How to Be Alone

September 15, 2018
One woman's quest for companionship in a culture progressively geared toward isolation.In her first book, about dealing with one's own solitude, Moore--the Onion writer, former sex and relationships editor at Cosmopolitan, and creator of the comedy show Tinder Live!--doesn't compile reams of statistics, comparative studies, or clinical evidence. Rather, she takes readers on a playful ride through her life, examining relationships and nonrelationships alike as she both actively engaged in and passively avoided assuaging that aching search for friendship and love. Swinging from the euphoria of newfound friendship to the despairing trenches of love lost, each chapter becomes a foray into universally themed experiences for women of all ages and sexual persuasions--e.g., "Please Just Be a Good Person So I Can Finally Be Someone Who Has Friends," which details the adolescent exploits with her friends and the confusion of teen gender roles and intimacy between girls. In "I Liked Dating You Better in My Head," Moore explores a long-term romance with a man that ended up unraveling into a textbook co-dependency in which the couple was in love with future possibilities rather than the empty reality of now. Moore's fast-clip wit, hilarious allegories, and conversational prose knock down the uncomfortably sharp edges of facing aloneness. Comparing her own life to scientist Harry Harlow's monkey love experiments, Moore teases, "I have always identified with the kind-of-dying monkeys who technically had food, but desperately wished they had softness and care too." Later, in a brief manifesto of women's romantic needs, she asks, "why did we stop wanting dinner and a movie and maybe flowers?....When did we start thinking that courtship was too time-consuming and everything romantic comedies waxed on about was just a dumb fairy-tale concept, instead of our expectations for romantic love? I'm tired of pretending I'm cool with whatevs. I'm tired of pretending that laziness can replace thoughtfulness and still be acceptable to me."An irreverent, candidly introspective exploration of toiling with loneliness that will leave readers feeling not so alone.

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October 1, 2018
In these bitingly honest autobiographical essays, comedian Moore chronicles the aftereffects of being raised by emotionally abusive and indifferent parents. After high school, she left home and moved to New York, hoping to find a soulmate and hide away from anyone who might hurt her. In “So Your Family Dictates Your Romantic Future? What a Fun Punishment!”, she explains how her parents displayed pride only after their kids had grown up; in “Maybe Someone Else Will Love Me and That Will Fix Everything,” she writes about sexual abuse (“sexual assault is not your ‘my first time’ story if you don’t want it to be” is the book’s most heartbreaking and encouraging line) and dysfunctional adult relationships. In the title essay, about trying to find a partner, Moore writes, “Telling yourself not to look for love is like telling yourself not to look for food or air or water or clothes that fit you perfectly.” Almost as if trying to bolster herself, Moore points out that being single and alone isn’t a life sentence. Within this compassionately told memoir, Moore offers hard-won advice for those looking to get beyond a painful past.

November 1, 2018
Moore has been named one of the most influential indie comedians of the decade, making a name for herself as a writer for The Onion, as the sex and relationships editor of Cosmopolitan, and as creator and host of Tinder Live!, a stand-up comedy show wherein Moore matches and interacts with other users of the infamous dating app in front of a nightly audience. In this scrappy collection of personal essays, Moore opens up her psyche and personal life for fans to relate to. The title references the underlying theme of every piece, that survival is possible even without any kind of family or support system. Moore is spare with the details of her childhood, emphasizing the weight of her trauma rather than the specifics of it. She explains how to survive the holidays, how to screen a mate, and how to accept love as someone who grew up without it. The essays are whip-smart, pithy, and full of an honest, conversational charm that sets Moore apart.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)