Book ~ "I Regret Nothing: A Memoir" (2015) Jen Lancaster

From Goodreads ~ Sure Jen has made mistakes. She spent all her money from a high-paying job on shoes, clothes and spa treatments. She then carried a Prada bag to the unemployment office. She wrote a whole memoir about dieting … but didn’t lose weight. She embarked on a quest for cultural enlightenment that only cemented her love for John Hughes movies and Kraft American Singles. She tried to embrace everything Martha Stewart, while living with a menagerie of rescue cats and dogs (glitter… everywhere).

Mistakes are one thing; regrets are another.

After a girls’ weekend in Savannah makes her realize that she is - yikes! - middle-aged (binge watching is so the new binge drinking), Jen decides to make a bucket list and seize the day, even if that means having her tattoo removed at one hundred times the cost of putting it on.

From attempting a juice cleanse to studying Italian, from learning to ride a bike to starting a new business, and from sampling pasta in Rome to training for a 5K, Jen is turning a mid-life crisis into a mid-life opportunity, sharing her sometimes bumpy - but always hilarious - attempts to better her life … again. 

At 46, Jen is married to Fletcher, able to make a living writing and mom to cats and dogs.  It hits her that she is middle-aged and she wants to move forward with no regrets ...

"At my age, I feel like I'm halfway to the finish line and life's too short to do what I'm sure to hate."

She has decided that she won't say "no" to her friends so she'll have new and different experiences and she'll create a bucket list ... she relearns how to ride a bike, takes Italian lessons, goes on vacation to Italy, meets an icon, turns her hobby of refinishing furniture into a profit, and more.  But it's also the time she looks inwards and wants to start getting healthier physically and emotionally (apparently she ended up losing 70 pounds).

I liked the writing style ... it's funny and sarcastic.  I think she would be fun to be around.  I found in this book, though, that she was more honest and less snarky at times, especially when she describes her feelings of being overweight.

I liked her use of sidebars ... I hated it when she used footnotes in her earlier memoirs (too much distraction having to look down then back up then down then back up).  I liked that there were some pictures in the books, especially of her dogs.  As a head's up, there is swearing.

Though not a fan of her fiction, I've read all her memoirs and have enjoyed them for the most part.

Book ~ "The Tao of Martha: My Year of LIVING, Or Why I'm Never Getting All That Glitter Off of the Dog" (2013) Jen Lancaster

From Goodreads ~ One would think that with Jen Lancaster’s impressive list of bestselling self-improvement memoirs, that she would have it all together by now.

One would be wrong.

Jen’s still a little rough around the edges. Suffice it to say, she’s no Martha Stewart. And that is exactly why Jen is going to Martha-up and live her life according to the advice of America’s overachieving older sister - the woman who turns lemons into lavender-infused lemonade.

By immersing herself in Martha’s media empire, Jen will embark on a yearlong quest to take herself, her house, her husband (and maybe even her pets) to the next level - from closet organization to craft making, from party planning to kitchen prep.

Maybe Jen can go four days without giving herself food poisoning if she follows Martha’s dictates on proper storage.  Maybe she can grow closer to her girlfriends by taking up their boring-ass hobbies like knitting and sewing   Maybe she can finally rid her workout clothes of meatball stains by using Martha’s laundry tips.  Maybe she can create a more meaningful anniversary celebration than just getting drunk in the pool with her husband ... again.  And maybe, just maybe, she’ll discover that the key to happiness does, in fact, lie in Martha’s perfectly arranged cupboards and artfully displayed charcuterie platters.

Or maybe not.

2011 is coming to an end and Jen and Fletcher have been living in their house, along with their three dogs and four cats, for a while.  Something is missing for Jen and she wants to be happier.  She spends 2012 following the advice of Martha Stewart, reading her books, magazines and website, organizing her house, her life and herself.

Lancaster celebrates each of the holidays (Halloween was a hoot!) and writes about  taking care of her pets, taking care of her rose garden, wanting to grow zucchinis, having an overabundance of frozen bananas, learning to knit, cooking from scratch, having a mammogram and lots more.

I liked the tao of Maisy ... be awesome, give awesome, get awesome.

I liked the writing style ... it's funny and sarcastic.  I think she would be fun to be around and her caring of others comes through.  As a head's up, there is swearing.

I've read quite a few of Lancaster's books, though it's been a while, so it's time to catch up.

Book ~ "Jeneration X" (2012) Jen Lancaster

From Goodreads ~ In Such a Pretty Fat, Jen Lancaster learned how to come to terms with her body. In My Fair Lazy, she expanded her mind. Now the New York Times bestselling author gives herself - and her generation - a kick in the X, by facing her greatest challenge to date: acting her age. 

