Why am I passionate about this?

As a writer and editor, I spend a lot of time thinking about what prose—especially first-person nonfiction, which is mostly what I edit—does, and how it sets out to accomplish its project. Across forms, I tend to think humor is largely underused! No matter how serious the subject, there’s always a place for it to sharpen the critique. My book engages with topics like systemic discrimination and inequity, but throughout, I always stay attuned to the comic absurdity of my subject—both as a way to give more pleasure to the reader, and as a way to cut to the heart of what I want to express.


I wrote

Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service

By Tajja Isen,

Book cover of Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service

What is my book about?

Some of My Best Friends is a darkly comic essay collection that braids personal narrative and cultural criticism, exploring the…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Priestdaddy: A Memoir

Tajja Isen Why did I love this book?

Patricia Lockwood’s memoir about growing up as the daughter of a married Catholic priest contains some of the best comic lines I’ve ever read. I still quote it regularly. When Lockwood and her husband move back in with her parents following a medical situation, two improbable things ensue at once: piercing reflections on a religious upbringing in a deeply patriarchal household, and family portraiture rendered in slapstick-funny, laugh-out-loud scenes. Lockwood approaches the world of her parents, and of her childhood, with such a keen perception of every absurdity, no matter how passing or small. Nothing escapes her vision. I want to see the world the way she does. 

By Patricia Lockwood,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Priestdaddy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NEW STATESMAN AND OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017

'Glorious' Sunday Times
'Laugh-out-loud funny' The Times
'Extraordinary' Observer
'Exceptional' Telegraph
'Electric' New York Times
'Snort-out-loud' Financial Times
'Dazzling' Guardian
'Do yourself a favour and read this memoir!' BookPage

The childhood of Patricia Lockwood, the poet dubbed' The Smutty-Metaphor Queen of Lawrence, Kansas' by The New York Times, was unusual in many respects. There was the location: an impoverished, nuclear waste-riddled area of the American Midwest. There was her mother, a woman who speaks almost entirely in strange riddles and warnings of impending danger. Above all, there was her gun-toting, guitar-riffing,…


Book cover of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

Tajja Isen Why did I love this book?

Tolentino’s essay collection is already a contemporary classic. In it, she lays bare—with surgical precision—the illusions and compromises of late-capitalist subjectivity, but pairs that existential dread with a sharp eye for the comic absurdity of it all. It explains so much of our contemporary life, and why that contemporary life so often feels bad. It stayed with me for the clarity of its arguments, but also for a truly hilarious scene involving escaped bodily air and a yoga class. 

By Jia Tolentino,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Trick Mirror as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A Times book of the year A Guardian book of the year 'Magnificent'The Times 'Dazzling' New Statesman 'It filled me with hope' Zadie Smith

What happens to our behaviour when we live most of our lives online? What does it mean to 'always be optimising'? And what is it about scams and the millennial generation?

Offering nuanced and witty reflections on feminism, reality TV, the internet, drugs, identity and more, Trick Mirror is a multifaceted, thought-provoking and entertaining response to our zeitgeist - a must-read for anyone interested in the way we live and think today.


Book cover of You've Changed: Fake Accents, Feminism, and Other Comedies from Myanmar

Tajja Isen Why did I love this book?

I love the boldness of putting “comedy” right there in the subtitle, and Pyae Moe Thet War absolutely delivers. This memoir-in-essays, about being a millennial woman in Myanmar, has one of the strongest voices I’ve encountered in recent essay collections. She writes back against the expectation that racialized and minoritized writers perform their trauma for the reader, or must be restricted to certain topics and tones. You’ve Changed sets a precedent I know other writers will feel empowered to follow.

By Pyae Moe Thet War,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked You've Changed as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this electric debut essay collection, a Myanmar millennial playfully challenges us to examine the knots and complications of immigration status, eating habits, Western feminism in an Asian home, and more, guiding us toward an expansive idea of what it means to be a Myanmar woman today

What does it mean to be a Myanmar person—a baker, swimmer, writer and woman—on your own terms rather than those of the colonizer? These irreverent yet vulnerable essays ask that question by tracing the journey of a woman who spent her young adulthood in the US and UK before returning to her hometown…


Book cover of One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays

Tajja Isen Why did I love this book?

