With laugh-out-loud funny parenting observations, the New York Times bestselling author and award-winning comedian delivers a book that is perfect for anyone who has ever raised a child, been a child, or refuses to stop acting like one.In 2016 comedian Mike Birbiglia and poet Jennifer Hope Stein took their fourteen-month-old daughter Oona to the Nantucket Film Festival. When the festival director … When the festival director picked them up at the airport she asked Mike if he would perform at the storytelling night. She said, “The theme of the stories is jealousy.”
Jen quipped, “You’re jealous of Oona. You should talk about that.”
And so Mike began sharing some of his darkest and funniest thoughts about the decision to have a child. Jen and Mike revealed to each other their sides of what had gone down during Jen’s pregnancy and that first year with their child. Over the next couple years, these stories evolved into a Broadway show, and the more Mike performed it the more he heard how it resonated—not just with parents but also people who resist all kinds of change.
So he pored over his journals, dug deeper, and created this book: The New One: Painfully True Stories From a Reluctant Dad. Along with hilarious and poignant stories he has never shared before, these pages are sprinkled with poetry Jen wrote as she navigated the same rocky shores of new parenthood.
So here it is. This book is an experiment—sort of like a family.
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I enjoy his comedy shows, and he’s really progressed since having a child. Lots more to joke about, I guess. Some of the stories in the book are small parts of his comedy routine fleshed out, which tells the entire story. Loved the book. Read it after you see one of his comedy specials and you’ll laugh even harder.
My fiancé introduced me to Birbiglia’s stand-up a few years back, thinking he has a sense of humor I’d enjoy. He was right and then some! I love all of Birbiglia’s works so reading this book was an obvious choice.
It was hilarious and painfully real and wonderful and necessary. It’s the perfect blend of humor and seriousness. The topics are ones I don’t think we talk about enough. Mike and Clo – her name is Jen – both approach these “difficult” subjects with a raw honesty that’s incredibly refreshing. I appreciated how much they shared of their personal lives and their journeys.
It’s nice to know you’re not the only one who feels these things or thinks these things. The sense of a shared experience that they create with their words is lovely and we need more of it. Plus, I basically laughed out loud the whole time I was reading it!
Go pick this up. Don’t wait to experience it’s wonderfulness.
I love that he and his wife, oblivious to each other, did their own documenting of their journey to parenthood and then made a book about it. It had me laughing out loud frequently, I found their honesty to be refreshing and hilarious.
I really enjoyed the audiobook because you can hear him laughing and/or smiling at his own jokes/comments and it made me smile along with him.
It was fun and a nice switch-up from my recent reads.
Life is not the same after having children. It’s delusional to pretend otherwise. But Mike Birbiglia and J. Hope Stein have not only survived, they’re making their most hilarious and truthful art yet. This book might save your best friend’s life.
Mike Birbiglia and J. Hope Stein have written the seminal parenting tome–side-splittingly funny from the first word to the last delicious bite. It’s a page-turner, wise and wise-assed, the comic hit of the year. Whether you’ve been a parent or ever had one: you’ll love this knockout.
This is a brilliant, funny, big-hearted version of he-said, she-said. Birbiglia and Stein trade jokes and poems and splendid storytelling about their roundabout stumble into parenthood. It’s hilarious, humane, often beautiful, and absolutely captivating.
Mike Birbiglia is one of my all-time favorite comedians. I think it’s his honesty combined with the sort of guileless storytelling nature of his delivery. He invites you into his life, and his life is sort of like your life with all the ups and downs and trials and tragedies, and he shows you how to look at all the hard things and find the humor in them.
Proving that, he’s written this book about having a child. I will tell you that having a child is one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. And I’m not the dad in this scenario. I’m the other side of the story. But it was refreshing and real and relatable to read about the struggles of bringing a child into the world and redefining family.
There’s so much honesty here and some of it HAD to be hard to write. But it resonated. I laughed out loud so many times, but I also nodded along in solidarity. He did it again – he took all the hard things in life and made them funny and honestly, the world needs more of this.
The New One was beautiful, funny, raw and real. No surprise here. An easy five stars.