Last week, I finally read Yes Please by Amy Poehler. I’ve been meaning to read it since it came out this past October, enthusiastically saying, literally, yes, please, when both my boyfriend’s roommate and my downstairs neighbor offered to lend their respective copies to me, but time got away from me, and I didn’t end up picking it up until this week. (I ended up borrowing it from my neighbor after my roommate borrowed it, if that detail matters.) I liked Yes Please a great deal, but I wasn’t in love with it. One thing I did love, though, was how much she brought up Burlington, which is literally one town over from where I grew up. I loved reading about her childhood/adolescence in Burlington, because there were a whole lot of parallels, and it’s fun in the “wow, the world is small” sense to see someone famous reminiscing about a town with which I am so familiar.
I’m late to the Amy Poehler game: until I discovered and started (binge) watching Parks and Rec this summer, I didn’t really know who she was other than vaguely recognizing her from SNL, which I watch occasionally and also infrequently. I like her writing style enough, but I was frustrated by how often she talked in circles – mentioning a thing and then dancing around it for several pages before returning back to her original point. A little bit of self-depreciation is good, and appreciated, but it got to the point where it seemed like she was intentionally writing filler for her own book. Her not-infrequent acknowledgments that the book was difficult for her to write and that she’s better in person only served to highlight some of the sections that were struggling more than others. I love her writing in terms of Parks and SNL, but something felt a little flat here. (And I really wish there were a comma between yes and please.)
That said: I think Yes Please is a worthwhile book, and it’s a quick and enjoyable read. Some of her advice pieces (or maybe most of them) might border on the cliche, but they’re statements that are worth hearing, worth reading from the pen of am intelligent, influential woman who can powerfully impact so many young women and girls. That power, though, is at the root of the underlying problem I had with the book: I wanted it to be better, to be more, to figure out if it were a memoir or a call to action. I know it was both, kind of, but it could have balanced them in a more coherent way. But on the other hand, her voice is very similar to how I think, how I write when I’m not self-editing, so in that sense I liked it a great deal.
And there are moments which are absolutely wonderful, like this one from the intro:
… You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing. That is what I know. Writing the book is about writing the book.
So here we go, you and me. Because what else are we going to do? Say no? Say no to an opportunity that might be slightly out of our comfort zone? Quiet our voice because we are worried it is not perfect? I believe great people do things before they are ready. …
Is it cliche? Maybe. Definitely. Absolutely. But is it true; is it necessary to have someone write those words when it’s basically a given that millions of people will read them? Yes please. Which is, I think, the heart of the thing: if somehow the whole book had been like that, I would wholeheartedly, four hundred percent recommend it. As is, I recommend reading it, but with some caveats.
Yes Please just felt like it could have and should have been pushed a little further. Amy (can I call her Amy?) joked (“joked”) in the intro (and throughout) about how difficult it was to write the book, and joke or not, the apparent trouble she had writing it hummed under the surface of the words more than it should have. But I still very much enjoyed reading it, and I recommend reading it. But take Yes Please for what it is: a humorous, delightful, somewhat superficial, and enjoyable read by an awesome, inspirational woman and brilliant comedian. Writing a book doesn’t need to be her forte: she’s already shown how much else she can do, and I have the utmost faith that we’ll only see more wonderful projects and inspirational moments and words from her. This book is not all of the things, and it feels that way, but only because Amy Poehler has set the bar so high through everything else she does.