{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"site_cron_amazon_bestseller_frontier_20261029T020001Z","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/073522482X?tag=bookfrontie00-20","asin":"073522482X","authors":["John Hodgman"],"book_id":"9780735224827","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/vacationland-073522482X","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780735224827.jpg?v=37a7f9556ae4efdb","description":"“I love everything about this hilarious book 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 routine didn’t seem as funny to John Hodgman anymore. Everyone is doing it now. Disarmed of falsehood, he was left only with the awful truth: John Hodgman is an older white male monster with bad facial hair, wandering like a privileged Sasquatch through three wildernesses: the hills of Western Massachusetts where he spent much of his youth; the painful beaches of Maine that want to kill him (and some day will); and the metaphoric haunted forest of middle age that connects them. Vacationland collects these real life wanderings, and through them you learn of the horror of freshwater clams, the evolutionary purpose of the mustache, and which animals to keep as pets and which to kill with traps and poison. There is also some advice on how to react when the people of coastal Maine try to sacrifice you to their strange god. Though wildly, Hodgmaniacally funny as usual, it is also a poignant and sincere account of one human facing his forties, those years when men in particular must stop pretending to be the children of bright potential they were and settle into the failing bodies of the wiser, weird dads that they are.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9780735224827","publication_date":"20180529","publisher":"Penguin Publishing Group","slug":"vacationland","subtitle":"True Stories From Painful Beaches","title":"Vacationland"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"BIO026000","confidence_band":"unbanded","label":"Personal Memoirs","score":0.54,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"HUM003000","confidence_band":"unbanded","label":"Humor Essays","score":0.44,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"TRV025060","confidence_band":"unbanded","label":"New England Travel","score":0.47,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"BIO026000","confidence_band":"unbanded","label":"Personal Memoirs","score":0.54,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"HUM003000","confidence_band":"unbanded","label":"Humor Essays","score":0.44,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"TRV025060","confidence_band":"unbanded","label":"New England Travel","score":0.47,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"BIO005000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Lives in Entertainment","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"BIO026000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Personal Memoirs","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"TRV025060","confidence_band":"high","label":"New England Travel","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"Personal Memoirs","score":0.54,"slug":"personal-memoirs"},{"label":"Humor Essays","score":0.44,"slug":"humor-essays"},{"label":"New England Travel","score":0.47,"slug":"new-england-travel"}],"reader_fit":["Readers of comic true-life stories and personal wanderings","Good for readers interested in candid reflections on middle age"],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Dylan Dethier"],"book_id":"9781451693645","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781451693645.jpg?v=ea1352475f967a83","score":0.493,"title":"18 in America","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781451693645"},{"authors":["Steven Petrow"],"book_id":"9780806541006","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780806541006.jpg?v=b06423c8b6a1612a","score":0.5467,"title":"Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780806541006"},{"authors":["Todd Snider"],"book_id":"9780306822605","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780306822605.jpg?v=adf7ade4c2d31e79","score":0.532,"title":"I Never Met a Story I Didn't Like","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780306822605"},{"authors":["Paul Theroux"],"book_id":"9780618658954","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780618658954.jpg?v=f497f6f80aa950c2","score":0.4928,"title":"The Kingdom by the Sea","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780618658954"},{"authors":["Nicholas Johnson","Eirik Sonneland - foreword","Aaron Abano","Audible Studios"],"book_id":"9780922915996","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780922915996.jpg?v=02218b143caa734a","score":0.5901,"title":"Big Dead Place","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780922915996"}],"topics":[{"evidence_refs":["goodreads_genre:Humor"],"label":"Humor","score":0.8889,"slug":"humor"},{"evidence_refs":["goodreads_genre:Memoir"],"label":"Memoir","score":0.7778,"slug":"memoir"},{"evidence_refs":["goodreads_genre:Essays"],"label":"Essays","score":0.6667,"slug":"essays"},{"evidence_refs":["goodreads_genre:Biography"],"label":"Biography","score":0.5556,"slug":"biography"},{"evidence_refs":["goodreads_genre:Comedy"],"label":"Comedy","score":0.4444,"slug":"comedy"},{"evidence_refs":["goodreads_genre:Biography Memoir"],"label":"Biography Memoir","score":0.3333,"slug":"biography-memoir"},{"evidence_refs":["goodreads_genre:Travel"],"label":"Travel","score":0.2222,"slug":"travel"},{"evidence_refs":["goodreads_genre:Short Stories"],"label":"Short Stories","score":0.1111,"slug":"short-stories"}],"what_you_get":["Themes: Humorous personal storytelling, Facing middle age, Maine and New England wanderings.","Themes: Humor, Memoir, Essays.","Reading lane: Personal Memoirs and Humor Essays."]},"llm_signals":{"confidence":0.9,"pacing":"unknown","reader_fit":["Readers of comic true-life stories and personal wanderings","Readers interested in candid reflections on middle age"],"themes":["Humorous personal storytelling","Facing middle age","Maine and New England wanderings"],"tropes":[]},"source_presence":{"amazon":true,"book_detail":true,"goodreads":true,"llm_signals":true,"similarity_seed":true},"stats":{"amazon_ratings_count":0,"goodreads_ratings_count":19559,"goodreads_reviews_count":2109,"quality_score":0.9641}}