Reading log: Dana Schwartz: Choose Your Own Disaster

Published by Grand Central Publishing


The author, Dana Schwartz, is the creator of the Twitter account @GuyInYourMFA which skewers precisely the tone of the posturing male writer type who infest Starbucks, laptops open, working on their groundbreaking novel, or rather talking about it. So I expected wit and intelligence.  I didn't expect so much emotion, or mild trauma described dispassionately.

The title refers to the structural conceit of the 'mostly true' memoir - so that each stage of adolescence and young adulthood is described as a stable state which requires a definite step to progress from. 

In practice, it can be read straight through, without all that tedious placeholding that the perils of  Choose Your Own Adventure books required.  The book is less funny but much more insightful than I expected; well worth reading.