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With about two weeks until virtual book club, how’s your reading coming along? We have both checked out When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole from the digital library and we’re looking forward to it, but that’s about it for now. We’ll get there, but we’re more excited to see your faces on Friday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m. CDT for those who sign up here to get the link to our Virtual Book Club conversation. We also want to know, so leave us a comment, or slide into our DMs, what you’re reading lately, and what you’re wanting to read and discuss with others. We’ve been enjoying discussing a recent read over the last several days, and want your help in selecting some virtual book club titles for the rest of the year. Genres, titles, likes, dislikes, let us know yours so we can plan some fun reads and readerly conversations for us all!
It comes as a bit of a surprise to me that Nikki and I have never actually reviewed a book by Helen Ellis (except that one time when Ashley sort of did). We’ve discussed her books, Southern Lady Code and American Housewife, multiple times when we used to make more book list posts on Mondays. C’est la vie, we have moved on from that. (Ain’t nobody got time for that mess around here anymore.) Helen Michelle (as she has admitted in Southern Lady Code that her mother calls her, and so now we do too) was born and raised in Alabama and currently lives in New York City with her husband and cats. Besides being one of the most humorous authors we have ever read, Helen Michelle also plays poker professionally. (More on that in a bit.) We love her sass and give-no-effs attitude, and how terribly real she is about everything in life, the good, the hilarious, and the terrible.
Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light: Essays by Helen Ellis is an essay collection filled with tales of friendship, family, and the daily struggles and celebrations of ‘grown-ass women.’ Unlike American Housewife which is filled with short stories that might could be true, every essay from Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light is based on Helen Michelle’s life. From the story of her friend’s battle with breast cancer, to her elderly parents’ downsizing from a four-bedroom house, to her own decision to get plastic surgery – her ‘Doubleday chin’ as she’s calling it – the wit and truth sound like your own best friends telling you about their adventures (or their trials). Oh, my favorite part was during the story of “The Last Garage Sale.” This is where we learn that Helen Michelle’s papa made “Everything for my sister and me [into] an opportunity to gamble.” And she learned to play poker from her father. In that same story, we hear about how Helen Michelle’s younger sister uses the same positive reinforcement tactics with her children – like betting her six year old son a nickel that he doesn’t have to pee before they get in the car (he pees, everyone wins!). Thrown in with all these anecdotes from real life are truth bombs like: “My parents were planning to downsize from their four-bedroom house, where I’d never lived, so I had few sentimental attachments. I am attached to my parents, but when it comes to their stuff (and their parents’ stuff, and their parents’ parents’ stuff), I can take it or leave it.” Girlfriend, yes. I can honestly just leave it. Less stuff, more fun stories!
Any Southern girl will find so much amusement in what Helen Michelle says about us as a collective and how we express our individuality. Did you know that there’s a difference between being a character and being a booze hound. “A character is more of a room-temperature thing out of place. Like a dildo on a coffee table. You can’t believe what you are seeing. But there it is. Right next to the remote.” We will find so much to laugh over when she talks about her life in New York, because we don’t have to experience random people’s nudity on the subway. She speaks of female friendships through the decades and how they evolve and also how having friends older and younger than you by a decade is always necessary to keep you on the proper course.
I can’t say anything else except 10/10 recommend everything Helen Michelle Ellis writes. Five Star Review, Always. Season Pass Holder For Life. Laugh out loud even when she’s talking about the not so fun fact of breast reconstruction after a mastectomy: you don’t get to keep your nipples. That’s both terrible and terribly funny. Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light is a book about life and all the baggage we carry: personal, emotional, friendly, familial, serious, and humorous. Or Seriously Humorous.
~Ashley
Oh readers, what to say about Darling Helen Michelle? I thought Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light: Essays was going to cause marital issues at my house. Here’s the deal, sleep, or lack thereof, causes marital issues with my husband. I don’t have caffeine after 3pm because then I don’t go to sleep at old thirty 9:30 like my husband likes, or even 10:30 which is my usual. So, when I, like I do, laid down to read myself to sleep with this book, I should have known the chapter titled “My Kind of People” wasn’t a great plan. I was laughing so, SO hard and I just knew it was going to cause a problem. Miraculously it didn’t, but y’all, when Ellis shares the specifics of being bet she would say a word of the other people’s choosing on stage during a panel, at a writers conference, where she’d sold a whooping six books, it was worth it. I won’t share the details, but do know her husband describes the whole concept as her “Helen shtick,” or where she shocks people with the contrast between her nice appearance and her unfiltered (or perhaps perfectly filtered) words. Y’all, Helen Michelle is definitely my kind of people.
In Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light: Essays, Ellis refers to her friends as a “grown-ass lady gang” and tells stories of reunions of said gang. She tells about her school and town banning Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret (which, side note, I’m STILL pissed no one handed me as a tween or teen) and her mother driving to the closest town to buy a copy for her. And she regales with a comparison between her southern childhood friends and her New York City friends. These essays are real and vulnerable, while also being funny and inspiring.
I’m very pleased to give Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light: Essays by Helen Ellis a solid five star rating and to say that I’ll gladly read this title again, and again, and I’m ever so grateful my amazing book buddy gifted me a copy for Christmas! This is truly the gift that keeps on giving in all the best ways.
~ Nikki
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