Yes Please by Amy Poehler

Having read Tina Fey's Bossypants and Aisha Tyler's Self-Inflicted Wounds within the past year (both great books), I thought Amy Poehler's Yes Please (2014) would be a similar collection of funny anecdotes and stories of embarrassing experiences, with some occasional behind-the-scenes 'shop talk' of the comedy and acting industries.

Though Yes Please had all of these, it was in very different proportions to the other comedy memoirs I've read recently, and was much heavier on the memoir and advice / words-of-wisdom, and lighter on the comedy and humor than I expected. It was much less of funny story after funny story and more sincere that I had assumed it would be. Amy was (or at least seemed to be) as honest about the lows as she was about the highs of her life.

This isn't a criticism; the book was definitely interesting, and I certainly feel like I know Amy better, even if I didn't bust my gut laughing regularly while reading. There was certainly still plenty of humor (heavy on the self-deprecating humor) and some great insider information, much more so than Tina's or Aisha's books. I really enjoyed reading about how things were run at SNL and her sitcom, and her experiences as a woman in what is definitely still a male-dominated industry were illuminating.

A really great read that I would recommend.

"Creativity is connected to your passion, that light inside you that drives you. That joy that comes when you do something you love. That small voice that tells you, 'I like this. Do this again. You are good at it. Keep going.' That is the juicy stuff that lubricates our lives and helps us feel less alone in the world." (page 222)

Keep reading! Beth