Vacationland
Ratings30
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings30
Average rating4.1
Although his career as a bestselling author and on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart was founded on fake news and invented facts, in 2016 that routine didn’t seem as funny to John Hodgman anymore. Everyone is doing it now.
Disarmed of falsehood, he was left only with the awful truth: John Hodgman is an older white male monster with bad facial hair, wandering like a privileged Sasquatch through three wildernesses: the hills of Western Massachusetts where he spent much of his youth; the painful beaches of Maine that want to kill him (and some day will); and the metaphoric haunted forest of middle age that connects them.
Vacationland collects these real life wanderings, and through them you learn of the horror of freshwater clams, the evolutionary purpose of the mustache, and which animals to keep as pets and which to kill with traps and poison. There is also some advice on how to react when the people of coastal Maine try to sacrifice you to their strange god.
Though wildly, Hodgmaniacally funny as usual, it is also a poignant and sincere account of one human facing his forties, those years when men in particular must stop pretending to be the children of bright potential they were and settle into the failing bodies of the wiser, weird dads that they are.
Source: https://www.booksontape.com/book/557020/vacationland/
Reviews with the most likes.
I sat on this book for a while. From what I heard from all the author's interviews, this was a personal recalling of his awkward youth. I haven't been in the mood to read semi-serious confessions about a weird family. Once I started reading it, I realized I looked at the book in the wrong light. Part of the book is stories about growing up in a unique family. And part of the stories are about the author's awkward youth. Turns out all the stories are hilarious
Mr. Hodgman is a particularly good writer and knows how to tell a good story. The book was a delight. I recommend it.
This is extremely John Hodgman, and I like John Hodgman.
There is a LOT of “I know this is a rich white person problem to have, but...” and I appreciate that he's self-aware and up front about it, and overall I enjoyed the book, but after awhile it was like I GET IT YOU HAVE TWO VACATION HOUSES AND THAT'S STRESSFUL IF NOT RELATABLE.
There's also some moving stuff about anxiety and grief and the loss of his mother. And of course, as you would expect, a lot of wryly persnicketty humor.
John Hodgman's Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches is what he refers to as his own brand of white privilege comedy wherein he talk about splitting his time between two summer homes in Maine and Western Massachusetts. Super relatable!
He shares personal anecdotes about dining with neighbour Black Francis of the Pixies, buying a wooden Jimmy Steele peapod (it's a boat) and getting high while speaking at colleges. Sounds like the insufferable musings of white male privilege gone slightly to seed - and you're not wrong ...except for the insufferable part.
Maybe he'll always be the nebbish PC to the smug Mac of commercial fame but it's hard to dislike Hodgman. He's a charming storyteller, altogether aware of how lucky he is without being disingenuously modest or humblebraggy. He's just bringing us along as he settles into middle age and wrestles with what that means. I'm here for that.
