Review: Idiot by Laura Clery & Beautiful Quotes

Publisher: Gallery Books

Published on: September 24th 2019

Genres: Non-fiction, Memoirs

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis

From YouTube star and Facebook Video sensation Laura Clery comes a collection of comedic essays in the vein of We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby and You’ll Grow Out of It by Jessi Klein.

Laura Clery makes a living by sharing inappropriate comedy sketches with millions of strangers on the Internet. She writes songs about her anatomy, talks trash about her one-eyed rescue pug, and sexually harasses her husband, Stephen. And it pays the bills!

Now, in her first-ever book, Laura recounts how she went from being a dangerously impulsive, broke, unemployable, suicidal, cocaine-addicted narcissist, crippled by fear and hopping from one toxic romance to the next…to a more-happy-than-not, somewhat rational, meditating, vegan yogi with good credit, a great marriage, a fantastic career, and four unfortunate-looking rescue animals. Still, above all, Laura remains an amazingly talented, adorable, and vulnerable, self-described…Idiot.

With her signature brand of offbeat, no-holds-barred humor, Idiot introduces you to a wildly original—and undeniably relatable—new voice.

My Thoughts

Oh my god! This book was just awesome…. Since a few months I have been following Laura Clery’s channel on Facebook and I really enjoy her videos. Her videos are so so funny, they put a smile on my face even on my gloomiest days. On this channel I first got to know about her book Idiot, she used to act out small snippets from the book. And she used to live this acts at big cliffhangers, and asks us to read the book to know more. When I first started watching these acts, I was not very eager to read her book because I am not a non-fiction fan and I had never read a memoir before, so I thought I wouldn’t enjoy the book. But slowly I got intrigued enough to surpass my initial scepticism and decided to give this book a read and I am so glad I did.

This book was a fun read, it was inspirational and one of the best books I ever read. In this book Laura started from her childhood and continued until almost recently. She talked about her friends, her drug abuse, her abusive relationship and a lot of other issues, but still this book never felt too heavy. This book was very impactful but it never felt too heavy because she never lost touch of the humour. Laura made us laugh even in the most serious situations.

For me this book was not only a memoir but also a self help book because I was able to relate to Laura so much in this book. Me and Laura Clery are as different as people can be in terms of goals, family, etc. She was from a liberal family with a goal of becoming an actor. And I am from a strict family with a goal of having a good salaried job. I have never done drugs nor have I ever been drunk in my life. And she is total opposite. But still I was able to draw some equivalence between some of her experiences and mine. There was this one part where she talks about how she was always too high to work on a script she was very passionate about, similarly in my situation I get distracted way too easily and go and watch web series or tv series instead of studying for the exam I am very passionate to crack. So this way I was able to draw equivalence between her and my situation in plenty of areas. I mostly don’t read self-help books because I find them to be very preachy, but this book while not being a self help book taught me way more than any self-help book ever could.

I just had one real issue with this book, and that too was way to minor to warrant a deduction of even .005 star. There was this part where she talks about the platforms where she made videos in. First she talks about Instagram, then she talks YouTube, and then she talks about getting million followers which I assumed is for YouTube but later she said it is for fb and insta… this part was a bit confusing… this part is over I think in 2 pages, so it didn’t bother me too much.

I will recommend this book to everyone. If you think that you are not a addict so you won’t be able to connect with this book, then you are wrong you will love it as much. And if you are like me who thinks that memoirs are serious so you should skip this, then just give this one a read, you will be laughing your ass for atleast 80% of the book. Though I recommend this book to everyone, I think this book would be better suited if you are student who is preparing for an life changing exam or job or if you are someone who is thinking about opening his/her company or you are a YouTuber or actress or entertainment content creator who is getting overwhelmed about everything.

View all my reviews

Quotes

“Like I said, I knew I was going to make it . . . but seventeen-year-old Laura thought that this meant I didn’t have to work for it. That success would just find me. That’s how life worked, right? #notatalldelusional.”

“For the record, I am not saying this is magic. I’m saying that a shift in your focus from what you don’t want to what you do want is more powerful than we could ever imagine, and it works in mysterious ways. There was no aspect of this success I could have truly planned for.”

“How did I ditch all the distractions and get here? I saw that my addiction, my fear, and my insecurity were getting in the way of my purpose and I changed, even when I thought change was impossible.”

Have you read Idiot? Did you like it?