Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man’s Fundamentals for Delicious Living by Nick Offerman
My rating: 3/5 cats
come on, humor book, be funny!
i am both a parks and rec fan and a ron swanson fan. his character appeals to me with his gruff and deadpan mannerisms and his abiding love of meat. (although not his hatred of libraries—hhmph)
but reading this book was just kind of a slog—the speech patterns and stylized formality that delights me onscreen are just dead on the page when i am forced to read them for an extended period, even though i can “hear” his voice reading them. i just don’t love artificial pomposity. i can’t even get through goodreads reviews that read like this:
As is only proper, my years in college saw me undergo a drastic personal transformation, as well as participate in a larger group consummation with those several champions who were to form the Defiant Theatre. Our sage Robin McFarquhar has since asserted that, in the twenty years since our matriculation, he has never seen another band of students with such an unquenchable work ethic, willing to stay up all night regularly to fulfill our artistic missions of mischief and beauty. I am very grateful to hear that I, once again, was in the right place and time to be valued by these peers, despite my relative inexperience onstage. Joe Foust and Christopher Johnson, destined to become Defiant’s first artistic director, spearheaded production teams to create pageants of theater both challenging and hilarious.
A ragtag team of puckish miscreants coalesced, membership in which required only an adherence to our collective taste and the willingness to work one’s fingers to the bone…We capering fools were drawn inexorably together to weave shows of intelligence and silliness in a way that thrilled us and fed us completely. Joe’s was my favorite brain, wickedly clever and funny for days. A naturally magnanimous leader, he had such a great sensibility for utilizing old-school theatrical conventions in a completely fresh way to incite mirth in any audience. He also wielded a fresh perspective that made him a wonderful and sensitive leader, which I have since learned is exactly the type of person in whose service I thrive.
and while some might say it is not valid to dislike a book because it is turgid or overwritten (which of course it is—”overwritten” is generally employed as a pejorative), i am also disliking it because it is not very funny. and as subjective as humor is, a book in the humor section should make me at least want to laugh.
and it did not.
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