What do you think?
Rate this book
This Too Can Be Yours
In this wholly unpredictable collection of tongue-in-chic short stories, Beth Lisick casts a cool eye on the lost and living dead of offices, nightclubs, shopping malls, and rent-controlled apartments. Pretentious web designers, reality show wannabes, and hipster party girls are among the characters populating a seemingly ordinary world teetering on the brink of chaos.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
160 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2001
8 people are currently reading
218 people want to read
About the author
Beth Lisick
18 books61 followersBeth Lisick is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller Everybody into the Pool. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies including Best American Poetry, the Santa Cruz Noir, and Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Movement. She has contributed to public radio's This American Life and is the cofounder of the Porchlight storytelling series in San Francisco.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 17, 2023
i just read this and i’ve already forgotten it
May 12, 2008
Here is the gist of most of these stories: "Man, these times we are living in, when everybody is getting rich from the internet and nobody's flown any planes into any buildings in New York, these are some weird, funny times, eh?" The best part about reading this book in 2008 instead of 2001 is that, yeah! Those WERE some weird funny times.
There's a lightness to the prose that makes these stories fly by. Not in, like, a there's-nothing-going-on way, but in more of a 'here is kind of a vapid character! Vapid like the rest of us. And this is pretty much how we think.' The world is this funny place where nothing can go wrong. I love it as a historical document of that moment, with all the prosperity, and no war, where irony was totally mainstream badass and embracing non-irony was becoming the radical thing to do, and whereit was still pretty much the nineties, for whatever that is worth.
Whatever any of that stuff I just typed is supposed to mean.
Anyway, the other thing that's nice about this book is how the characters who star in their own stories show up as minor characters in the other stories. It's not like there's one big story being told from multiple viewpoints or anything as boringly modernist as that; it's just that it makes the book feel like it takes place in its own world without the book's world being outside of the real world.
There's a lightness to the prose that makes these stories fly by. Not in, like, a there's-nothing-going-on way, but in more of a 'here is kind of a vapid character! Vapid like the rest of us. And this is pretty much how we think.' The world is this funny place where nothing can go wrong. I love it as a historical document of that moment, with all the prosperity, and no war, where irony was totally mainstream badass and embracing non-irony was becoming the radical thing to do, and whereit was still pretty much the nineties, for whatever that is worth.
Whatever any of that stuff I just typed is supposed to mean.
Anyway, the other thing that's nice about this book is how the characters who star in their own stories show up as minor characters in the other stories. It's not like there's one big story being told from multiple viewpoints or anything as boringly modernist as that; it's just that it makes the book feel like it takes place in its own world without the book's world being outside of the real world.
May 13, 2020
I’m not sure what to make of these stories. They seemed to me like fleeting glimpses into some lives, oddly voyeuristic even. It’s like looking at pictures and understanding what you can from them. They don’t paint a complete picture of anything. They also have a dream like quality.
Not my type really. I wouldn’t say the stories or writing are/is bad, they didn’t engage me as much.
Not my type really. I wouldn’t say the stories or writing are/is bad, they didn’t engage me as much.
November 6, 2020
I always feel strange capitalizing a title which is not capitalized on its own cover, but consistency is important, perhaps more important than anything else ever.
Short stories, so there isn’t exactly a plot, but theme is more or less: being young and tragically hip and underappreciated and terrible in San Francisco.
“We Call It Blog” irks me because the unrewarded artistic angst shit strikes close to home and the self-obsession just pisses me off. The lack of consideration of the girl’s feelings when mentioning previous fucks. How he gets to hit the ground running because of her knowledge of his life through reading his blog. The arbitrary underlines, like “what I say is so fucking important and you don’t even realize it, do you?”
“Best Of” is a perfect sendup of San Francisco/Bay hipsterdom (more SF because of web money included, but soon enough, this side too) and the ever-present weariness of another slogging, but necessary night of revelry.
“P.S. I know you are passive aggressive” is a tremendous ending.
Often shorts will try to do too much, but these are self-contained, small things that stick to a point. Which is good.
This narrowness of scope sometimes hurts though. Seems like Lisick has a four page limit and a bigger story will sometimes get cut short and just kinds end, leaving me out in the cold.
Short stories, so there isn’t exactly a plot, but theme is more or less: being young and tragically hip and underappreciated and terrible in San Francisco.
“We Call It Blog” irks me because the unrewarded artistic angst shit strikes close to home and the self-obsession just pisses me off. The lack of consideration of the girl’s feelings when mentioning previous fucks. How he gets to hit the ground running because of her knowledge of his life through reading his blog. The arbitrary underlines, like “what I say is so fucking important and you don’t even realize it, do you?”
“Best Of” is a perfect sendup of San Francisco/Bay hipsterdom (more SF because of web money included, but soon enough, this side too) and the ever-present weariness of another slogging, but necessary night of revelry.
