Hilarious first half, moderately funny second half.

"When you piss in a cereal bowl and let it cool to room temperature, it behaves a lot like chicken noodle soup under the same conditions."

This and many other life lessons from Sara Benincasa can be discovered in, Agorafabulous!: Dispatches from My Bedroom. When I found this book, I couldn't not read it. Humorous memoirs have sorta been my bag as of late and I am a sucker for cutsey, cheeky images on book covers. Say what you will, but I will almost always give a book with a clever title or twee cover the good college try. Anyway, this book did not disappoint. I was definitely interested in reading an account about agoraphobia, having dealt with anxiety myself, and I always appreciate raw experienced-based humor. Sara is very honest and expressive about all of her very difficult experiences and actually made it entertaining to read about.

"Comedy is tragedy plus time, right?"

The book begins with The Thing Before the Rest of the Thing, where Sara describes her state of mind during some of the darker accounts told in her memoir. It then continues on to an introduction where she tells about about a childhood friend, a handsome shining star with a bright future, who committed suicide under horrible circumstances. Sara sights this incident throughout her decline into agoraphobia as a kind of starting point or gauge of her mental health. This story really stuck with me and I related with Sara's inability to accept the situation - if someone so seemingly stable and well off was vulnerable to such mental instability, how are the rest of us safe? Sara was raised in a Catholic household, so she accounts her struggles with thoughts of suicide and premarital sex throughout the book as well.

After the death of her peer, Sara next recounts a trip to Sicily with her classmates during her senior year of high school. Although Sara had suffered from panic attacks before, she sights this trip as an benchmark, revealing the first warning signs of the excruciating and crippling anxiety to come. Despite the very real and serious subject matter, Sara's retelling of her panic attack inside of a foreign gas station bathroom was ultimately very funny and gripping.

After starting college, Sara's mental state goes into a rapid decline and she finds herself unable to leave her apartment and eventually her room. She begins starving herself to rid herself of energy so she can all day. And of course pissing in bowls.

"When your daily routine includes repeatedly convincing yourself not to commit suicide, you probably won't have time left over to prepare haute cuisine."

Her grades begin to drop as she is unable attend class and her friends eventually alert her parents, who pick Sara up from her dorm and bring her home for help. During what she refers to as her "qualifying indecent", Sara goes back home to live with her parents while she meets with a new therapist to treat her anxieties.

Through medication and therapy treatment, Sara eventually learns to cope with her anxieties and lands a job working for a mentally unstable spiritual guru. She accounts her experiences of coping with and quitting her new job, going back to college, serious relationships, teaching experiences and eventually moving to New York City to attend grad school at Columbia University.

I was actually surprised about what an uplifting book this was. Sara accounts her very emotional struggles with a debilitating disorder but in a way that is funny and tells you she will eventually recover, which she does. Although many points of this book as raw and exposing, Sara ultimately rises above all of them to became a happy, healthy individual who hardly thinks about the long list of phobias posted in the beginning of her memoir that once used to confine her to her bedroom. Agorafabuous! introduced me to unknown information about an interesting anxiety disorder, and more importantly introduced me to a very funny, strong and unique comedian. I hope to see more from Sara as she continues to succeed as a comic.

"Fear built on fear begets all kinds of little falsehoods."

I loved this memoir. I used to listen to Sara on sirius radio. I found her hilarious, and truthful.

I'm a little biased towards Auntie Sara because I'm a fan of her comedy, having read her column on Wonkette for a while, then watched her awesome Youtube vids, so I'm not sure how objective I can be about the book.

I definitely have to give her props for exposing such personal information like this. I had heard some of it before in her act, and always assumed it was exaggerated, or just a story told for comic effect, but nope, actual crazy here! Hopefully people who are going through similar things can gain some inspiration from this and see someone was able to power through the crappiness.

The book itself is a little uneven, with some of the chapters being real page turners, and others feeling a bit rushed, but I never was bored while reading. This is truly saying a lot in my case, because I RARELY read non-fiction for fun. I feel like I know one of my favorite internet personalities a bit better now, and I hope she keeps on producing. And writing. Definitely writing.

If you have ever had to deal with anxiety or depression this memoir is for you. There were so many times where I felt exactly as Sara did. It was so refreshing to know I wasn't alone experiencing these feelings!

Interesting story about overcoming anxiety issues. Lots of cursing, which I LOVED.

When one browses the "new books" shelves at the library regularly and grabs anything with an odd title on the notion that it might be an odd book and therefore interesting, one winds up with, well, odd books. This is an odd, but funny, memoir about agoraphobia, depression, and eating disorders.

Sara mixes humor and tragedy into one. This is the funny memoir of a journey through panic attacks, agoraphobia, and eating disorders (if you go through those things too). Sara is witty, interesting, and a fabulous story teller. Each chapter covers a unique story ranging from high school study abroad trips, teaching in Texas, entering graduate school, and having to visit the ER for suicidal thoughts. This book was easy to read in one sitting. Some of the stories were so relatable for me. I think that made it more hilarious. If you have struggled with your mental health and are looking for something to read that makes you feel seen this is a good choice. Sara is unapologetic-ally feminist in her writing and paints beautiful pictures of the humans in her life.

Agorafabulous!: Dispatches from My Bedroom is a funny, honest, and heart-felt look at mental illness and the courage and strength (and good drugs) it takes to control it. This is the first book that I've read about mental illness that made mental illness understandable and human. Sara Benincasa doesn't mess around and tells it like it is. If you are someone who doesn't like profanity, this book may not be for you - Benincasa drops a lot of f-bombs. This is a book of hope for anyone who struggles with the demons of anxiexy and depression.

If you liked [b:Bossypants|9418327|Bossypants|Tina Fey|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327926050s/9418327.jpg|14302659] by Tina Fey, check this out! Entertaining, funny tales of humiliation by a lady comedian, plus some graphic information about how when you can't leave your bedroom to go to the bathroom, and (naturally) start peeing in bowls and storing them under the bed, how one's urine changes over time. It's a disturbing detail.