Living It Up

by Karen Finley

In Enough Is Enough, Karen Finley lampooned the self-help genre with weekly meditations showing us how to make the most of our dysfunctionality. In Living It Up, she trains her blazing wit and insight on the tyrannical Myth of the Perfect Homemaker.
With the indomitable ingenuity and can-do spirit of a manic Martha Stewart, Ms. Finley takes us month-by-month through a year of fabulous living - from dictating New Year's resolutions to friends and family, to growing marigolds in your armpit in June, to knitting sandwich bags for a back-to-school surprise, to getting a head start on the perfect Christmas by chopping down a forty-foot tree and saving it in your freezer. In addition to such seasonal delights, Living It Up offers resourceful everyday activities and crafts, like making bathmats and coasters from the hair that collects in the tub drain, and how to throw the perfect divorce party.
Illustrated throughout with the author's own distinctive drawings, Living It Up offers hope to frustrated do-it-yourselfers everywhere in a screamingly funny addition to the literature of house and home.

149 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

KAREN FINLEYs raw and transgressive performances have long provoked controversy and debate. She has appeared and exhibited her visual art, performances, and plays internationally. The author of many books including A Different Kind of Intimacy , George & Martha , and Shock Treatment , she is a professor at the Tisch School of Art and Public Policy at NYU.

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Reviews

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wouldn't call it out-and-out funny, but let's say it's amusingly grotesque. The drawings are so crazy!

[sheena d! · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is my favorite karen finley book.

[Tami · Rating 1 out of 5]

supposed to be funny? Not to me. Couldn't get past the first chapter. Maybe the rest are better but I'm not going to bother to find out.

[Kimberly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Definitely not a read-straight-through book. And I wasn't impressed with the "humor". It wasn't terribly witty or inventive. Just weird.

[Cherie · Rating 3 out of 5]

B+ More tongue in cheek "domestic," housekeeping and decorating tips. Funny, light read to bring to the bathtub, on the subway after a cranky day at work, or at a noisy poolside.