“Famous people are never as interesting as your friends.” – Amy Poehler
While waitlisted for the library’s copy of Tina Fey’s “Bossy Pants”, I decided to check out Amy Poehler’s memoir, “Yes Please”. Poehler read her own book for the audio version, so I went into this book eager and excited to learn more about her, only to fall quickly into waiting for the good stuff. Throughout the seven hour audio book, Poehler droned endlessly through random haphazardly ordered stories and long (LONG) lists of all of the people she ever knew. Reading “Yes Please” was like reading a script while it’s still being written and simultaneously like meeting someone interesting at a party only to realize they’re incredibly boring and there’s no polite way to escape.
Poehler juggled writing “Yes Please” with caring for two kids under 6, a divorce and a busy booming career schedule. In that vein, the entire book presents itself as a half hearted attempt to write down some “funny shit” after everything else had been managed for the day. To ease some of her burden, both of her parents and Seth Meyers contribute to “Yes Please”, which felt cheap and out of place. She also started her book with an excessive amount of complaining about how hard it is to write a book.
This complaint sets the tone for the remaining pages as “I didn’t really want to do this but all of my peers wrote books, soooo….”
Poehler is a very talented and funny comedian. She has great timing and an unbelievably versatile character list. Her pro-women, live-and- let-live motto of “Good for her, not for me” felt refreshing and sincere. She’s a fantastic writer and most of the material in this book could easily be translated into hilarious skits. With that said, storytelling is not Poehler’s strong suit. The background, performance, and build-up that set a punch line on stage or studio do not translate well into print (or audio.) In fact, after skipping around the audio book and listening to the chapters recommended by Amazon reviewers, I finally hit the very last chapter, which Poehler performs in front of a live audience. While the rest of the book felt flat and annoying, her live stuff was really funny! Poehler is a comedian, not a story teller.
In general, “Yes Please” bounces around Poehler’s idyllic middle class suburban childhood to her dream job on SNL to a lovely celebrity life full of famous friends. Her parents lovingly supported her career choice of waitressing and improv. She lived happily in an unsafe Chicago neighborhood where she suffered no real misadventures or scares. She encountered no major setbacks or failures on the road to fame. She’s always been blessed with great friends, great roommates, has great kids and she is eternally grateful for her fantastic life. According to her book, the worst things Poehler has encountered thus far in life were her friendly harmless meth-addicted landlords who enjoyed cleaning, a pile of human poop on the sidewalk, and offending someone once (through no fault of her own) and then waiting five years to apologize.
Despite all of the stories shared, Poehler never shares anything intimate or personal. The pages are full of happy safe tales of no great import or consequence, making it much too long and much too vanilla.
At 329 pages, “Yes Please” could have done with some heavy editing. It also would have helped to kick out 90% of the name-dropping going on in this book. Nearly every person Poehler’s worked with (famous or not) is mentioned in this book. While SNL super fans and people familiar with the comedy circuit may enjoy these stories, it was exhausting (and BORING!) trying to keep track of who she’s talking about and who they are and why they’re even in her book.
And so my friends, I conclude these ramblings with the fact that “Yes Please” became one of about three books I just could not read all the way through. This book actually turned me off of anything Amy Poehler until the very last chapter in which her live comedic performance changed my mind. After listening to her perform live, I decided to dislike her book and how she read it, instead of just disliking all of her.
Until next time, happy reading y’all.
And if you like Amy Poehler, stay away from this book and stick to her performance stuff instead.
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