Yes Please, by Amy Poehler

Book 70/50

My last book of 2014!

Amy Poehler‘s Yes Please (my first ever audio book!) was a great way to cap off an epic year of reading in 2014.  Overall, I enjoyed Yes Please: it was sweet, charming, funny, insightful and crass. It was a little bit self-indulgent on a few occasions, but it was mostly humble and humorous. Poehler sounds like the woman I thought she was; someone who I’d hang out with and laugh with. She’s smart, feisty, seemingly real and ambitious, and is definitely a woman to look up to in Hollywood.

I also recommend this book as an audio book; at times it was like listening to an Amy Poehler dinner party! And now that the first season of the Serial podcast is over, I’m sure you’re looking for something new to listen to for your next long car ride. Amy brought in Seth Meyers, Carol Burnett, Mike Schur, her parents, Patrick Stewart, and Kathleen Turner to narrate parts of the book. Poehler’s guests joke and laugh, and the whole thing seems really natural; I could visualize Amy sitting around with her friends and having a glass of wine as they recorded the chapters.

My favorite stories were the ones of her Saturday Night Live and Upright Citizens Brigade days. (My husband also really liked the Parks and Recreation chapter as he thoroughly enjoys the show). Poehler’s behind the scenes stories about Chris Parnell playing tricks on her underneath her desk at the SNL office, and Will Forte throwing a coworkers McDonald’s out the window as a joke left me laughing out loud.

Here are some memorable quotes from the book:

“I tried cocaine, which I instantly loved but eventually hated. Cocaine is terrific if you want to hang out with people you don’t know very well and play Ping-Pong all night. It’s bad for almost everything else…”

“When the demon starts to slither my way and say bad shit about me I turn around and say, ‘Hey. Cool it. Amy is my friend. Don’t talk about her like that.’ Sticking up for ourselves in the same way we would one of our friends is a hard but satisfying thing to do. Sometimes it works.”

“Good for her! Not for me. That is the motto women should constantly repeat over and over again.”

“Is there a word for when you are young and pretending to have lived and loves a thousand lives? Is there a German word for that? Seems like there should be. Let’s say it’s Schaufenfrieglasploit.”

“I am a firm believer that every few years one needs to shake one’s life through a sieve, like a miner in the Yukon. The gold nuggets remain. The rest falls through like the soft earth it is.”

“Creativity is connected to your passion, that light inside you that drives you. That joy that comes when you do something you love. That is the juicy stuff that lubricates our lives and helps us feel less alone in the world. Your creativity is not a bad boyfriend. It is a really warm older Hispanic lady who has a beautiful laugh and loves to hug.”

If you are looking for something light, a beach read, an audio book, or something fiery, funny and feminist, check out Yes Please.