Author: Diana Estill
ISBN: 13: 978-0-9799708-1-8:  10: 0-9799708-1-4

Click Here To Purchase Deedee Divine's Totally Skewed Guide to Life

If you are looking for a good belly laugh, this is it. Diana Estill’s writing is wickedly hilarious being blessed with one-liner insights into life’s frustrations and how to copy with them through humor. In fact, I would even go so far as to compare her to a female version of Andy Rooney of Sixty Minutes fame. And as the introduction mentions, Estill through the voice of her narrator Deedee Divine,  “no longer looks at life from a bubble-on-due-plumb perspective. It is laughter that has gotten her through the hard patches, plummeting times, and spiralling bills.” 

Estill has published her essays in a variety of publications and her opinion columns have appeared in The Dallas Morning News. She is also the author of Driving on the Wrong Side of the Road: Humorous Views on Love, Lust, & Lawn Care. With Deedee Divine’s Totally Skewed Guide To Life she tackles such topics as daredevil children, riding in cars with kids, scuba lessons, vacation envy, home and garden issues, health beauty, and other pricey pursuits, dining advice, the best way to clear a garage, as well as a host of other common landscapes wherein Deedee, which Estill claims to be part of her that doesn’t hold back, voices totally skewed views for which no apologies are offered.

It is difficult to pinpoint which of Estill’s essays was the funniest and wackiest, however, when several of my friends including my wife were found rolling on the floor after reading Love Means Never Having to Say “Excuse Me," you know you have a winner. Without giving away too much, Deedee recounts how she and her husband Jim stopped to eat at one of their favorite Mexican restaurants while traveling on a book tour. This began, as she states, to be now simply referred to as “Bean-o-rama.” We are informed that she had forgotten that the restaurant serves a small bowl of bean soup with each of its meals. In itself this wouldn’t have been so bad if she and her husband did not order platters of refried black beans. By the time they returned to their hotel room, they were “loaded with more than margaritas; we were packing major intestinal power.” In other words, this was lethal!

When reading Estill’s essays, I was reminded that one of the fundamental elements of humor is that it hinges on the principle of reversal of expectations. In other words, we anticipate a certain result, a certain tone, a certain reaction, but in fact we get something entirely different. As an example, Making Vino illustrates how the simple process of deciding to make one’s own wine turns into an event the participants couldn’t even remember, as along the way to creating their masterpiece they permitted their numerous samplings to take over. So much for making your own wine! 

Even though some readers won’t find all of Estill’s essays hilarious or witty, the good thing is that if you don’t enjoy one, you need only to start another. With that in mind, I found her writing a welcome breath of fresh air and Deedee Divine’s Totally Skewed Guide To Life did manage a fine balance of quirky humor, sometimes absurd with a good dose of light pen commentary pertaining to everyday common settings. What is more, Estill is a savvy amusing observer and her effectiveness lies in the way she packages the truth that differentiates what makes us cringe from what makes us chuckle.

Click Here To Purchase Deedee Divine's Totally Skewed Guide to Life

 Click Here To Read Norm's Interview With Diana Estill