Portmanteaujam: Essays About the Sea Inside

Here is a book that explores some of the day’s heaviest issues: Would the Guess Who have been a better band if Tennessee Williams was their lead singer? Why are people so afraid of mixing peanut butter with pickles? Is the Indy 500 really a three-hour advertisement for the dairy industry? While this book has nothing to say about harbors, feet, or sugary fruit spreads, it does confront the ocean of emotion inside one rather absurd man by collecting seventy-six of Adam’s essays, the first of which was penned the day after Lazerbeam Sandwich, his first book, was published.

Several of the author’s watering holes are revisited—his best friend’s life in prison, sporting event live blogs, idiosyncratic lists, and road trips with his girlfriend—as he constantly seeks to mine joy from his unpredictable circumstances. Now is when this paragraph should conclude by posing a witty maritime question prior to an encouraging offer to “Bon voyage!” Instead, just start reading…and pick up your phone by page four. Ahoy!

Adam Harrison-Friday has worked in the insurance, music retail, and secondary ticketing industries; he was shockingly fired from only one of those jobs. A freelance writer and devoted analyst of everyday mundanities, he enjoys arguing in defense of hyphenation, writing limericks about (primarily) food, and criticizing his own neuroses. Adam lives in Connecticut without any children or pets, lifestyle decisions that have given him excess time to obsessively create lists.