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The Book of Eleven: An Itemized Collection of Brain Lint
Presents random thoughts on different subjects, including movies, restaurants, death, olives, sex, and answering machines
122 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1998
About the author
Amy Krouse Rosenthal
89 books1,100 followersSHORT BIO:
Amy Krouse Rosenthal was.
She divided her time.
NOT SO SHORT BIO:
Amy Krouse Rosenthal was a person who liked to make things.
Some things she liked to make include:
Children's books. (Little Pea, Spoon, DuckRabbit)
Grown-up books. (Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life)
Short films. (The Beckoning of Lovely, The Money Tree)
Guided journals. (The Belly Book)
Something out of nothing. (see above)
A longtime contributor to WBEZ and to the TED conference,
Amy lived with her family in Chicago and online at whoisamy.com.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
March 15, 2017
probably my favorite book
read again on Monday 13/3/17, the day she died
read again on Monday 13/3/17, the day she died
January 12, 2024
I loved it.
Plain, simple.
It appeals to me wholeheartedly.
Plain, simple.
It appeals to me wholeheartedly.
February 25, 2019
Just a nice little book of 11 thoughts per subject. I read it in less than an hour but will treasure it forever. RIP Amy.
June 2, 2008
Very fun! i found myself thinking either that i wondered why i had never noticed what she was pointing out, or feeling better because someone else was admitting to thinking something that i have often wondered!
November 11, 2019
I miss Amy Krouse Rosenthal. I know she can't read this review, but I still want to send this out into the universe: Amy Krouse Rosenthal didn't think like other people; she was fresh and alive and fun and fascinating and remarkable.
This was her first published book. It is probably not her strongest book, but, hey, I'm delighted that I discovered it. It's a jumble of useless and endlessly entertaining little facts all arranged in lists of eleven items.
Let me say it again: I miss you, Amy Krouse Rosenthal.
This was her first published book. It is probably not her strongest book, but, hey, I'm delighted that I discovered it. It's a jumble of useless and endlessly entertaining little facts all arranged in lists of eleven items.
Let me say it again: I miss you, Amy Krouse Rosenthal.
January 30, 2016
I really liked this book a lot, but not quite enough to give it four stars. Took me almost two years to read it. I read it in the bathroom. TMI - I know. It can be really hard to read a book in the bathroom, the configuration between trying to keep the book open and take care of business, well... I digress. Back to the book:
I got it because my favorite number is eleven. Loved the idea, easy to read book with eleven thoughts on many different subjects. I like her writing style and sense of humor. I would certainly read more of her books because of this one. This would be a great book for a short plane ride. Or a two year read in the bathroom, it's good for that too. Funny and a little thought provoking at times. I feel guilty for not giving it four stars. I'd give it three and a half, maybe three and three quarters if I could... But I can't. Just buy it, it's worthwhile :)
I got it because my favorite number is eleven. Loved the idea, easy to read book with eleven thoughts on many different subjects. I like her writing style and sense of humor. I would certainly read more of her books because of this one. This would be a great book for a short plane ride. Or a two year read in the bathroom, it's good for that too. Funny and a little thought provoking at times. I feel guilty for not giving it four stars. I'd give it three and a half, maybe three and three quarters if I could... But I can't. Just buy it, it's worthwhile :)
May 26, 2016
Cute. Funny. An interesting take on memoir stories.
Some poignant moments like "11 Thoughts on the End" - especially "When someone dies, I fell like the world should really stop, that we should be naked in the freezing cold and quit our jobs and suffer from their absence. That we should utter nothing but their name, over and over again until no other words make any sense. But the truth is, the person dies and minutes, maybe seconds later, we go out and grab a burger."
Some poignant moments like "11 Thoughts on the End" - especially "When someone dies, I fell like the world should really stop, that we should be naked in the freezing cold and quit our jobs and suffer from their absence. That we should utter nothing but their name, over and over again until no other words make any sense. But the truth is, the person dies and minutes, maybe seconds later, we go out and grab a burger."
January 6, 2016
It was amusing. I think I picked it up at B. and N. and found it amusing enough. Didn't keep it though. I am having problems tracking the amusing books written by Amys that I read roughly around the same time.
May 15, 2014
I think I would have loved this book when it was first published and would have thought it was amazing. That was in 1998. I was barely out of high school. So basically, this book was written for the 19-year-old me, and not the 36-year-old me.
