Published in: 2014
Pages: 329
Edition read: E-book
Book description:
In Amy Poehler’s highly anticipated first book, Yes Please, she offers up a big juicy stew of personal stories, funny bits on sex and love and friendship and parenthood and real life advice (some useful, some not so much), like when to be funny and when to be serious. Powered by Amy’s charming and hilarious, biting yet wise voice, Yes Please is a book is full of words to live by.
My review:
I wanted to love this book, as I think Amy is quite awesome, and she is friends with Tina Fey who is my spirit animal (isn’t she everyone’s?). However… I didn’t. Amy comes across as trying a bit too hard sometimes. There are moments in this book where I laughed, as she was pretty funny; there were moments that were charming; there were moments that were genuinely interesting to read about. But then there were the moments where she just blatantly name-dropped for no reason. The times where she brags about her drug use- I am so against this kind of thing, I nearly gave up on the book in disgust. She tells how she loves being on cocaine, and I thought to myself, seriously? Why am I even reading this? Great that she is being honest, but Amy, that’s a step too far. think about who will be reading this book, your fanbase includes a bunch of impressionable teenagers who will look to you as a role model and go “yeah, if she thinks Cocaine is cool then maybe I should try it!” and you don’t want kids messing with that kind of shit.
I think reading this book made me lose a little respect for Amy, which is a bit sad. I thought she was pretty cool, now I feel like she’s the kid who is trying too hard to make people like her by bragging about all the shit she gets up to, and it’s hard to get past that feeling. While interesting to learn about how she started in the comedy business through improv and hard work, I feel that the book could have been better and far more interesting, had she focused less on trying to impress the reader and more on telling her story. The book was disjointed and jumped from subject to subject before coming back to something she already covered, and involved a mega-ton of name dropping. We get it, you have famous friends.
Anyway. She slightly redeemed herself on the last page of the book. There is an ‘about the author’ page, and there is Amy in a sailors hat with a pipe, looking off into the distance with contemplation. Pure Amy. This is the Amy we all love and respect and want to be friends with. It was the perfect ‘about the author’ picture, the best way to end the book, and I wish she had writen moments like this purely classic Amy-ism, as it would have really made the book better. Oh well.
Final review:
Yes Please rating: 6/10. It had it’s funny moments, but overall it was… just not what I expected from this charmingly funny lady. I expected her personality to shine through…. got an insecure girl trying to make the cool kids like her with all her cool acquaintances and partying ways.
Would I re-read it? No
Who would I recommend it to? Tough to say. Fans might enjoy learning about Amy, but be warned that although there are gems in this book, there is a lot of bullshit too. A lot of promoting her love of recreational drug use, a lot of her name-dropping any famous person she has ever come into contact with, a lot about her first love- improv (which, if you are not a fan of improv, you will find this dull).
Links:
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20910157-yes-please
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Yes-Please-Amy-Poehler/dp/0062268341
Rolling stone’s 9 things you can learn from Yes Please: http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/features/9-things-we-learned-from-amy-poehlers-yes-please-20141030
(This link is worth a read. It picks out most of the best parts of the book, makes me think maybe I judged it a little harshly…)
Bookish 