Everybody Into the Pool

Beth Lisick was a cheerleader, a homecoming princess, and a star athlete with a Crisco-aided tan and a bad perm. And then everything changed. How exactly did this suburban girl-next-door end up as one of San Francisco's foremost chroniclers of alternative culture, touring as the only straight woman with a band of punk rock lesbian poets and living in illegal warehouses All while managing to get married, buy a house, and have a baby Lisick explains it all in her hilarious, irreverent memoir Everybody Into the Pool.

Diving into America's deepest subcultures, while keeping both feet firmly grounded in her parents' Leave It to Beaver values, Lisick explores the fringe of mainsteam culture where she's made her adult home and finds it rich with paradox and humor. On the one hand, she's got a babysitter who's a drag king and a dentist who's a keyboardist in a Goth band, and on the other, she drives a station wagon with a baby seat in the back, clips coupons, and makes extra lasagnas to freeze for emergencies. Just like her own mother. Well, sort of.

Fans of David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell are relishing Lisick's scathingly funny, smart, very real take on the effluvia of daily living—no matter what community she's exposing to the light, Lisick's hilarious perspectives always hits the right chord.