I'm Special and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves

 By: Ryan OConnell

Location: NF 920 OCO

Genre: Over coming Adversity, LGBGT, Disability, Memoir

Doona said this...

This was a book challenge read for me. I had never heard of Ryan O'Connell before but since I like reading autobiographies, I picked this one up. I'll straight up say that this was not at all what I expected. This was a little too crude and explicit, but he had a clever wit which made this far more palatable than I would have thought. This wasn't laugh out loud funny for me because I was mostly saying to myself, "I can't believe he just said that," but he was clever ,honest and seemed to capture emotion well, which are three things that I feel worked here. The information regarding his sex life was TMI, and I would have thought the same thing even if he was straight. This wasn't quite 3 stars for me, but I'll round up because he clearly had a story to tell.

This hilarious part-memoir, part-manifesto reveals what sets apart the latest generation of young people coming of age in an all-wired, overeducated, and underemployed world.

People are obsessed with Ryan O'Connell's blogs. With tens of thousands reading his pieces on Thought Catalog and Vice, watching his videos on YouTube, and hanging on to each and every #dark tweet, Ryan has established himself as a unique young voice who's not afraid to dole out some real talk. He's that candid, snarky friend you consult when you fear you're spending too much time falling down virtual k-holes stalking your ex on Facebook or when you've made the all-too-common mistake of befriending a psycho while wasted at last night's party and need to find a way to get rid of them the next morning. But Ryan didn't always have the answers to these modern day dilemmas. Growing up gay and disabled with cerebral palsy, he constantly felt like he was one step behind everybody else. Then the rude curveball known as your twenties happened and things got even more confusing.

Ryan spent years as a Millennial cliche: he had dead-end internships; dabbled in unemployment; worked in his pajamas as a blogger; communicated mostly via text; looked for love online; spent hundreds on "necessary" items, like candles, while claiming to have no money; and even descended into aimless pill-popping. But through extensive trial and error, Ryan eventually figured out how to take his life from bleak to chic and began limping towards adulthood.

Sharp and entertaining, I'm Special will educate twentysomethings (or other adolescents-at-heart) on what NOT to do if they ever want to become happy fully functioning grown ups with a 401k and a dog.

 Gerimos Reads review

Ryan O' Connell is a tv writer who also happens to be a young gay man living with cerebral palsy. Just last week Netflix released a show written and created by him (and starring himself) inspired by this memoir filled with anecdotes from his life. After watching all eight 15-minute long episodes on Netflix I just had to pick up this book and get more of Ryan and his hilarious stories.

I decided to go for the audiobook which is narrated by Ryan himself, just because I needed more of his personality that was oozing out of his Netflix show. I was not disappointed. Ryan's memoir is even funnier, more heartwarming and even more emotional than the Netflix adaptation of it. The jokes made me laugh harder and the emotional moments resonated deeper.

Ryan is funny, sweet and intelligent and his stories made me laugh and want to cry at the same time. He is the representation we need right now and I cannot recommend this book or the Netflix show enough.