MONICA HEISEY AND NORA EPHRON: THE ONLY WRITERS I’LL HUNT DOWN OUT-OF-PRINT BOOKS FOR

Reading "SNL Skits" About My Internal Life

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better (by Monica Heisey).  Same Monica. Same.

Picking up I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better was exactly what I needed to start the year. Not only because it’s one of the funniest books I’ve read since Really Good, Actually (also by Monica Heisey—her titles alone are iconic), but also because of the reactions it elicited from anyone who walked past it on my coffee table. I’m sure many of my friends and family assumed I was having some kind of existential crisis. Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t.

As someone who currently has a strong aversion to self-help culture, this book could not be further from that type of writing. It was like reading SNL skits about my internal life, where my own spirals turned into a comedy routine.

Originally published in 2015, I went on a fucking journey trying to track down this book. After multiple calls to bookstores, hours of contemplation over whether to just buy the single copy on Amazon, and a deep dive into online thrift options, I finally found it at a random bookstore in Arizona. Other than a few obvious references to lace jumpsuits and chevron, this book felt like I was reading about everything I’m going through today (ten years later) as a woman in her mid-twenties.

I never grew out of my love for Pinterest, and Monica’s A Day in the Life of Pinterest essay had me dying of laughter. “The sun shines through Pinterest’s upcycled stained-glass window, catching the mirrored elements on the mobile she crafted with her mother.” Although my recommendations on Pinterest have changed a bit, Monica personified exactly how my feed looked in 2015. I couldn’t scroll down the page more than an inch without seeing repurposed windows for photos or paintings—so of course, I did exactly this for my college bedroom.

“Getting out of her cast-iron vintage bed, Pinterest nearly trips on a pile of antlers. Whoops!” I do love a cast-iron bed, but I never bought into the fancy antler trend. If I had a dollar for every antler I saw screwed into someone’s wall—both online and in real life—I’d never have to work again.

“She grabs a vintage teacup and throws it on the ground. ‘OOOOOOOPRAH!!!!!’ She yells, her eyes wild. She gathers the remains of the teacup into a tidy line and snorts it.” I’m obsessed with this part. OF COURSE Pinterest could never keep up the perfect image without needing some sort of fix—it’d be nearly impossible if she were a real-life human. The perfect Pinterest board definitely drove me to madness a time or two, and eventually, I learned to stop incessantly trying to copy everything I saw and just use it to look at pretty things and give a visual to my ideas.

Eating in Bed: We CAN Have It All! I’ve never felt so seen reading this essay title. Eating in bed is one of my specialties and greatest joys in life. I mean, who wouldn’t want to melt into the coziest place on earth with their favorite food and waste away while binging a show for hours on end? I’m not being sarcastic—I’m dead serious—who wouldn’t want that?

“You’re a strong, smart, independent woman. You work hard, you play hard, and this weekend, you want to spend your precious leisure time as God HERSELF intended: eating spicy foods in bed.” Thank you, Monica Heisey, for putting this feeling and primal need so perfectly. This is what I want to do, and I won't listen to any gurus of any kind telling me it’s “unhealthy.”

Not only does Monica validate this pull to eat in my favorite place, but she talks about how to do it well. “The real issue is not IF you should eat in bed, but HOW, and the answer is: carefully, and with the below tips in mind.” From the fabric of your sheets to which foods to avoid so you don’t stink up your room in a disgusting way, this is the type of “self-help” I want and need.

Now you can see why, after finishing I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better, I was only interested in reading anything Monica Heisey had written or exploring books from writers who were similar to her. This is where Nora Ephron enters my story.

A well-known icon who I’d heard about many times but hadn’t yet experienced personally, I immediately went on a deep internet search for her book Heartburn after reading an interview about how she had inspired Monica’s writing. I’m now officially in my Nora Ephron era and consuming anything and everything she’s ever created.

I then spent hours trying to buy a used version online (I wanted the pink cover with the fork and ring, not the reissued cover with the BURNING HEART EMOJI—honestly, it’s an insult to her memory), but only on a website where I felt comfortable entering my card information. Eventually, the stars aligned, and I bought my copy of Heartburn from a girl in Texas. It’s in my “currently reading” section on Goodreads, so a debrief will come at another time. For now, I’ll just be obsessing over these revolutionary women.