As I’ve written before, one of the real perks of working where I do is that I so often have the opportunity to meet and befriend smart, creative, interesting, quirky, funny, and extremely cool people… some of whom do very cool and enviable things like writing books that get published by actual, honest-to-god publishers and turn up in actual, honest-to-god bookstores and such, as my friend Diane Olson did last year.
Well, it’s happened again.
Jen Larsen used to be a — how do I put this? — a large woman. She thought, as many people do, that if she could just lose the weight, all her troubles would be over. She’d magically become confident, dynamic, beautiful, successful… that she would finally like herself. And so, like so many other people in a society obsessed with the quick fix, she underwent gastric bypass surgery. And the weight came off. But then Jen found, to her surprise, that her problems were still there… and she was no longer sure who the hell she was. Her memoir of the whole experience, Stranger Here: How Weight-Loss Surgery Transformed My Body and Messed with My Head, has just been released. I haven’t read it yet, but I know from my personal experiences with her that she’s witty, funny, self-deprecating, and brutally honest, and I’m certain her book is probably much the same. It promises to be an incredible read. Here’s a nice little animated trailer for it:
That’s Jen herself doing the voiceover, by the way. I’m sure she would deny it, but I think she’s a great reader. Stranger Here has already gotten some good reviews, and Diane Olson and I are taking bets on how long it takes before Jen is invited to meet with Oprah. In the meantime, she’ll be signing books in Salt Lake next week at the King’s English Bookshop; details here.
I highly recommend buying the book from your local bookseller, of course, but you can also get it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Jen’s website is here.
(Incidentally, Diane’s book — A Nature Lover’s Almanac: Kinky Bugs, Stealthy Critters, Prosperous Plants & Celestial Wonders — is still available! And still wonderful!)
