Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant: Essays

Joel Golby's writing for and with its wry observation and naked self-reflection, has brought him a wide and devoted following. Now, in his first book, he presents a blistering collection of new and newly expanded essays—including the achingly funny viral hit "Things You Only Know When Both Your Parents Are Dead." In these pages, he travels to Saudi Arabia, where he acts as a perplexed bystander at a camel pageant; offers a survival guide for the modern dinner party (i.e. how to tactfully escape at the first sign of an adult board game); and gets pitted head-to-head, again and again, with an unpredictable, unpitying subspecies of Londoner: the landlord. Through it all, he shows that no matter how cruel the misfortune, how absurd the circumstance, there's always the soft punch of a lesson tucked within. This is a book for anyone who overshares, overthinks, has ever felt lost or confused—and who wants to have a good laugh about it.