A Review of Amy Poehler’s “Yes Please”
I was disappointed. I wanted so much more from Poehler — not necessarily more wit, humor, or insight but more purpose; I wanted to see the Book Poehler. I’ve seen the SNL Poehler, the Feature Film Poehler and the Successful TV Series Poehler. I was excited and enthusiastic about reading her words, about gaining a new perspective on this creative, comedic role model. Instead, she writes reluctantly and contractually. She admits so much on the jacket cover, in the preface and she even sprinkles in exhausting paragraphs throughout her book that complain about “how hard writing is.”
It really felt like Poehler’s motivations for writing Yes Please were more to satisfy everybody else’s desire for her to write a book than to actually write a book. Now, there were entertaining anecdotes and fun snapshots of Poehler posing with other famed names back in the day. There were good writing moments, particularly in the chapter where she describes preparing for the first round of parenthood and the astonishing “crying to laughing” story of the birth of her first son. I also liked how the last pages of the book reflect the type of person Seth Meyers describes Poehler to be in the chapter he writes for Yes Please.
However, the book was bound to have a lot of interest, readers and financial success, and that is all she wrote it seems. Yes Please is a distracting and messy read with billboard-sized filler pages and unfinished ideas. While there are some good bits, mostly personal histories and lists of fun advice, they just scratch the surface of interesting because of their celebrity. For example, Poehler talks about her work, but so matter of factly that one would think being a comedian and live performer were as easy as getting hired at the mall. I wanted to know more about the journey and I wanted more thought on her tremendous career.
Lastly, this book is deceiving. Full of blank “filler” pages and misused white space, Yes Please was made and bound with the wrong kind of paper. Thick and glossy and more appropriate for a twenty-page photography book, the paper makes Yes Please look substantial and respectable. In fact, it is a short book that weighs more than my Norton Anthology of English Literature. It is a short book I would have liked to have read printed and bound like a movie script, because it would have been way cooler and more fitting.
Final words: Poehler’s author bio pic devastates me. That pipe should be sticking out of the left-side of her mouth, because that decision completes the photograph compositionally and emotionally.
Yes Please
By Amy Poehler
Date Published: 28 October 2014
329 pages. 28.99 USD.
Rating: 2/5 (as previously rated on goodreads)
Other Reviews That Agree With Me:
The Guardian: Yes Please by Amy Poehler Review — ‘Beefs, Advice, & Memoir’
The New York Times: ‘S.N.L.’ Memories and Getting-Some-Rest Dreams
