“This is not a book about marriage or family, both because I respect my loved ones’ private lives, and because I am very selfish,” John Hodgman writes at the beginning of Vacationland. “This is a book about me, at what I hope is the beginning of the second half of my life and not the brief, final tenth.”
Hodgman’s latest stands apart from his previous books—The Areas of My Expertise, More Information Than You Require, and That Is All, three excellent tomes that purported to contain the sum total of all world knowledge, but actually contained a bunch of made-up facts and hobo names. Vacationland, on the other hand, is full of true things: memories and thoughts and jokes and essays, all of which gradually cohere into a careful, bittersweet memoir. It’s just as funny as his previous books; it’s better than all of them.