Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

Today's post is on Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere by Maria Bamford. It is 287 pages long and is published by Gallery Books. The cover is yellow with Maria on it in a white dress with flowers in her hair and a silly look on her face. The intended reader is someone who likes memoirs. There is some mild foul language, no sex, and no violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the back of the audiobook- From “weird, scary, ingenious” (The New York Times) stand-up comedian Maria Bamford, a brutally honest and hilariously frenetic memoir about show business, mental health, and the comfort of rigid belief systems—from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, to Suzuki violin training, to Richard Simmons, to 12-step programs.
Maria Bamford is a comedian’s comedian (an outsider among outsiders) and has forever fought to find a place to belong. From struggling with an eating disorder as a child of the 1980s, to navigating a career in the arts (and medical debt and psychiatric institutionalization), she has tried just about every method possible to not only be a part of the world, but to want to be a part of it.
In Bamford’s signature voice, Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult, brings us on a quest to participate in something. With sincerity and transparency, she recounts every anonymous fellowship she has joined (including but not limited to: Debtors Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, and Overeaters Anonymous), every hypomanic episode (from worrying about selling out under capitalism to enforcing union rules on her Netflix TV show set to protect her health), and every easy 1-to-3-step recipe for fudge in between.
Singular and inimitable, Bamford’s memoir explores what it means to keep going, and to be a member of society (or any group she’s invited to) despite not being very good at it. In turn, she hopes to transform isolating experiences into comedy that will make you feel less alone (without turning into a cult following).

Review- A hilarious memoir about a one woman's journey through life, comedy, mental illness, and family. Bamford reads this audiobook and her impersonations of her family and friends are just hysterical. She holds nothing back from her life and her journey with mental illness. Bamford not only has stories about working as a comedian but she includes helpful little recipes from her family about how to handle different problems. Bamford as so many little touches over the course of this book, that make it so very special. I completely recommend this book, I enjoyed it so much. 

I give this book a Five out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this audiobook from my local library. 

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