Amy Poehler‘s beautifully designed hardcover Yes Please reads like an elderly woman’s scrapbook – an elderly woman who is reminiscing on her life and reveling in her past carelessness and stupidity. The work simultaneously reads like eloquently written poetry.

Yes Please Book Review

The book is riddled with Poehler’s personal ideas, lists, pictures, poems and the occasional two-page spread of a wise or funny original quote. One would call it more than just a memoir, but a work of art – a treasure to admire, or just keep on the coffee table for guests to stop and stare in wonder at the sexy, rock & roll portrait of Poehler on the cover.

It is very difficult to dislike the Parks and Recreation star and Saturday Night Live staple. Even when describing the darkest, most humiliating moments of her life, she is still delightful. If there’s one thing America loves about Poehler, it’s the visceral honesty that flows through the veins of her public life, as well as her work. In the opening chapter, “Instructions For How To Use This Book,” she remarks, “This book is a missive from the middle. It’s a street-level view of my life so far. It’s an attempt to speak to that feeling of being young and old at the same time… Sometimes this book stays in the present, other times I try to cut myself in half and count the rings.”

Poehler writes unique and often abstract imagery into the memoir, but her style is distinctively clear enough to avoid strain from the reader. She recalls stories of lessons learned on mushrooms, humping Justin Timberlake, divorce and saying the words “I’m sorry” too many times.

She penetrates the mind of the reader through her self-deprecating, yet confident humor through the stories she unwinds. She makes a spectacle of herself in the most lovable way possible, delivering comments like, “Sometimes I worry that not enough people hate me.”

So, raise your glass to Golden Globe Winner, Amy Poehler, who is no skilled writer, nor astute memoirist, but a charming and clever storyteller. That’s enough reason to pick up Yes Please and bathe in its brilliant hilarity.

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