Jen is finally ready to put away childish things (except her Barbie Styling Head, of course) and embrace the investment-making, mortgage-carrying, life-insurance-having adult she’s become. From getting a mammogram to volunteering at a halfway house, she tackles the grown-up activities she’s resisted for years, and with each rite of passage she completes, she’ll uncover a valuable - and probably humiliating - life lesson that will ease her path to full-fledged, if reluctant, adulthood.

It's been a couple years since I've read a book by this author ... this is the seventh I've read by her.

In this book, Jen and Fletch have just bought a house and are settling in to country life.  She recounts her experiences in wanting to become a volunteer, adopting a rescue puppy, going to a Glee concert, experiencing power outages, getting a salon blowout in Texas, meeting with an estate planner and more.  At the end of each chapter there is a "reluctant adult lesson" learned.

I liked the writing style ... it's funny and sarcastic.  It was a fun read if you don't it too seriously.  As a head's up, there is swearing.

I'm sure she'd be fun to be around, though it sounds like she has a big personality.  She seems caring of her friends and is a huge animal lover.  She spends a fair bit of time promoting her friend, Stacey's books ... I've read one and gave it 1/5 so this didn't reflect well on Jen.

Book ~ If You Were Here" (2011) Jen Lancaster

From Goodreads ~ Told in the uproariously entertaining voice readers have come to expect from Jen Lancaster, If You Were Here follows Amish-zombie-teen- romance author Mia and her husband Mac (and their pets) through the alternately frustrating, exciting, terrifying-but always funny-process of buying and renovating their first home in the Chicago suburbs that John Hughes's movies made famous.

Along their harrowing renovation journey, Mia and Mac get caught up in various wars with the homeowners' association, meet some less-than-friendly neighbors, and are joined by a hilarious cast of supporting characters, including a celebutard ex- landlady.

As they struggle to adapt to their new surrounding s- with Mac taking on the renovations himself - Mia and Mac will discover if their marriage is strong enough to survive months of DIY renovations.

This is the sixth book I've read by this author. I like her writing style ... it's funny and sarcastic. My one complaint about her style has always been her use of footnotes. I find them distracting having to look down then back up to find my spot. Just include them in the paragraph.

This is her first fiction ... the rest of have been memoirs of her life. Lancaster may as well have just kept real names as they are so similar ... I could definitely hear Lancaster's voice. Mia is really Jen; Mac is really Fletcher. Even her pets are there. I have nothing against them ... they are very thinly disguised. Her Polish grandmother was fun.

Mia and Mac buy a mansion ... hard to feel sorry for them since they have like three (or more) bathrooms, a lake, lots of room that they will never use. They have spent a ton of money for it plus megabucks to restore it. All will be okay once Jen Mia finishes her latest book ... if that's the case, I wanna be an author! They did the work themselves ... keep in mind that they have no experience and Fletcher Mac wants to figure it out on his own rather than doing any research. Crazy considering he's dealing with electricity! It was way over the top and irresponsible for them to buy this house and fix it up just because it was featured in a John Hughes movie. And I couldn't believe that Vienna had that much control on their lives.

All in all though, I'd recommend this if you are looking for a fun sarcastic read. If Lancaster writes another fiction, I hope she steps out of her comfort zone and truly makes it a work of fiction.

Book ~ "Bright Lights, Big Ass" (2007) Jen Lancaster

From Goodreads ~ Jen Lancaster hates to burst your happy little bubble, but life in the big city isn't all it's cracked up to be. Contrary to what you see on TV and in the movies, most urbanites aren't party-hopping in slinky dresses and strappy stilettos. But lucky for us, Lancaster knows how to make the life of the lower crust mercilessly funny and infinitely entertaining. 

Whether she's reporting rude neighbors to Homeland Security, harboring a crush on her grocery store clerk, or fighting-and losing-the Battle of the Stairmaster- Lancaster explores how silly, strange, and not-so-fabulous real city living can be. And if anyone doesn't like it, they can kiss her big, fat, pink, puffy down parka.

This is Lancaster's second book ... there are five in total (I've read the other four).

In this book, things are turning around for Jen and her husband, Fletch. Her first book, Bitter is the New Black, is just about to come out and she has to take temp jobs that she is overqualified for to survive.

Her sarcastic humour, which I enjoy, is there. I love reading about her interaction with her spoiled dogs and cats.

I must admit that I skipped over when she discussed politics ... I don't know and I don't care.

And her use of footnotes still irritates me.

All in all, though, I'd recommend this book if you are looking for a funny mindless memoir of no one famous.

Book ~ "My Fair Lazy" (2010) Jen Lancaster

From Goodreads ~ Readers have followed Jen Lancaster through job loss, sucky city living, weight loss attempts, and 1980s nostalgia. Now Jen chronicles her efforts to achieve cultural enlightenment, with some hilarious missteps and genuine moments of inspiration along the way. And she does so by any means necessary: reading canonical literature, viewing classic films, attending the opera, researching artisan cheeses, and even enrolling in etiquette classes to improve her social graces.

