Jolenta Greenberg Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Jolenta Greenberg is a pop culture commentator, podcaster, comedian, and reality TV historian. She is best known for her “By the Book Podcast” and her debut novel “How to be Fine.” She is the winner of the Moth StorySLAM and for a time also worked in Brooklyn’s Pete’s Candy Store as a comedic resident. As a performer, her storytelling and stand-up artist her work has been featured all over New York. Her thoughts and reflection on pop culture have been featured on The BBC and NPR. “Modern Harpies,” her second work which has become an Amazon bestselling title is a comedic e-book that compares Greek Gods to the characters in her podcast “Real Housewives.” The show has received rave reviews and been featured in several publications such as “Bustle,” “Time Magazine,” “Stylist Magazine,” “The Washington Post,” “Bust,” and “Buzzfeed” among several other publications. The work has also been featured on a variety of networks such as CBC’s “All Things Considered” and NPR. She has also been involved in the naming and launching of “Werk It,” the all-female podcast festival.

Jolenta was born in Portland Oregon and as a teenager, she went to the University of San Francisco from where she graduated with a Performing Arts and Social Justice Degree. She believes that her stories encourage people to question the status quo, think, and sometimes laugh. Greenberg was always interested in writing and remembers sitting with her mother as she read “Little House on the Prairie” novels during her childhood. The first series of novels that she got interested in was the “Rats of NIMH” novels which she believes was because she owned a rat as a pet. She loved the rodent adventures in her childhood even though she would get interested in more adult works such as autobiographies when she got older. Straight from college, she taught performance, playwriting, and acting for the Atlantic Theater Company, then worked as Special Projects Producer for WNYC Radio for three years between 2012 and 2015. She also worked for Freakonomics as an associate producer and launched the Freakonomics podcast. Jolenta Greenberg started the “By the Book Podcast” of which she was and is still the host. Much of her debut novel is derived from the content of her show on the podcast.

Ever since the first season of the “By the Book” podcast came to a close, people started asking Jolenta Greenberg and Kristen Meinzer her co-host to distill what they had learned. They wanted those experiences to be written in a more in-depth format than what had been presented on the podcast. They had several self-help books that they had reviewed and discussed on the podcast and with a few seasons under their belt, they believed they had enough to distill some knowledge to help others. It was from these experiences that they came to author the bestselling novel “How To Be Fine.”

Jolenta Greenberg’s “How to Be Fine” is a synthesis of the insights and lessons that she learned alongside her friend Kristen. It is an insightful analysis of the practices and books that have been very real and the ones that should never have been written. She also includes a list of philosophies of life that are then explored in depth. Before starting their podcast, Jolenta believed everything written in self-help works while her friend Kristen has always been the skeptic. They put together their differences in opinion even as they tore down or praised some of the works just for downloads and laughs on their podcast. In the years following the publication of their novel “By the Book,” they realized that their podcast was not only about humor and downloads. By following and reading the recommendations in the book they had written from reading and discussing a ton of self-help material they had improved and changed their lives. Thanks to the podcast, Jolenta’s cohost Kristen ended up writing an Amish romance that she had always desired to write. Jolenta Greenberg finally managed to memorize her husband’s mobile number, fell in love with clutter, and began looking at her finances more closely. The part prescriptive and part memoir handbook is a funny, honest, and heartfelt guide that seems almost like a heart to heart between you and your smartest and closest friends.

“Modern Harpies” by Jolenta Greenberg is a scathingly comedic and riveting novel that compares the Real Housewives to Greek Mythology. The Real Housewives is a gripping reality TV show and the informative and funny Modern Harpies outlines the similarities between the classic Greek myths and the stories in the TV series. In her first work of fiction, Jolenta writes about the key characters that populate Greek Mythology while comparing them to modern-day characters. Since she has derived many of her characters from her podcast, they are very contemporary. Even persons that are not familiar with the Franchise will feel a sense of connection with the characters in the Real Housewives. Maybe you could even mingle and crash a dinner party thrown by one of them and never be out of place.