Amy Poehler is a funny woman. She was a delight on Saturday Night Live, delicious as host of the Golden Globes and enjoyable on Parks and Recreation, a show I never got into in a big way.
Her autobiography, Yes Please, is so titled because the phrase is her mantra. “Yes and…” is a fundamental of improv, where Poehler cut her teeth. When your improv partner makes a suggestion you always go with it, rather than oppose it. It’s a philosophy that works well in radio morning shows, too.
The book is sweet and amusing and personal but it’s also very girly. She talks about wanting to eat up her children, something that women find cute and understandable but would sound threatening and creepy coming out of the mouth of a man. She writes about her long friendship with Tina Fey and her delight that their careers continue to intertwine. Her now-ended marriage to fellow funny person Will Arnett, her occasional diva outbursts and where they came from and enough behind-the-scenes moments at SNL to keep this SNL freak interested.
However, my voracious-reader husband couldn’t get through it. He found it too light, too quirky and too silly for his taste and I can understand that. Poehler is a funny performer but this book reminds you that one of the reasons she’s memorable is because of the writing done by others. Yes Please is a bit of frosting on the cake of life. I enjoy frosting as much as anyone. Especially those hard little roses that mark the corners of a square cake. But I digress. If you’re a huge fan, go for it. Otherwise, there are better books for peeking behind the legendary SNL curtain.
As an audio book on this one: I found the first half far more fulfilling than the second and that’s probably largely because I don’t watch Parks & Rec. I felt she did bare her soul a fair bit (the apology that took years was especially touching) but her incessant “I hate writing this” whining – which it really was in the audio version – took away some of the pleasure of listening to it. (We PAID a lot for this, so if you really hated it, perhaps you shouldn’t have accepted that advance, Amy?) That dissipates as the book goes on. I’m half tempted to re-read Darrell Hammond’s, now that he’s back as voice of SNL, aren’t you? What a story his was. Thanks for the review Ms Lisa!
Oh…PS…an audio plus: voices of Patrick Stewart, Seth Meyers, Carol Burnett and (?) Kathleen Turner crop up.
That’s pretty cool!