Bon's Book Club - Yes Please

This month’s book for Bon’s Book Club was Yes Please by Amy Poehler. This is a book that has been on my list to read for quite a while now.  I love funny autobiographies and memoirs, so it is right up my alley. Here is a description from Amazon:

 

“Do you want to get to know the woman we first came to love on Comedy Central's Upright Citizens Brigade? Do you want to spend some time with the lady who made you howl with laughter on Saturday Night Live, and in movies like Baby Mama, Blades of Glory, and They Came Together? Do you find yourself daydreaming about hanging out with the actor behind the brilliant Leslie Knope on Parks and Recreation? Did you wish you were in the audience at the last two Golden Globes ceremonies, so you could bask in the hilarity of Amy's one-liners?

If your answer to these questions is "Yes Please!" then you are in luck. In her first book, one of our most beloved funny folk delivers a smart, pointed, and ultimately inspirational read. Full of the comedic skill that makes us all love Amy, Yes Please is a rich and varied collection of stories, lists, poetry (Plastic Surgery Haiku, to be specific), photographs, mantras and advice. With chapters like "Treat Your Career Like a Bad Boyfriend," "Plain Girl Versus the Demon" and "The Robots Will Kill Us All" Yes Please will make you think as much as it will make you laugh. Honest, personal, real, and righteous, Yes Please is full of words to live by.”

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Honest opinion? I really didn’t like this book.  There were a few moments when I giggled, but I would not say this book was overwhelmingly funny in any way like I was expecting it to be.  I enjoyed Tina Fey’s book and have read many others by TV personalities (Mindy Kaling and Chelsea Handler for example) and this one was by far my least favorite.

I think my biggest problem was it jumped around too much.  She would talk about one point in her life, then talk about her marriage, then go back to a chapter on college, then move to SNL, then go back…you get the picture.  I was so lost half the time and really turned off by the lack of timeline. I also never watched Parks and Rec, so I didn’t connect with anything that she wrote about that portion of her life.

She also had some really strange chapters.  I mean, several pages spent on how her cell phone was out to kill her?  Maybe we just don’t have the same sense of humor. I don’t like weird humor, so that’s very possible.

I felt like most of the book was too much on the surface for a book touting that its author was “honest” and “real.”  Yes, there were a few real moments, for example when she wrote about a very insensitive skit she did years ago and how she dealt with the aftermath, but they were few and far between in my opinion.

Overall, I would skip this book.  I’ve read so many other books of the same “type” that I enjoyed far more.

Next up for Bon’s Book Club is Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.  I am not sure how I feel about this one.  I have heard it’s great, but for some reason I don’t find it fully appealing.  Hopefully that will change and I will love this book!

Have you read Yes Please? What are your thoughts?