How to Ruin Everything: Essays
Jun 2016 · Penguin
4.9star
28 reviewsreport
Ebook
240
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
About this ebook
A New York Times Bestseller
"Funny, subversive, and able to excavate such brutally honest sentences that you find yourself nodding your head in wonder and recognition."
—Lin-Manuel Miranda, composer and lyricist of In the Heights and Hamilton: An American Musical
Are you a sensible, universally competent individual? Are you tired of the crushing monotony of leaping gracefully from one lily pad of success to the next? Are you sick of doing everything right?
In this brutally honest and humorous debut, musician and artist George Watsky chronicles the small triumphs over humiliation that make life bearable and how he has come to accept defeat as necessary to personal progress. The essays in How to Ruin Everything range from the absurd (how he became an international ivory smuggler) to the comical (his middle-school rap battle dominance) to the revelatory (his experiences with epilepsy), yet all are delivered with the type of linguistic dexterity and self-awareness that has won Watsky devoted fans across the globe. Alternately ribald and emotionally resonant, How to Ruin Everything announces a versatile writer with a promising career ahead.
"Funny, subversive, and able to excavate such brutally honest sentences that you find yourself nodding your head in wonder and recognition."
—Lin-Manuel Miranda, composer and lyricist of In the Heights and Hamilton: An American Musical
Are you a sensible, universally competent individual? Are you tired of the crushing monotony of leaping gracefully from one lily pad of success to the next? Are you sick of doing everything right?
In this brutally honest and humorous debut, musician and artist George Watsky chronicles the small triumphs over humiliation that make life bearable and how he has come to accept defeat as necessary to personal progress. The essays in How to Ruin Everything range from the absurd (how he became an international ivory smuggler) to the comical (his middle-school rap battle dominance) to the revelatory (his experiences with epilepsy), yet all are delivered with the type of linguistic dexterity and self-awareness that has won Watsky devoted fans across the globe. Alternately ribald and emotionally resonant, How to Ruin Everything announces a versatile writer with a promising career ahead.
Ratings and reviews
4.9
28 reviews
Zuhdi Rabin
- Flag inappropriate
July 24, 2016
The soulful descriptions and vivid imagery not only matched, but also exceeded my lofty expectations for Watsky. I love him most for his raps but reading this makes me want to consume more of his literature
Jordan May
- Flag inappropriate
July 1, 2020
If you are a Watsky fan, this is a must read, and if you are a fan of the human experience, the trials and errors and failures and successes, then I implore you to read these essays. It will not teach you how to ruin everything, but it will teach you to examine your life and yourself, and to take it a little less seriously.
dustin jones
- Flag inappropriate
April 14, 2017
Long time fan of Watsky this book was a wonderful read I found myself laughing out loud in inappropriate settings more times than I care to count I highly recommend this book and I'll keep my fingers crossed for a future follow up
2 people found this review helpful
About the author
George Watsky is a writer and musician from San Francisco, California. After getting his start as a teenager in competitive poetry slam, winning both the Youth Speaks Slam and Brave New Voices National Poetry Slam at the Apollo Theater, he has since branched out into hip hop and long-form writing. Watsky has performed on HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, the Ellen Show, the NAACP Image Awards, and his online videos have received hundreds of millions of YouTube hits. A committed live performer, he’s played hundreds of shows, both with his band and solo, across the North America, Europe, Australia, and India, including festival slots at San Francisco’s Outside Lands, Just for Laughs in Montreal, Rock the Bells, Soundset, Warped Tour, and released numerous music albums and mixtapes, including his most recent projects, a track on “The Hamilton Mixtape” in 2016, 2013’s “Cardboard Castles” and 2014’s “All You Can Do." He graduated from Emerson College with a degree in acting and dramatic writing, where he received the Rod Parker playwriting fellowship, and released a poetry collection, “Undisputed Backtalk Champion,” on First Word Press way back in 2006. And although he was forced to write a lot essays in school, he considers this his first attempt at prose.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