“P.S. I know you are passive aggressive” is a tremendous ending.
Often shorts will try to do too much, but these are self-contained, small things that stick to a point. Which is good.
This narrowness of scope sometimes hurts though. Seems like Lisick has a four page limit and a bigger story will sometimes get cut short and just kinds end, leaving me out in the cold.
August 16, 2022
"Does that sound terrible to you? Imagine it. Seeing a white art school graduate singing a folk song about evicted Salvadorans? Does it make you cringe to think about it? And does your uneasy feeling become worse when I speak of the pupusas gordas and sabor delicado in las comidas que ella me ha preparado. Just wondering, just checking."
Laughed out loud many times with this one - a blind pickup! Nice surprise.
Laughed out loud many times with this one - a blind pickup! Nice surprise.
June 23, 2019
too close to home! still relevant SF stories 20 years later
December 30, 2020
So weird, random , and quirky. I thoroughly enjoyed this.
January 7, 2010
Much as I enjoyed Lisick's first book, Monkey Girl, I like this one better. The stories here are richer and more developed and show more sense of craft. They also include a delicious holiday cheese log at the end of each paragraph.
I don't know if Lisick is a genius writer--she might be, though all I can say for sure is that she was a hell of a high-school long jumper--but she is certainly very smart and very talented, with a keen eye and a mimic's voice. For those of us who are full up with writers lighting their literary pants on fire to show how pyrotechnic their prose is, a respite from enforced brilliancy comes as a relief. If occasionally she overdoes the cooking ("Mid-Sixties MOPARS, man"), most of the time she's cooly spot-on ("the back of his neck looked like a pack of franks"), and marvelously economical with her portraiture. Also, I liked the cheese logs.
In fact, the only serious drawback to the book is that Lisick does her work almost too well; like Sinclair Lewis in Babbit or Evan S. Connell in Mrs. Bridge, she so expertly spears her prey--corporate hipsters, pick-up artists, suburban doofuses, and more--that you begin to feel sorry for her wriggling subjects. Fortunately, she isn't venomous, and behind the skewering you sense a true identification with her various personae. Besides, you know, she's very funny.
And she likes to dress up in a banana suit.
(4.5 stars ... Goodreads, you need a better rating system)
I don't know if Lisick is a genius writer--she might be, though all I can say for sure is that she was a hell of a high-school long jumper--but she is certainly very smart and very talented, with a keen eye and a mimic's voice. For those of us who are full up with writers lighting their literary pants on fire to show how pyrotechnic their prose is, a respite from enforced brilliancy comes as a relief. If occasionally she overdoes the cooking ("Mid-Sixties MOPARS, man"), most of the time she's cooly spot-on ("the back of his neck looked like a pack of franks"), and marvelously economical with her portraiture. Also, I liked the cheese logs.
In fact, the only serious drawback to the book is that Lisick does her work almost too well; like Sinclair Lewis in Babbit or Evan S. Connell in Mrs. Bridge, she so expertly spears her prey--corporate hipsters, pick-up artists, suburban doofuses, and more--that you begin to feel sorry for her wriggling subjects. Fortunately, she isn't venomous, and behind the skewering you sense a true identification with her various personae. Besides, you know, she's very funny.
And she likes to dress up in a banana suit.
(4.5 stars ... Goodreads, you need a better rating system)
October 22, 2014
Once again I plowed headfirst into a world I'm totally unfamiliar with by checking out a random library book with a pretty cover. Halfway through the book I realized that those stories exist in the same universe because there are recurring character names -_-# and a lot of times I finish a story without even understanding if the main character (most of the stories are told innthe 1st person) was better or worse off compared with the beginning.
3/5 for now, if someone can help me understand this book better, I might bump up a star or one and a half.
3/5 for now, if someone can help me understand this book better, I might bump up a star or one and a half.
Read
May 16, 2008i first saw beth lisick read in san fran while accompanied by a full band of cool cats on upright bass and sax, or something like it. so neat. then when i read this book i was in love with one of the chapters poking fun at the weird internet moment where there were millions of new startups that were infiltrating the language. now that time is in the past, i don't know if this book would seem anachronistic.
July 23, 2015
Rad, weird slice of life stories. A few intertwine. The whole thing seems to be themed around "2000s people are aggressively normal/weird" in a everyone is strange vibe. Enjoyed it. Some very laugh-out-loud moments too.
August 17, 2008
i liked it. i'm slow though, got halfway through before i started connecting the characters in the short stories. i really want to read again for this reason. good book, quick read!
April 27, 2010
At another, much younger time in my life, I might have really, really enjoyed this book. The stories remind me of performance pieces or slam poetry: sort of a one-shot/splash of entertainment.
August 29, 2013
not as good as Everybody Into The Pool
January 1, 2015
Ugh. Couldn't finish. Sorry, Beth, I like your other books, but this one? No.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews