Autobiographies and biographies are among my favourite reading genres. And as you’ve observed in my earlier book review postings, I really enjoyed Mindy Kaling’s Why Not Me and Sylvia Jukes Morris’s two-volume biography on Clare Boothe Luce, How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran and numerous other books about strong, successful women. Such was not the case with Amy Poehler’s recent best-seller Yes, Please. As the star of various TV comedies including Saturday Night Live and Parks and Recreation, BFF of comedienne Tiny Fey and co-host of The Golden Globe Award Show, Poehler has acquired a sizeable fan following.

The book gives a strong sense of having been written under duress. She constantly refers to the writing process as being hard work and cops out by getting both Seth Meyers and her mother to each write a chapter, and uses various lists, handwritten notes and other material to fill space. There was little of the insight displayed by Mindy Kaling or Tina Fey in Poehler’s writing and at times I found it hard to soldier on. She’s boringly over-the-moon in love with her two boys which is understandable but reading about it is a yawn for anyone but her family. She dispenses divorce advice, drug-use advice and motherhood advice, but none of it was particularly interesting or ground-breaking. But maybe that’s just me. I could be dead wrong about this book when I say I was totally underwhelmed and I’m really glad I borrowed it on-line from the library rather than laying out hard cash. Read it and judge for yourself.

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