I Hate Everyone, Starting With Me (Joan Rivers)

In I Hate Everyone, Joan Rivers dishes on all the things she hates. With her usual shocking honesty, political incorrectness and multiple swearwords. This book is a long list of Joan’s grave irritations, which include old people, dating and Anne Frank.

Here's an excerpt:

“For those of you thinking, Geez, Joan seems a little angry, you’re half right. I am angry. I’m also fed up. I’m fed up with the morons and losers and cretins who are cluttering up the planet. But being fed up and angry is better than being depressed. Psychologists tell us that depression is just anger turned inward, but I say, why waste your time? It is what it is and quite frankly I’d rather be angry than depressed. Why? Because antidepressants can cause bloating—and I hate bloating! (I need to go back and add bloating to the list of things I hate. Is there anything worse than not being able to fit into a size two Valentino? I think not. Talk about depressing.)”

What I’ve just read is the tamest thing in the book. If you’re easily offended, read something else. But remember what one reviewer said, ‘This is an awful book that’s so offensive I ought to throw it out the window. But I can't, ‘cos I can't stop laughing.’

To go back a bit, Joan Rivers is an award-winning entertainment person – actress, talk show host, comedian. She’s also that woman on the red carpets and on E!’s Fashion Police with the frightening plastic surgery. She’s 79 and looks like a 69-year-old who’s had frightening plastic surgery. But she’s really, really funny…

On TV. Not so much in writing, where every paragraph has a punchline. Don’t get me wrong: I love Joan. But this book should perhaps have been a DVD.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (Rhoda Janzen)

I love books about cults. The more polygamous marriages, multiple children, bizarre religious practices and outlandish views, the better. I also love novels set in the Amish community, the Mormon community and the Quaker community because, as a Jew, I find insights into little-known or oft-misunderstood religions fascinating.

It’s strange, then, that in my literary travels, I’d never come across Mennonites.

They’re a devout but very friendly and unusually tolerant (of non-Mennonites, that is) sect of Christian Anabaptist denomination, with their origins in German and Dutch-speaking central Europe. It’s from the Mennonites that the Amish broke away in the 17th century because the former were ‘too liberal’. I mean, have you ever?

But this little write-up makes them sound very boring, when they’re quite divine. The book in question, Rhoda Janzen’s Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, reveals the eccentricities, naiveties and family foibles with which the author is faced when she moves back home after having been abandoned by her suddenly-gay husband.

Her people welcome her back with open arms and weird advice, like “Why not date your first cousin? He owns a tractor!” This, from Janzen’s mother. Her father is a theologian and doyen of the community, so Janzen grew up in a traditional household. Most things were banned, she explains, like "Drinking, dancing, smoking, sex outside of marriage, sex inside of marriage, gambling, playing cards, foul language like the word 'fool', Ouija boards, slumber parties, divorce, Prada…”

Written with self-effacing, delicious humour – and tackling universal issues like faith, love and family, Mennonite is both moving and absolutely hilarious. I adored it. 

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za