{"id":2769,"date":"2013-02-26T04:03:15","date_gmt":"2013-02-26T04:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=2769"},"modified":"2013-02-26T04:03:15","modified_gmt":"2013-02-26T04:03:15","slug":"i-knew-her-when-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2013\/02\/26\/i-knew-her-when-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"I Knew Her When, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I&#8217;ve written before, one of the real perks of working where I do is that I so often have the opportunity to meet and befriend smart, creative, interesting, quirky, funny, and extremely cool people&#8230; some of whom do very cool and enviable things like writing books that get published by actual, honest-to-god publishers and turn up in actual, honest-to-god <i>bookstores <\/i>and such, as my friend Diane Olson did <a title=\"I Knew Her When\u2026\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=2360\">last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Well, it&#8217;s happened again.<\/p>\n<p>Jen Larsen used to be a &#8212; how do I put this? &#8212; a <i>large woman<\/i>. She thought, as many people do, that if she could just lose the weight, all her troubles would be over. She&#8217;d magically become confident, dynamic, beautiful, successful&#8230; that she would finally like herself. And so, like so many other people in a society obsessed with the quick fix, she underwent gastric bypass surgery. And the weight came off. But then Jen found, to her surprise, that her problems were still there&#8230; and she was no longer sure who the hell she was. Her memoir of the whole experience, <em>Stranger Here: How Weight-Loss Surgery Transformed My Body and Messed with My Head<\/em>, has just been released. I haven&#8217;t read it yet, but I know from my personal experiences with her that she&#8217;s witty, funny, self-deprecating, and brutally honest, and I&#8217;m certain her book is probably much the same. It promises to be an incredible read. Here&#8217;s a nice little animated trailer for it:<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/59938913\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" title=\"Stranger Here\" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s Jen herself doing the voiceover, by the way. I&#8217;m sure she would deny it, but I think she&#8217;s a great reader. <em>Stranger Here<\/em> has already gotten some good <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkusreviews.com\/book-reviews\/jen-larsen\/stranger-here\/\">review<\/a>s, and Diane Olson and I are taking bets on how long it takes before Jen is invited to meet with Oprah. In the meantime, she&#8217;ll be signing books in Salt Lake next week at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kingsenglish.com\/\">King&#8217;s English Bookshop<\/a>; details <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kingsenglish.com\/event\/jen-larsen-stranger-here\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I highly recommend buying the book from your local bookseller, of course, but you can also get it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Jen&#8217;s website is <a href=\"http:\/\/jenlarsen.net\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>(Incidentally, Diane&#8217;s book &#8212; <em>A Nature Lover&#8217;s Almanac: Kinky Bugs, Stealthy Critters, Prosperous Plants &amp; Celestial Wonders<\/em> &#8212; is still available! And still wonderful!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I&#8217;ve written before, one of the real perks of working where I do is that I so often have the opportunity to meet and befriend smart, creative, interesting, quirky, funny, and extremely cool people&#8230; some of whom do very cool and enviable things like writing books that get published by actual, honest-to-god publishers and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-bookshelf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}