“Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service, we lay them aside.”
– Henry David Thoreau in a letter to B.B. Wiley, 1857
Thoreau was right. Books show us who we really are. And sometimes, we don’t like what we see.
Much like books, self-reflection can be dangerous. Spend too much time staring into the abyss, and suddenly, you’re questioning every life choice you’ve ever made, from that philosophy degree to that brief experiment with bangs.
But we can truly learn so much from books… if they don’t suck.
Life Sucks Doesn’t Suck
As you may have guessed, dear digital strangers, my new book, Life Sucks: Memories and Introspections During the Great COVID Lockdown, does NOT suck. It’s coming April 1, 2025 (yes, April Fools’ Day—because why not) to an Interwebs near you.
Here’s the rundown:
- Every week during COVID Lockdown, I wrote darkly satirical essays to distract readers from the world’s slow-motion collapse. These pieces have been updated, expanded, and compiled into a book format.
- Topics range from useless pets to the joys of a colonoscopy, schadenfreude to Shakespeare, Trump’s first reign to Jesus Christ’s prolific pet rabbit, Reg – all narrated by a cranky, hyperbolized version of myself.
- It’s weird, irreverent, sometimes uncomfortably honest, and according to my publisher, “the kind of book that makes you laugh, cringe, and then regret spending four hours reading it.”
Need I say more?
And the Cover of Life Sucks Really Doesn’t Suck
Now, let’s talk about what might be the greatest book cover in human history (or at least one that doesn’t make you ashamed to be seen reading it in a strip club).
Once the manuscript was finalized, we collaborated with the brilliant artist Yucen Yao to design a cover that perfectly captures the absurdity, isolation, and existential exhaustion of Lockdown Life – without resorting to yet another sad-looking facemask or a sourdough starter. She slayed it didn’t she?
Dear The New Yorker, need a new cover artist? Damn straight you do.
Behold:
Gaze upon it. Let it consume you. Feel its quiet desperation.
To truly appreciate its brilliance, let’s break down its 5 greatest mysteries:
- The Hidden Messages: The scribbled papers inside the snow globe—what do they say? Are they secret government memos? Lost Gnostic scriptures? Illegible pandemic-induced journal entries that say nothing but “Day 37: Ate peanut butter with a spoon again”?
- The Snowflakes Falling Outside: In normal reality, snow belongs inside a snow globe. But this is COVID Lockdown. Logic doesn’t live here anymore.
- The Clock Stuck at 12:55: AM? PM? Or did time just stop mattering, as it did when entire days blurred into Netflix binges and existential dread?
- The Books in Water: Did they escape the bubble? Were they exiled for questioning authority? Are they melting like our collective grasp on reality circa 2020?
- The Sightless Eyes: Much like Oedipus (or anyone who watched too many pandemic press briefings), our protagonist appears to have gouged out his own eyes. Or perhaps he just rolled them too far back during a Zoom call and got stuck.
There’s so much more to unpack here, but I’ll let you spiral into your own obsessive analysis.
Final Thoughts
If this cover has revealed anything to you – other than the fact that I had way too much time on my hands during Lockdown – it should be that you need this book in your life.
So don’t just laugh. Pre-order Life Sucks now and be the first to tell your friends you read it before it was inevitably banned.
Amazon link: https://a.co/d/bbkOzZV
Mark your calendars: April 1, 2025. You’re welcome. And namaste.
– PS Conway ☘️
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