In Jen's corner is a crack team of experts, including Page Six socialites, gourmet chefs, an opera aficionado, and a master sommelier. She may discover that well-regarded, high-priced stinky cheese tastes exactly as bad as it smells, and that her love for Kraft American Singles is forever. But one thing's for certain: Eliza Doolittle's got nothing on Jen Lancaster-and failure is an option.

I just discovered Lancaster in January and have read four of her five books, which are memoirs with themes.

This one is about her realization that she is addicted to reality TV and feels she has to become more cultured for an upcoming author's event. With the help of her friends, she experiences live theatre, opera, cheese and wine pairings, and much more.

I like her sense of humour. When I'm reading her books, it feels like we're sitting with a glass of wine yakking.

Plus she is a huge animal lover so that makes her okay with me!

Her continuous use of footnotes still annoys me, though.

Book ~ "Pretty in Plaid" (2009) Jen Lancaster

From Goodreads ~ In Pretty in Plaid, Jen Lancaster reveals how she developed the hubris that perpetually gets her into trouble. 

Using fashion icons of her youth to tell her hilarious and insightful stories, readers will meet the girl she used to be. Think Jen Lancaster was always "like David Sedaris with pearls and a super-cute handbag?" (Jennifer Coburn) Think again. She was a badge-hungry Junior Girl Scout with a knack for extortion, an aspiring sorority girl who didn't know her Coach from her Louis Vuitton, and a budding executive who found herself bewildered by her first encounter with a fax machine. 

In this humorous and touching memoir, Jen Lancaster looks back on her life-and wardrobe-before bitter was the new black and shows us a young woman not so very different than the rest of us. The author who showed us what it was like to wait in line at the unemployment office with a Prada bag, how living in the city can actually suck, and that losing weight can be fun with a trainer named Barbie and enough Ambien is ready to take you on a hilarious and heartwarming trip down memory lane in her shoes (and very pretty ones at that).

After all my growling a couple weeks ago about not particularly liking Lancaster in Bitter is the New Black, I liked her in this book. There was no arrogance or shallowness ... just a comic and sarcastic tone as she talks about past experiences.

I remember very well the scary styles of the 1980s (she spends a lot of the book in this era).

I'd recommend this book ... I enjoyed it much more than Bitter is the New Black and will continue to read future books of hers.

Book ~ "Bitter is the New Black" (2006) Jen Lancaster

From Goodreads ~ This is the story of how a haughty former sorority girl went from having a household income of almost a quarter-million dollars to being evicted from a ghetto apartment... It's a modern Greek tragedy, as defined by Roger Dunkle in The Classical Origins of Western Culture: a story in which "the central character, called a tragic protagonist or hero, suffers some serious misfortune which is not accidental and therefore meaningless, but is significant in that the misfortune is logically connected." In other words? The bitch had it coming.

I enjoyed her Such a Pretty Fat last month. The writing was fun and sarcastic.

I found that I really disliked her in the beginning of Bitter is the New Black ... she was so shallow, ignorant and arrogant. I almost didn't keep going ... but I did.

Jen and her husband went from being cocky and having it all ... to being unemployed and having to give up everything (they were pennies away from having to move in with her parents). At no point, though, did I ever feel sorry for them.

Most of the time, it's a fun read so I'd recommend it for that.

Her use of footnotes on pretty almost freakin' page drove me crazy!

Book ~ "Such a Pretty Fat" (2008) Jen Lancaster

From Goodreads ~ "To whom the fat rolls … I'm tired of books where a self-loathing heroine is teased to the point where she starves herself skinny in hopes of a fabulous new life. And I hate the message that women can't possibly be happy until we all fit into our skinny jeans. I don't find these stories uplifting; they make me want to hug these women and take them out for fizzy champagne drinks and cheesecake and explain to them that until they figure out their insides, their outsides don't matter. 

Unfortunately, being overweight isn't simply a societal issue that can be fixed with a dose healthy of positive self-esteem. It’s a health matter, and here on the eve of my fortieth year, I've learned I have to make changes so I don't, you know, die. Because what good is finally being able to afford a pedicure if I lose a foot to adult onset diabetes?"

A different take on one woman's quest to lose weight.

Jen is extremely sarcastic. You are either going to love her or hate her. I enjoyed her writing style and could relate to a lot of what she wrote about. It was funny to read about her experiences with Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers (that's what I'm doing but minus the meetings).

One complaint, though, is that I hated the footnotes on the bottom of most pages ... there are 175 in all. I found it really annoying having to look up and down all the time and it interrupted the flow.