Books by Jen

 

Jeneration X; One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never Too Late for Her Dumb Ass to Learn Why Froot Loops Are Not for Dinner

In Such a Pretty Fat, Jen Lancaster learned how to come to terms with her body. In My Fair Lazy, she expanded her mind. Now the New York Times bestselling author gives herself—and her generation—a kick in the X, by facing her greatest challenge to date: acting her age.

Jen is finally ready to put away childish things (except her Barbie Styling Head, of course) and embrace the investment-making, mortgage-carrying, life-insurance-having adult she’s become. From getting a mammogram to volunteering at a halfway house, she tackles the grown-up activities she’s resisted for years, and with each rite of passage she completes, she’ll uncover a valuable—and probably humiliating—life lesson that will ease her path to full-fledged, if reluctant, adulthood. 

If You Were Here; A Novel 

Told in the uproariously entertaining voice readers have come to expect from Jen Lancaster, If You Were Here follows Amish-zombie-teen- romance author Mia and her husband Mac (and their pets) through the alternately frustrating, exciting, terrifying-but always funny-process of buying and renovating their first home in the Chicago suburbs that John hughes's movies made famous. Along their harrowing renovation journey, Mia and Mac get caught up in various wars with the homeowners' association, meet some less-than-friendly neighbors, and are joined by a hilarious cast of supporting characters, including a celebutard ex- landlady. As they struggle to adapt to their new surroundings- with Mac taking on the renovations himself- Mia and Mac will discover if their marriage is strong enough to survive months of DIY renovations. 

  

My Fair Lazy; One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover If Not Being A Dumb Ass Is the New Black; Or, A Culture-Up Manifesto 

Readers have followed Jen Lancaster through job loss, sucky city living, weight loss attempts, and 1980s nostalgia. Now Jen chronicles her efforts to achieve cultural enlightenment, with some hilarious missteps and genuine moments of inspiration along the way. And she does so by any means necessary: reading canonical literature, viewing classic films, attending the opera, researching artisan cheeses, and even enrolling in etiquette classes to improve her social graces.

In Jen's corner is a crack team of experts, including Page Six socialites, gourmet chefs, an opera aficionado, and a master sommelier. She may discover that well-regarded, high-priced stinky cheese tastes exactly as bad as it smells, and that her love for Kraft American Singles is forever. But one thing's for certain: Eliza Doolittle's got nothing on Jen Lancaster-and failure is an option. 

  

Pretty In Plaid; A Life, a Witch, and a Wardrobe, or, the Wonder Years Before the Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass Phase 

In Pretty in Plaid, Jen Lancaster reveals how she developed the hubris that perpetually gets her into trouble. Using fashion icons of her youth to tell her hilarious and insightful stories, readers will meet the girl she used to be.

Think Jen Lancaster was always "like David Sedaris with pearls and a super-cute handbag?" (Jennifer Coburn) Think again. She was a badge-hungry Junior Girl Scout with a knack for extortion, an aspiring sorority girl who didn't know her Coach from her Louis Vuitton, and a budding executive who found herself bewildered by her first encounter with a fax machine. In this humorous and touching memoir, Jen Lancaster looks back on her life-and wardrobe-before bitter was the new black and shows us a young woman not so very different than the rest of us.

The author who showed us what it was like to wait in line at the unemployment office with a Prada bag, how living in the city can actually suck, and that losing weight can be fun with a trainer named Barbie and enough Ambien is ready to take you on a hilarious and heartwarming trip down memory lane in her shoes (and very pretty ones at that). 

  

Such a Pretty Fat:  One Narcissist's Quest to Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big; Or, Why Pie Is Not the Answer

Are you tired of books where the self-loathing heroine is teased to the point where she starves herself tiny in hopes of a fabulous new life?  Do you hate the message that we women can't possibly be happy until we fit into our skinny jeans? 

Yeah?  Well, Jen Lancaster is, too. 

Jen doesn't find stories like this uplifting; rather, they make her want to hug these women and take them out for fizzy champagne drinks and cheesecake and explain to them that until they figure out their insides, their outsides don't matter.

Unfortunately, being overweight isn't simply a societal issue that can be fixed with a dose of positive self-esteem.  It's a health matter, so on the eve of Jen's 40th birthday she decides to make changes so she doesn't, you know, die.  Because what good is finally being able to afford a pedicure if she loses a foot to adult onset diabetes?

  

Bright Lights, Big Ass:  A Self-Indulgent, Surly Ex-Sorority Girl's Guide to Why it Often Sucks in the City, or Who Are All These Idiots and Why Do They Live Next Door to Me?

From the rollicking bestselling author of Bitter Is the New Black comes a brand-new collection of essays that shine a bright light on the big city to reveal the escapades of the outrageously unglamorous.

Jen Lancaster hates to burst your happy little bubble, but life in the big city isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Contrary to what you see on TV and in the movies, most urbanites aren't party-hopping in slinky dresses and strappy stilettos.  But lucky for us, Lancaster knows how to make the life of the lower crust mercilessly funny and infinitely entertaining.

Whether she's reporting rude neighbors to Homeland Security, harboring a crush on her grocery store, or fighting -and losing - the Battle of the Stairmaster, Lancaster explores how silly, strange, and not so fabulous real city living can be.  And if anyone doesn't like it, they can kiss her big, fat, pink, puffy down parka.

And the one that started it all...

Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomanical, Self-Centered, Smartass, or Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office

This is the story of how a haughty former sorority gal went from having a household income of almost a quarter-million dollars to being evicted from a ghetto apartment in less than two years.  It's a modern Greek tragedy, as defined by Roger Dunkle in The Classical Origins of Western Culture: a story in which "the central character, called a tragic protagonist or hero, suffers some serious misfortune which is not accidental and therefore meaningless, but is significant in that the misfortune is logically connected."

In other words?

The bitch had it coming.