I love you, Laurie Notaro

Who would you rather hang out with, the perfect perky blonde in the spotless twin-set, or her chubby wise-cracking brunette sidekick? Read Laurie Notaro, it's like having that brunette over for lunch (with margaritas).

Laurie Notaro is a humor columnist from Arizona. She been trying to sell a book of her columns for seven years without success. One of her fans offered to help, and sold two books worth of columns. Shortly afterward, Notaro lost her weekly newspaper column. Since then she has published three more essay collections. Her latest book, There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell: a Novel of Sewer Piper, Pageant Queens and Big Trouble, is her first novel. I am listening to the audio version, which is read by Susan Denaker. She's not my favorite audiobook narrator--she has a little too much sneer in her voice--but either she grew on me, or she's got better as the book went on.

The main character will be familiar to Notaro fans as a fellow member of The Idiot Girls Action-Adventure Club. After moving to a new, fiercely politcally correct town, she has trouble making new friends, and embarks on an interesting new project to remedy this. In the end, she discovers the meaning of true friendship, solves a mystery, and learns the ins and outs of styrofoam recycling.