Remember how in those old timey movies about a reporter going after a hot story you’d often see them take out a little tape recorder to record notes for themselves? You know, leads they’d need to follow up on, that sort of thing. Well, I read my review for Lauren’s last book (Ruining Your Cat’s Life, in case you need a reminder) and I mentioned missing several of her books/comics and needing to rectify it soon. I have not done that thing! Will I remember to fix that this time around? Well, if this book doesn’t lodge that into my memory, nothing will. This is a collection of a bunch of Lauren’s new strips, and two things are true about this at the same time: there’s some ridiculously funny stuff in here, and it would be wonderful if like 90% of it really did happen/start happening in real life. I mean, the sample image! What a fantastic idea. And spare me with the “oh, think of the food that would be wasted, the chef would have to make full size portions of each just for little samples.” No! She’s trying to imagine a better world here, and this would absolutely apply. If you’re new to her stuff, or unsure, her website has all kinds of sample comics. If you can scroll through that for a few minutes without laughing, I guess you won’t enjoy this, but I also feel sorry for the lack of laughter in your life. For the rest of us, if you’re curious what goes on in this particular volume, Lauren has some suggestions for other medical practitioners and the samples they could be giving out after appointments (seriously, why is it that only dentists do this?), new vanity plates, ways to disguise a cell tower, condiments that help you out, new vegetables, new appetizers, dream restaurants, new fruits (and seltzers, and animals, and jelly beans, and ice creams; again, the world would be a better place with a lot of these things in it), and some movie ideas that should happen as soon as possible. As always, just describing these takes some of the humor out, which is why I keep it vague. There are also a few more ideas in here I’m not even going to mention (except for the pajamas that show cats knocking things off of shelves), but the important thing is that they’ll make you laugh. Yes, that’s a guarantee. $15
