Our Book of Awesome

October 3, 2022
3 Books podcaster Pasricha (You Are Awesome) continues his Book of Awesome series with this fun outing. He recounts starting his 1000 Awesome Things blog in 2008 to remind himself of the “endless simple joys we’re surrounded by every day” and here collects additional reasons to be grateful, rhapsodizing about the first day of spring, sleeping in on weekends, and not getting a parking ticket when one should have. Short anecdotes accompany some entries, such as when the author tells of the relief felt by his high school chemistry class after tracking the source of a strange smell in their classroom to a piece of salami left in a textbook, while others offer only a brief line (one dispatch reads in full: “Opening the dishwasher and it’s empty. You officially live with somebody”). The author includes notes from readers of his blog, such as when he praises “inventing” new dishes at a buffet and shares readers’ concoctions (“Take a chicken nugget, top it with a pickle, wrap it in a slice of cheese”). Pasricha’s lighthearted tone is a perfect match for his upbeat dispatches, though compared to previous entries in the series, this feels like more of the same. Still, readers will find this a pleasant diversion.