did you know joey comeau wrote books? I didn't either, or maybe I did and forgot until I found an old email. anyway, this book made me happy and sad at the same time. I have been sending out the same exact cover letter over and over, with the positions and locations changed, which is maybe why I am still working at Barnes and noble serving tired moms and the Chase people from next door. my point is that joey took the time to write all these different letters that all manage to make you happy and sad at the same time, and I liked it a lot. I've written a couple (thousand) cover letters in my ever, it seems, continuing attempts to become a real full time librarian, and each one really was just a form letter after a while, Dear Committee, I saw the posting for whatever on this board or that list, I think I would be A GREAT FIT for your position! !!! I really enjoyed reading the cover letters, laughing, even as I realized these were cover letters of someone who was past hope.From the moment I got the book I liked it, the quality of the thick paper, the type written pages, appealed to me as a reader. It wasn't squishy like most books these days, but had a lovely crispness to the pages, which were white, instead of the over-used grey books get when they've been through the library system, assigned to home after abusive home.I also loved the title of the book, "Overqualified." I try to be humble, but occasionally I'll lie to myself and claim that was the reasoning behind my rejection. I was overqualified for the job, so I wasn't hired, because they thought I wouldn't stay, because I was overqualified. Overqualified? Mainly they tell me I wasn't hired because they found someone who was a better fit. I want to say, tell me how to fit and I'll fit. Boy will I fit.At first I was just enjoying the oddity of the letters, the hilarity of what Comeau was writing, but I was also starting to get a feel for the underlying story, which was subtly worked in. Readers have to read between the lines for some of it, but it's well worth it. Sometimes I feel things are best discussed in ink, only to be read by an underpaid temp or a computer. There are people who write letters only to tear them up or stick them in the fireplace. This narrator mailed his. Questions that have no answers, stories that have no point, that's life, it's bleak and funny and Joey Comeau wrote it very well.
What do You think about Overqualified (2009)?
Dark truths about where our thoughts wander to. Crippling sad, funny, humiliating and honest.
—samia
Funny. There is a story, though initially it doesn't seem like it.
—Gayley
