Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son by Anne Lamott with Sam Lamott

The first Anne Lamott book I read was called Operating Instructions which was a journal about her son's first year of life. She was a single mother and this was an unexpected pregnancy. It was the first time that I read about what it's like to have a baby and how challenging it can be. I gave Operating Instructions to a friend at a baby shower, and later she told me that the book freaked her out. So I stopped giving the book out to pregnant ladies.

The son that Lamott writes about in Operating Instructions is all grown up now, and got his girlfriend pregnant when he was 19. So this is a book that chronicles the first year of Anne Lamott's grandson.

I'm a fan of Lamott's non-fiction (Traveling Mercies is one of my favorites), but some of her jokes and descriptions have been used so many times (like references to Nixon) and are found in this book as well, so that felt old. She also describes a trip to India that she took during that first year, and that seemed like a totally different book within a book.

Overall, I read this one in two days and liked it. Way better than her fiction - I advise you to stay away from her fiction and stick to her non-fiction.