Mortified: Love Is a Battlefield

and it's nice to know we all have our "war stories". Mortified: L.I.A.B has all the cringe worthy, lovesick, smack your head against your forehead cause you can't believe you said that moments you thought you had conquered with age, therapy, and your 10 year high school reunion. Just be warned: finishing Mortified: L.I.A.B will cause you to book a trip home to try and unearth all those unsent love letters you hope your mom didn't find in that secret hiding spot in your room and then spend the afternoon crafting a mixtape for your current crush.

There are few books, movies, or any other type of media that hit home as well as Mortified. I laughed and cringed through the first book, and this one delivers in the same way... only more focused. It brought me back to every note, overture, and incorrectly interpreted look I was ever a part of. Essential reading for the teenage love hero in all of us...

Mortified: Love Is a Battlefield does one better than the first book, bringing forth universal stories of adolescent pain and humiliation and mining them for catharsis, understanding, and, yes, humor. Is emotional excavation a thing? If it is, then surely the profession has found its Copernicus (or maybe Oppenheimer) in David Nadelberg. These clearly carefully selected diary entries, poems, letters and other artifacts of adolescence can be, well, mortifying. Certainly this collection is darker than the first, but that's also what makes it great, in that same way that Freaks and Geeks made the specific universal and made us flinch while laughing along with the characters. Because we've all been there. Sean Sweeney's "screenplay" (written for no less than Al Pacino, Debra Winger, Roy Scheider and Phoebe Cates, as well as a character named "Shawn") is hilarious for its innocence and aggressive egotism. Leonard Hyman's story of growing up in American Samoa seems at first completely unrelatable--until he begins talking about his desperate crush on the new girl and his fickle attentions that follow. And certainly the "Dueling Diaries" by Matt Berck and Kirsten Gronfield are a highlight. The new book is laid out beautifully, with not just the photos of the first book but scraps of the actual source material and some hilarious doodles and illustrations. For fans of Freaks and Geeks, Judy Blume, This American Life, The Wonder Years, and anything else that makes you sigh, blush, and laugh all at once. (Also, check out the Mortified web-thingies on iTunes; it's free and it opens up the world of the book so well. One of my favorite pieces, "Stairway to Winnipeg" is better served by the "Showbox Show" than the transcription in the book, though both are hilarious).

Okay, so I've devoured the first and second editions of the Mortified series and am ready to move on to the next. I hope Dave Nadelburg reads this and gets the hint. (Nudge-nudge, elbow-elbow.) Both books are a delicious romp through the pages of other people's almost life ending pubescent emergencies, but Love is a Battlefield's honing in on the sweet excruciations of teen romance is enough to make me think I didn't have it so bad. (Or so hilarious.) Can....'t......waai....t...any......lon....ger..for...ne..xt......one.

"Mortified 2---Love is a Battlefield" picks right up where we left off in the first book ("Mortified"). Baby Boomers will mostly identify as these stories are in the time frame of their youth. However, I think we all can relate to the embarrassment and intensity of our first love & crushes. David Nadelberg has a knack for taking us back there and making us remember how it was---the good, the bad, and yes, even the ugly. Even now, as it was then, it is bittersweet. I look forward to more from David Nadelberg.I like his style and his tenacity, taking us back where we were so vulnerable yet so sure---our youth.