Yes Please by Amy Poehler

"Your ability to navigate and tolerate change and its painful uncomfortableness directly correlates to your happiness and general well-being."

--Amy Poehler

This perceptive nugget is just a sample of what you'll find in Yes Please among the humorous anecdotes and insights into Poehler's life. It's also somewhat of a theme of the book, how Poehler approaches each new stage of her life, giving her writing a thankful and honest tone that makes it easy to identify with her even without sharing the same life experiences.

Poehler does a great job in this memoir, which is really more like a collection of personal stories, of showing the reader what makes her unique, what makes her a celebrity, and what makes her just like everyone else. You get a complete picture without learning every intimate detail of how she got to where she is today. What came through strongly for me, was how humbled and appreciative she is of the people in her life who have inspired and supported her. Poehler doesn't pretend she's a one-woman-show, she acknowledges that any road to success is paved with the helping hands of others.

The stories in Yes Please are a great mix of the crazy things actors do, the embarrassing moments that simply stick in your narrative, the emotional impact to your life that comes with being a parent, and what it's like being a kid from Watertown, Mass. growing up happily. It was a great read and I enjoyed Poehler's keen attention to telling her stories to entertain while passing along the knowledge she's acquired through her own experiences.

This is a quick read and lots of fun.