Author: Amy Poehler
Publisher: Picador
Publication Year: 2014
Language: English
Format: Hardback
Pages: 329
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). Powered by Amy's charming and hilarious, biting yet wise voice, Yes Please is a book full of words to live by.
I haven’t read many memoirs. Yes Please might be the first memoir that I read and boy, I’m glad I did it. I first knew Amy Poehler from Mean Girls, but I came to like her because of Parks and Recreation. I love her works in Parks and Rec that it inspired me to read this book. She is an actress, comedian, director, producer, writer; she is many things. But her passions are mostly comedy and improv.
In this book, Poehler talks about her journey navigating the showbiz. There are chapters about how she fell in love with comedy and improv. She talks about her early days doing improv at ImprovOlympic and Upright Citizens Brigade. In some ways, her story is relatable; being young and struggling. I admire her determination to keep pursuing career in comedy considering how tough it was. It’s inspirational.
Amy talks about her time on SNL a lot. She often references some sketch that she did there. I couldn’t connect with these parts, mostly because I don’t watch SNL. So I tend to skim these parts, which is a shame because SNL is such a big part of her career. I just wish I could have the access to watch her skits on SNL because I’m actually interested in watching them.
Besides her life experience, she also talks about her perspective of life. She’s so genuine and I love this book because of that. This book is honest in a sense that she doesn’t try to avoid dark subjects. On the contrary, she reaches them with positivity and a bit of sarcasm which makes it funny and enjoyable. She talks about her experience with drugs and ‘inner demon’. She also talks about her friendship with Tina Fey (who is also amazing) and her kids.
My favorite is of course the Parks and Rec part. She explains how the project started and how it grew. She also talks about her connection with other casts and her favorite moment with them. There are also pieces of script from Parks and Rec’s episodes where Ben proposed to Leslie and their wedding. Reading them gave me all the feelings. It makes me want to binge watch the show again.
Overall, I highly recommend this book. Whether you don’t know or know Amy Poehler, read it. If you want to read fun memoir but also insightful one, read Yes Please! I give this book a four out of five.
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