The Broke Diaries
The Completely True and Hilarious Misadventures of a Good Girl Gone Broke
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
“People always say I’m going to look back on these days and laugh — why put it off?”
When Angela Nissel found herself struggling financially while in college, instead of sulking, she decided to entertain herself by creating an online journal that chronicled her day-to-day trials and tribulations. Written with humor and intelligence, her “Broke Diary” quickly found an audience as people wrote to Angela to empathize with, console, and laugh with her about her experiences and even share their own. The Broke Diaries is the first complete compilation of her experiences, written in a voice that is funny, unique, and dead-on.
On buying ramen noodles: I am sooooooo embarassed. I only have 33 cents. I (please don’t laugh) put the money on the counter and quickly attempt to dash out with my Chicken Flavored Salt Noodles. The guy calls me back! I look up instinctively, I should have run . . . Why didn’t I run???!! He tells me the noodles are 35 cents. I try to apologize sincerely. I thought the sign said 33 cents yesterday, so that’s all I brought with me. Could he wait while I ran home and get the 2 cents? I show him my student I.D. to let him know I am not a thief. He shakes his head and motions either for me to get the hell out of his store and never come back again or get the money as do come back. I don’t know. He said something like “Nyeh” and swiped his hand in my direction.
I can’t translate hand motions well.
The noodles: tasty!!!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Internet has been around long enough as a venue for works like the diary presented here, which debuted online, for such works to have lost some of their mystique. Still, Nissel deserves her moment in the sun. As a struggling college student at the University of Pennsylvania, she decided that to keep her mind off her empty stomach, she would keep a journal of her days and post it on the Net. The result is a series of biting, funny entries about the evil atmosphere of check-cashing offices, the horror of being two cents short for the grocery bill and the joys of making friends who buy dinner. Her wry thoughts about being flat broke will appeal to readers who enjoyed Bridget Jones's exploits and similarly sparky works. Nissel is no fictional Bridget, however, obsessing about weight and cigarettes. She's a city girl who knows the exact price of ramen noodles and the pain of counting pennies. Although she occasionally recycles material, she rants with aplomb, using colorful anecdotes (her elderly landlord comes for the rent and ends up falling asleep on the couch) to pull the reader further into her impoverished reality. She doesn't delve into the actual fear and pain associated with poverty, but views her time of hunger with amusement, like a financial misadventure that she always knew would end. Charming and sharp, Nissel's diary will be relished by anyone who's ever been a student and remembers those ramen noodles.
