My Beautiful Despair

The love child of Soren Kierkegaard and Kim Kardashian, the @KimKierkegaard Twitter account has been admired, praised, and adored in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Financial Times, The Economist, New York, Buzzfeed, and more, and has amassed nearly a quarter of a million Twitter followers, including J.K. Rowling and Anna Kendrick.

A mash-up of Kim's tweets and observations with Kierkegaard's philosophy, Kim Kierkegaardashian shares their musings on fashion, beauty, brunch, and the relentless waves of existential dread that wash over us day after day.

Now in a humorous, illustrated gift book, perfectly suited for our existential times, Kierkegaardashian's philosophical insights are juxtaposed for the first time with Dash Shaw's brilliant black-and-white illustrations. A sample of the revelations included in My Beautiful Despair include:

- I have majorly fallen off my workout-eating plan AND it's summer. But to despair over sin is to sink deeper into it.
- Obsessed with protecting your skin, lips, hair & face from the sun? Close the cover of the coffin tight, really tight, and be at peace.
- I like my men like I like my coffee: a momentary comfort in the midst of all my suffering.
- What is the operation by which a self relates itself to its own self, transparently? Selfie.
- What if everything in life were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears? Scared LOL
- Glamour, menswear, top hat...I stick my finger into existence, and it smells of nothing.
- I took my cat Mercy to the groomer, to brush out the dreadful tangled confusions of its existence.
- I've been going to bed a little bit earlier each night, to get a taste of death.

In an age where the line between news and entertainment is blurrier than ever before, and the difference between a celebrity and the leader of the free world is nil, My Beautiful Despair's "reflective maxims on life, death, sin, and emptiness, salted with the luxury accessories of the Kardashian lifestyle" (The New Yorker) perfectly reflect our absurd, hilarious, and deeply disturbing new era.