Tag Archives: Amy Poehler

Yes Please By Amy Poehler Book Review

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Yes Please Amy Poehler Book ReviewYes Please is Amy Poehler‘s first book, and what a corker it is. I loved this book. I mean, really loved it. Yes, I know this review is starting to look like a gushing fan letter and not a proper review but a woman like Amy Poehler can do that to you. I loved her on Saturday Night Live and Parks And Recreations. The book starts off with Poehler talking about how hard writing a book is:

“Everyone lies about writing. They lie about how easy it is or how hard it was…No one tells the truth about writing a book…the truth is, writing a book is this: hard and boring and occasionally great but usually not. Even I have lied about writing. I have told people that writing this book has been like brushing away dirt from a fossil. What a load of shit. It has been like hacking away at a freezer with a screwdriver.” 

She goes on to talk about how she wrote the book on set, when her children were sleep, at airports and even on the notes section on her iPhone. It is a corking start and everyone who has ever written a book will relate to it. Poehler goes on to talk about improvisation, sexism, marriage, divorce, pregnancy and motherhood. She is a hard-working, talented woman who has gone for what she wants and knows that she is worth it. Amy Poehler leaned in. Amy Poehler is the coolest woman in the world. Well, she may have to share her crown with best friend Tina Fey but you get the point.

The book is split into three parts: Say Whatever You Want, Do Whatever You Like and Be Whoever You Are. A lot of the book is advice like ‘treat your career like a bad boyfriend’ but all of the book is well-written and funny. I rushed through the book and nothing else mattered while I was reading it. Hence why I did not go to sleep that night until 4am. This book is a must read for both men and women. There is definitely a reason it is on the Amazon Bestseller List: it rocks.

After reading this book I felt inspired, happy and thoroughly entertained. This is the non-fiction book of the year. I love, love, love it. I am pretty sure you will to. You can buy it here.

 

 

Not That Kind of Girl By Lena Dunham Book Review

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9780008101268Where to start? I guess with the fact that this book is not what I thought it would be. It’s not bad, it’s just not what I expected. Let’s get the controversy out of the way: I don’t believe Lena molested her sister. The passage about ‘spreading open her vagina’ makes for very uncomfortable reading but, in my opinion, is very different from sexual abuse. Same gender curiosity in young children is different from sexual abuse, many have said that if this book was written by a male things would be different, but not if the male did what Lena did to his brother. Young children don’t even know what sex is. So, end of.

The thing is, I don’t relate to Lena Dunham. Or at least I thought I did until I read this book. I don’t get the drug use, I am very anti-drugs and always have been. I don’t even care if I come across as boring but mentioning casual drug use as if it is not a thing to me is irresponsible. Many people think drug use is ‘cool’ and ‘artistic’ but it’s not. Drugs ruin lives and society. Now go ahead and judge me for my controversial view: I don’t care. The book is full of sex: masturbation and sexual encounters. This also makes for uncomfortable reading. Not bad reading, just uncomfortable. Dunham seems to want to punish herself with jerks and bad sexual encounters. It’s a version of self-loathing and it made me want to pick her up and hug her. Then of course there is the fact that Dunham was raped. Rape is never fun to read about, but Dunham’s courage in telling her story is commendable. The book is full of brutal honesty.

I know that in many ways this review will seem like a bad review, it’s not. I still think Dunham is talented, amazing, brilliant: a trail blazer. We are similar in age and I also made a web series about young twenty-somethings struggling to find their way in life, though with less success than the juggernaut that is Girls. We are both writer/producers/actors/directors and I always thought that Dunham was so together. I think she is now and that is what is interesting about this book. After all of the self-loathing, punishing herself dating/having sex with men who treated her terribly and other self-destructive behaviour the book comes beautifully full circle: she no longer runs away from people and herself, she in many ways, becomes a grown up. She finally stops causing herself pain. While I related more to Amy Poehler and her awesome book, Yes Please, there is something here to learn. Dunham is unvarnished, naked, almost embarrassing in her honesty. Dunham has been called the voice of her generation many times. Truth is, she doesn’t speak for me or many people that I know. But the thing is: it doesn’t matter. She is still paving the way for women, still creating waves in the film and TV industry, still making progress in a brutal, sexist industry. It doesn’t matter that I don’t 100% relate to her: she is still awesome.  I may not write endlessly about my vagina the way Dunham does but then, maybe my vagina just isn’t that interesting. There is a lot of stories of bad sex in this book, and I hope that other women who read it don’t think this is par for the course. It shouldn’t be.

This book is certainly worth a read. It really made me think and feel. This is essentially a collection of autobiographical essays which Dunham was paid £2.3m for by Random House. It is not as good as it could have been, and Dunham could have done with more editing, but she is certainly a talented writer and I am sure there will be more to come. As Dunham says in the book: “There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person is a woman,”

Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s Learned is available here.