I did not expect to be so underwhelmed by this book, but I was. The structure was barely hanging on, and it was so all over the place, I had difficulty keeping all the story threads together.

Obviously, Amy Poehler had gone through a lot of personal and career upheaval during the writing on this book and was probably not at a very good place emotionally. She also doesn’t like talking about herself, as is evident from several subjects that are just a no go, including her divorce, embarrassing moments, and a few other things.

The book reminded me of a lot of reasons why I disliked Mindy Kaling’s book (and I’m glad I didn’t spend any money on either of them). It was just a bunch of vignettes, loosely strung together and attempting to be funny. I guess it even reminds me of Ellen Degeneres’ latest book. Chapters of narrative style writing, interspersed with odd bits, like emails, poetry, or lists. It doesn’t work for me. For a great example of memoir, everyone should read Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher. Now that was fantastic.

There were a few things I found interesting and thoughtful about the book. The chapter of apologies was good, and I enjoyed the story, the honest depiction of anger and shame, and then acknowledging that the thing she did was careless. More of those stories, yes please! I also liked the portion where she talked about her brief touch with sexism in the workplace, with the unwanted physical touch. But I get the sense that even though she is famous, her life isn’t really all that interesting. I think the real reason she hated writing this book so much was that she really didn’t have much to tell. It’s not that she is a bad writer. It’s that she just didn’t have anything to work with.

3 stars (and that’s generous)

This book fulfills the funny book requirement for the challenge.