I Was Told There'd be Cake by Sloane Crosley

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Summary: Essays from a recent college graduate about growing up Jewish but not practicing, dating and sex, work and friendship. 

Sloane Crosley writes of her first publishing job after college graduation:

“The hours I logged in there were some of the more useless of my life. Which is really saying something. I remember almost nothing of my experience except for the tray of inexplicably unwrapped cherry frosted Pop-Tarts in the office kitchen and the one article they allowed me to write all summer: a two-hundred word reportage masterpiece on a teen fashion show at Macy’s. In it, I attempted to explore the seedy underbelly of thirteen-year-old runway models, all of whom had better skins and better social lives than I did. What came out went something like: Shoulder pads. All bad?”

The minutes I logged trying to get through the painfully dull and self-absorbed stories of another whiny New York college grad can never be repaid.

Now I know why so many other aimless twenty-something have novels out, because this ridiculous book got published. Do you know who’s reading it? All the other aimless twenty-somethings who have no jobs but think they are brilliant. This is what helicopter parenting leads to, folks: liberal art majors who think they can write and are owed a novel about how awkward it is to have sex or date or play band or have any other NORMAL experience people have.

Funny title, but even though this was a collection of essays, I couldn’t bring myself to finish even half of them.