“I really like everything concerning this hilarious reserve except the font size.” -Jon Stewart

Although his career as a bestselling author and on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart was founded on fake news and invented facts, in 2016 that regular didn’t seem as funny to John Hodgman anymore. Many people are doing it now.

Disarmed of falsehood, he was left only with the awful truth: John Hodgman is an older white male monster with poor facial hair, wandering such as a privileged Sasquatch through about Vacationland: True Stories from Unpleasant Seashores three wildernesses: the hillsides of Western Massachusetts where he spent much of his youngsters; the painful beaches of Maine that are looking to destroy him (and some day will); as well as the metaphoric haunted forest of middle age group that connects them.

Vacationland gathers these true to life wanderings, and through them you observe the horror of freshwater clams, the evolutionary purpose of the mustache, and which animals to maintain as household pets and which to kill with traps and poison. There is also some advice on how best to react when the folks of seaside Maine make an effort to sacrifice you with their strange god.

Though wildly, Hodgmaniacally funny as usual, it is also a poignant and genuine account of one human facing his forties, those years when guys in particular must stop pretending to end up being the kids of shiny potential these were and settle in to the failing bodies of the wiser, weird dads that they are.