My Less Than Secret Life

Your average reader may never find him/herself participating in a backyard animal sacrifice, attending a support group for S & M enthusiasts, or being brow-beaten by a Jamaican customs official. Self-described "comic-depressive" Jonathan Ames has endured all these adventures and many more and--luckily for us--has chronicled them with astonishing candor, wit and humility in his latest collection. Ames makes you empathize with every scenario, from the most seemingly mundane indignities to the most fantastic (or phantasmagoric). His brilliantly self-deprecating prose is laugh-out-loud funny--I found myself chuckling inappropriately in public as I read how he has been dubiously appointed the expert-in-residence on venereal afflictions to his friends--but extremely poignant, too. He often gives voice to the marginalized of society--prostitutes, transsexuals, porn stars and derelicts--but never in a condescending or exploitative way. I only wish I hadn't devoured it so quickly--next time I read it, and I most definitely will--I'll try to time-release my doses of hilarity. All in all, a highly addictive, moving and oddly reassuring book.

Bored, lonely, depressed and poor? Of course you are. So you look for solace in the recent glut of memoirs and find that although Andrew Solomon was vomiting from depression he once worked 12 hour days followed by attending 4 parties. Who does that? And don't get me started on the "Girl's Guide to Sex in the City" subgenre. Jonathan Ames, on the other hand, describes the world I inhabit - one where where every sexual encounter is fraught with anxiety and guilt, where the daily choice is between the horrible and the miserable. Yet he somehow does it with a kindness, sense of decency and a wistfulness that is redeeming. The author-reader connection is intimate and the end result is a feeling of being allowed a view into someone else's life while taking a vacation from your own.

I couldn't put this book down, wanting to read just one more chapter in the life of Jonathan Ames each time. The stories are nothing short of brilliant. Ames excellence stems from the fact that shares everything with the reader - the good, the bad, and even the very ugly. If he fells intimated, hurt, or embarrassed, he tells you. These stories are told exactly as they unfolded, there is no spin doctoring by the author to put him in a better light. The authors sincerity aside, the book is very amusing. Most of us will only find us in one or two of these situations in a lifetime, but Ames seems to be in one several times a month! How many orgies or animal scarifies have you been to? If you are a fan of Ames, pick this book up immediately, and if you are not a fan, this book will make you one.

Ames writes with such honesty about the human condition it is amazing, and he does so with such humor I find myself laughing outloud, which can get me in trouble on subway when i read the book going home. But it's worth it, his writing is so real and true and honest. He really gets it. Definitely the best book of this year, or any year.

This companion book to "What's Not To Love" collects more of Ames'New York Press columns and shows why Ames is one of the finest, and funniest, writers of his generation. His brutally honest sagas of nearly attending an orgy and his exploits as the boxer known as "The Herring Wonder" will keep you in stitches. This compelling collection is ideal for the prurient, neurotic underdog which Ames champions.