The “yes,” she writes, “comes from my improvisational days and the opportunities that come from youth, and the ‘please’ comes from the wisdom of knowing that agreeing to do something usually means you aren’t doing it alone.” There is also something of a point, as Poehler signals with her title. Truths will be told, yes, and anecdotes recounted, but the attic and the cellar will also be raided, for funny hats and canned goods.

If Fey’s “Bossypants” or Kaling’s “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?” feel like a chatty beach weekend with a friend, “Yes Please” has the more manic air of a snowbound situation. Poehler, being a bit more wild-eyed than most comedians, which is to say braver, has made “Yes Please” even more free-form than most. Increasingly these books are not so much memoirs as musings, collections of essays that could appear in magazines, along with creative lists and random thoughts. Way back in the late 1980s, Kenneth Branagh took a lot of flak for writing an autobiography at 28, but nowadays, the midcareer memoir is de rigueur. More important, she fears she hasn’t “lived a life full enough to look back on, but I’m too old to get by on being pithy and cute.”įew people would admit to not being the right age to write a book. (Despite many misleading headlines to the contrary, you will not be hearing much about any of this in “Yes Please” because, as she explains in big letters: “Nothing is anybody’s business.”) She is also, as she explains, raising two young sons, getting a divorce and falling in love. She has been busy, starring in “Parks and Rec,” hosting the Golden Globes and persuading NBC to air her brother’s lovely new show, even though it is a half-hour comedy with Swedish subtitles. Novak - have already written their books heck, Lena Dunham just released hers, and her entire career spans fewer years than “Parks and Recreation.”īut as Poehler explains in her preface, she wasn’t quite sure this was a good time for a book. So many of her friends and colleagues - Tina Fey, Mindy Kaling, B.J.

Called “Yes Please,” it is, as Poehler fans might expect, funny, wise, earnest, honest, spiritually ambitious, occasionally self-indulgent and structurally messy.

Poehler book