February 1, 2008
There were similar entries (some were the same) that were in Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life that I recognized. I like Rosenthal's way of putting random thoughts in book form.
Read
February 12, 2008I think I read this...pretty sure.
November 6, 2008
I was laughing out loud on an airplane reading this book...loved it!
November 24, 2009
charming, witty and quick
August 22, 2011
Amy Krouse Rosenthal could write a grocery list and I would enjoy it. That's almost what happened here.
Read
October 8, 2011Such a fun read - brilliant author.
July 15, 2011
Fun book to read. You can't help identify with many of her thoughts!
July 15, 2013
I like the way Amy thinks. She amuses me. This book was randomly funny, curiously insightful and highly entertaining. Mind fluff, yes.
January 25, 2012
Super fast read, very amusing. I enjoyed her "Encyclopedia" also.
February 7, 2012
This book was still as funny the 2nd time around as the 1st. LOVE Amy Krouse Rosenthal!
May 25, 2012
Quarter Read: 4
Genre: Nonfiction
Read this in an hour.... I loved it, all the humor and the bazaar topics and questions.
Genre: Nonfiction
Read this in an hour.... I loved it, all the humor and the bazaar topics and questions.
January 19, 2013
Cute, quirky, typical Amy. You can see the spark that gave us her Encyclopedia on these pages.
May 5, 2014
great & quick read. had me shaking the bed with laughter so hard that z made me put the book away.
July 11, 2014
Perfectly titled. Would and have read multiple times and found random bits of information refreshing time after time. Perfect coffee table or funny bathroom book.
May 12, 2015
I love this woman's style so much. Someday I'll thank her for all the writing activities she's inspired in my classroom.
September 8, 2018
Always five out of five stars with you, Amy.
“Just look at us, all of us, quietly doing our thing and trying to matter. The earnestness is inspiring and heartbreaking at the same time.”
“Just look at us, all of us, quietly doing our thing and trying to matter. The earnestness is inspiring and heartbreaking at the same time.”
January 15, 2019
Tiny lists, tiny glimpses of a W H O L E person.
April 2, 2026
I added this book as to-read Jul 27, 2010. 16 years ago! If my desire to read this book was a human child, it'd be old enough to drive! Though it couldn't go to war, although I CAN now that the military has raised the maximum age to 42.
Which is insane.
Let me say, as a man in the upper range, you don't want anyone in my age range. Not (just) because I'm old and rickety, more because if someone, at age 42, is like, "Fuck it, I might as well join the military," we are talking about a person who has probably not made great life choices up to now.
Joining the military when you're young makes sense. I mean, it's fuckin' crazy that we're sending human teenagers into a meat grinder because oil, something I thought surely we'd be done with after trying that for all of my 20s and 30s and having all of diddly dick to show for it. But when you're 18, you can probably handle it, and if you get out unscathed, you do have some nice benefits moving forward into life, the sorts of benefits we should probably give to everyone, but that's a different soapbox, and like I said, I'm in my 40s, way too old to be stepping down and up different boxes all goddamn day.
When you're 42, though, and you join the military, it's a sure sign your life has gone horribly, horribly wrong. So wrong that you can't even do the normal things people do at 42 to push the pain away, like getting a divorce, buying a silly car, and living in a terrible apartment.
And THESE are the folks that our government thinks will be helpful in wartime? Burned-Out Dale and Shabby Dan, guys who smoke on weekdays and vape on weekends, guys who used a computer for the first time last month because their exterminator licensure moved online, guys who drive lifted trucks they never learned to park properly because in their abysmally dim minds they thought it would help them pick up chicks, guys who are 42 and have the lower age range on their Tinder profiles set to 21, guys who are the personification of the opioid crisis, guys who don't drink water and find the idea a little repulsive and "gay?"
What is the series of calamities that leads a person, at 42, to see joining up with the military, in wartime, as a pretty good option? And what is the military expecting to do with these guys? Sew them together for Operation Meat Shield? "Iran can't have infinite bullets, this isn't Doom, you can't just type in IDKFA and replenish, so maybe we can throw some bodies at 'em and run them out of bullets that way."
