Jenny Lawson is back with a short but hilarious essay about why she is a fan of Halloween. I Choose Darkness is classic Lawson, blending childhood stories with delightful decorating tips, if you want a house with a year-round Christmas tree and a collection of whimsically taxidermied animals, like life-size Ruth Bader Ginsbear, complete with gavel.
Lawson talks about her Halloweens growing up, complete with homemade costumes and concerns about razor blades being slipped into the candy. And the circus peanuts. (She doesn’t go into detail about them, but she should. They were disgusting, and honestly I would have rather gone to a house handing out toothbrushes, because that used to happen too).
She goes on to talk about trick-or-treating in the extremely rural part of Texas where she grew up (she and her sister basically walked around their own house over and over while their mother pretended it was a different house every time). She talks about their yearly Fall Festival, with the Sucker Tree, Cornhole, Haunted Hayride, Costume parade, and the Cakewalk (which I would have loved).
But really, Lawson is talking about her love of Halloween, her love of her family, and her love of being true to herself, no matter what other people or their perfect Instagram accounts say. She is honest and brave, and she shows us all that we can be ourselves. Because no matter how weird we may be, she is far, far, far stranger, and we all love her for that.
I Choose Darkness is only available as an ebook or an audio book. That makes it a tough choice. The audiobook is read by the author herself, with her signature snark and perfect comedic timing. But the ebook has the photos, which are terrible, as so many childhood photos from the ‘70s and ‘80s are, but they add an extra layer of humor and oddness to the story. It’s a tough choice. It was for me, anyway. I ended up doing the only smart thing I could think of and bought both.
