Perry, Laurie. Home Is Where the Wine Is. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 2009. Print.
Laurie Perry is better known as “Crazy Aunt Purl”, the blogger who started writing about her life in January 2005, and somehow turned into an internet phenomenon – among us knitters, anyway. I actually didn’t start reading until the summer of 2009, but I obsessively went back to the very beginning and read her whole blog in order. At the time she was a newly-divorced 30-something with four cats and a new knitting hobby, and freely admitted that blogging was a cheap form of therapy for her. Many of her enthusiasms – her knitting and cats, obviously, but also exercise and de-cluttering – are enthusiasms of mine as well.
Her first book, loosely based on the blog, was called “Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair”. This is the sequel, picking up where that book left off. She is mostly over her divorce, and includes three chapters about dating – always problematic in this age of dating websites, but even more so since she innocently started blogging under her real name, so all her neuroses and late-night ill-advised posts are freely available to any man who googles her name. She sets up the book as a list of new year’s resolutions, and tracks her progress (or lack thereof) against them.
I loved her first book as I love the blog, and I love this book too. Not only does Perry write from the heart, she writes well. I find her incredibly funny, and found myself laughing until tears came to my eyes while reading this. I’m not sure that everybody would find her as hilarious, but I definitely think she’s worth a try, especially if you love knitting, cats, or wine.