Our score
Excellent
Actually, Nevermind
Actually, Nevermind is Taylor Tomlinson's debut collection of humorous essays, a comedian memoir organized around the habit of revising what you once knew for sure. It runs from a strict religious childhood to a TV hosting job she grew unhappy with, and it's candid, funny, and easy to read in short sittings.
From the review
Taylor Tomlinson grew up certain. A strict religious upbringing and a loss that arrived early handed her a world with clean edges, where answers existed and she was expected to have them. Actually, Nevermind is the story of what happened when life kept refusing to cooperate, told by a comedian who has clearly decided that being wrong, repeatedly, is better material than being right once. The argument, stated plainly: changing your mind is a skill, and the people who can't do it are mostly just frightened. Tomlinson tests that claim against the only evidence she fully controls, her own biography. It's a narrow evidentiary base, and she knows it. There's no pretense of research or a survey of other people's reversals. What holds the thesis up is the range of things she's revised: faith, assumptions about adulthood, what a good career is supposed to look like, and her family. Each essay is a small trial, and the verdict is usually that she was less sure than she sounded.
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