Whether in her book or her writing for BuzzFeed, Koul’s voice and humor are always instantly recognizable. Their distinctive tone is right there in the title. In her debut collection, Koul explores growing up as a South Asian woman in Canada, braiding her personal narrative with deft cultural critique. Essay collections rarely have such a strong sense of characters as this one does—Koul’s parents, especially, are deeply felt and sharply rendered figures who appear across the essays as sources of humor, pathos, and exasperation.

By Scaachi Koul,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of NPR's Best Books of the Year

A DEBUT COLLECTION OF FIERCE, FUNNY ESSAYS ABOUT GROWING UP THE DAUGHTER OF INDIAN IMMIGRANTS IN WESTERN CULTURE, ADDRESSING SEXISM, STEREOTYPES, AND THE UNIVERSAL MISERIES OF LIFE

In One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, Scaachi Koul deploys her razor-sharp humor to share all the fears, outrages, and mortifying moments of her life. She learned from an early age what made her miserable, and for Scaachi anything can be cause for despair. Whether it’s a shopping trip gone awry; enduring awkward conversations with her bikini waxer; overcoming…


Book cover of Leave the World Behind

Tajja Isen Why did I love this book?

A surprising choice, perhaps, for a book list framed around comedy, as the lingering feeling this book leaves you with is closer to a deep dread. But the family at the center of this book—who are on vacation during what very much seems to be the beginning of the end of the world—exhibit such a specific and well-observed type of wealth and whiteness. The book’s social satire adds some levity amid really dire circumstances. And the language in this novel is just delicious.

By Rumaan Alam,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Leave the World Behind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

*A THE TIMES #1 BESTSELLER*
*THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*
*A BARACK OBAMA SUMMER READING PICK 2021*

'Easily the best thing I have read all year' KILEY REID, AUTHOR OF SUCH A FUN AGE

'Intense, incisive, I loved this and have still not quite shaken off the unease' DAVID NICHOLLS

'I was hooked from the opening pages' CLARE MACKINTOSH

'Simply breathtaking . . . An extraordinary book, at once smart, gripping and hallucinatory' OBSERVER

_______

A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong

Amanda and Clay head…


Explore my book 😀

Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service

By Tajja Isen,

Book cover of Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service

What is my book about?

Some of My Best Friends is a darkly comic essay collection that braids personal narrative and cultural criticism, exploring the absurdity of living in a world that has grown fluent in the language of social justice but doesn’t always follow through.

The book’s nine essays explore the sometimes troubling and often awkward nature of that discord. Some of My Best Friends takes on subjects that include the cartoon industry’s pivot away from colorblind casting, the pursuit of diverse representation in the literary world, the law’s refusal to see inequality, and the cozy fictions of nationalism. Throughout, Tajja Isen deftly examines the quick, cosmetic fixes society makes to address systemic problems and reveals the unexpected ways they can misfire.

You might also like...

Curiosity and the Cat

By Martin Treanor,

Book cover of Curiosity and the Cat

Martin Treanor Author Of The Logos Prophecy

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Illustrator Reader Jester Quantum physics buff

Martin's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

Curiosity is certain she saw fairies at the bottom of the garden. Little does she know . . . they saw her first.

Emotionally abandoned by her mother and infatuated by a figurine of a fairy ballerina she discovers in an old toy shop, eight-year-old Curiosity Portland steals the figurine, unleashing strange and frightening happenings around her home, which, in turn, reveals a disturbing family history. 

An ominous tale of faerie folk.

Curiosity and the Cat

By Martin Treanor,

What is this book about?

Curiosity is certain she saw fairies at the bottom of the garden. Little does she know . . . they saw her first.

Emotionally abandoned by her mother and infatuated by a figurine of a fairy ballerina she discovers in an old toy shop, eight-year-old Curiosity Portland steals the figurine, unleashing strange and frightening happenings around her home, which, in turn, reveals a disturbing family history.

An ominous tale of faerie folk.



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