Ahem, anyway, Book of Eleven. Dope memoir, Amy Krouse Rosenthal is the queen of unusual book structures that are ingenious without being precious and overly engineered. They're the kind of thing that makes you think, "Now why didn't I think of that?" while also being very fun to read because she's an excellent writer and lives up to the wacky structures she concocts.
Amy Krause Rosenthal died a few years back, fuck, 2017, almost TEN years back, and that fucking sucks. You might remember, one of her last published pieces, if not THE last, was an essay about her dying that was also a personal ad for her husband, who she hoped would find love and remarry. It was published, and according to Wikipedia: "She died ten days later at her home in Chicago, where she was born."
Fuck. Fuckin' fuck.
In The Book of Eleven, there are two parts that prompt, maybe dare is a better word—that dare readers to write in and receive mail in return. I have no idea whether these will still work, but I'll write in to both and report back.
This, by the way, is why the book gets 4 stars. It'd be 5, but I want to give it the chance to earn that last star by surprising me with mail.
Which is insane.
Let me say, as a man in the upper range, you don't want anyone in my age range. Not (just) because I'm old and rickety, more because if someone, at age 42, is like, "Fuck it, I might as well join the military," we are talking about a person who has probably not made great life choices up to now.
Joining the military when you're young makes sense. I mean, it's fuckin' crazy that we're sending human teenagers into a meat grinder because oil, something I thought surely we'd be done with after trying that for all of my 20s and 30s and having all of diddly dick to show for it. But when you're 18, you can probably handle it, and if you get out unscathed, you do have some nice benefits moving forward into life, the sorts of benefits we should probably give to everyone, but that's a different soapbox, and like I said, I'm in my 40s, way too old to be stepping down and up different boxes all goddamn day.
When you're 42, though, and you join the military, it's a sure sign your life has gone horribly, horribly wrong. So wrong that you can't even do the normal things people do at 42 to push the pain away, like getting a divorce, buying a silly car, and living in a terrible apartment.
And THESE are the folks that our government thinks will be helpful in wartime? Burned-Out Dale and Shabby Dan, guys who smoke on weekdays and vape on weekends, guys who used a computer for the first time last month because their exterminator licensure moved online, guys who drive lifted trucks they never learned to park properly because in their abysmally dim minds they thought it would help them pick up chicks, guys who are 42 and have the lower age range on their Tinder profiles set to 21, guys who are the personification of the opioid crisis, guys who don't drink water and find the idea a little repulsive and "gay?"
What is the series of calamities that leads a person, at 42, to see joining up with the military, in wartime, as a pretty good option? And what is the military expecting to do with these guys? Sew them together for Operation Meat Shield? "Iran can't have infinite bullets, this isn't Doom, you can't just type in IDKFA and replenish, so maybe we can throw some bodies at 'em and run them out of bullets that way."
Ahem, anyway, Book of Eleven. Dope memoir, Amy Krouse Rosenthal is the queen of unusual book structures that are ingenious without being precious and overly engineered. They're the kind of thing that makes you think, "Now why didn't I think of that?" while also being very fun to read because she's an excellent writer and lives up to the wacky structures she concocts.
Amy Krause Rosenthal died a few years back, fuck, 2017, almost TEN years back, and that fucking sucks. You might remember, one of her last published pieces, if not THE last, was an essay about her dying that was also a personal ad for her husband, who she hoped would find love and remarry. It was published, and according to Wikipedia: "She died ten days later at her home in Chicago, where she was born."
Fuck. Fuckin' fuck.
In The Book of Eleven, there are two parts that prompt, maybe dare is a better word—that dare readers to write in and receive mail in return. I have no idea whether these will still work, but I'll write in to both and report back.
This, by the way, is why the book gets 4 stars. It'd be 5, but I want to give it the chance to earn that last star by surprising me with mail.
January 30, 2023
such a nice and quick little read! it feels rude for some reason to describe it as “a book of tweets written before twitter was a thing” but personally i love tweets and how people have always had the desire to share their quick little thoughts
February 22, 2024
This was just my notes app of unpublished tweets. Some of them were ok? Most read like Ellen Degeneres stand up ideas that were left on the cutting room floor. I think Amy and I would have been friends, but not because of this book.
Read
April 27, 2025It’s quintessential AKR. I’m so grateful to Marné for sending it to me last year. I waited because I loved knowing I had something by AKR left to read.
I guess I’ll be reading her children picture books now.
I guess I’ll be reading her children picture books now.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews