Yes Please

by Amy Poehler

[Grace]

I wanted to like this, I really did, because I adore Amy Poehler. But the essays in this book needed some heavy-duty editing. They just kind of meandered, stream-of-consciousness style, and didn't seem to have much of a point beyond "these things happened to me." There were line breaks were there shouldn't have been, and vice versa. Her pronouns were sometimes vague, like I wasn't sure which person this "he" is supposed to be attached to, which made the stories confusing for a few lines until I used context clues to figure it out. And... I didn't really find it that funny. Maybe she wasn't intending it to be comedic, but you pick up a book by an SNL alumna, you're going to expect some laughs. I enjoyed the chapter on Parks and Recreation, and some of the anecdotes featuring her SNL colleagues, but apart from those things, it felt like she was just trying to fill up pages and didn't have much to say. I went in expecting something more akin to Bossypants and Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and came out pretty disappointed. :(