Liveblog

In the early morning of Mar. 17, 2013, Boyle resolved: “I will be liveblogging everything i[sic] do, think, feel, and say, to the best of my ability.” Originally posted to her personal Tumblr, the project is collected as a 700-page tome. Boyle makes clear from the first page that “**THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE INTERESTING**,” and, more often than not, she keeps that promise—unless a reader thinks it’s riveting that on Apr. 8, 2013, at 8:31 p.m., Boyle “ate baba ganoush and three rice cakes.” Nevertheless, the book is frequently funny, clever, and even heartwarming. Over the six months chronicled, Boyle complicates things with her ex-boyfriend Zachary, moves to New York with her cats Alvie and Shirley, contemplates a “realistic course of action” to becoming an astronaut, has a Kafkaesque DMV experience (the only kind), and does enough Xanax, Adderall, morphine, crack cocaine, Vyvanse, noopept, heroin, nicotine, and Monster energy drink to give Hunter S. Thompson a run for his money. Indeed, calculating how many days Boyle has been awake, or wincing when she ingests more amphetamines at 3:03 a.m. and operates a motor vehicle, offers some of the book’s most page-turning thrills. Boyle’s story, of a 20-something trying to get her life together, is universal and relatable. Though not a narrative in any conventional sense, this is a riveting concept and a challenging volume. [em](Sept.) [/em]