Got milk? VCU alum’s snarky new book finds the ‘dumbest’ things to complain about
March 17, 2023 - Leila UginciusOnce upon a time, there were three kinds of milk: whole, low-fat and chocolate.
These days, the choices seem endless, with fat-free, lactose-free, lower-sugar and higher-protein all with their own place in the market. And that’s before you get into the nondairy varieties such as soy, oat and almond vying for the top spot in your fridge.
That’s the premise behind Tara Lawall and Anne Marie Wonder’s “There Are Too Many Milks: And Other Common Annoyances of Modern Life,” which came out last week.
The idea for the book emerged during the height of the pandemic, said Wonder, a two-time graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University.
“Tara and I had toyed with the idea of writing something together for years, but in the throes of the pandemic we really liked the idea of making a book that was filled with some of the dumbest — but realest — things to complain about,” she said. “When the book was coming together, it was still very much in the thick of the pandemic so there were so many legitimate things to get upset about and focusing on the dumb things about life actually was a really nice distraction.”
“It’s definitely a bit snarky but also incredibly neurotic,” she said. “Just like us, I suppose.”
Wonder and Lawall wrote “Too Many Milks” together and Wonder sketched ideas for the illustrations.
“I just spent a lot of last winter avoiding Omicron and drawing everything up,” said Wonder, who graduated from the School of the Arts in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in communication arts and from the Brandcenter in 2016.