Started reading this while taking a break from changing my tire. I ended up having to call AAA to change said tire, after fighting with a lugnut for an hour, but that’s not important. Finished reading this earlier tonight.
I guess it’d be wrong to say my expectations were low, because I figured that, yes, I would like this. I like Patton Oswalt! He wrote a book! Mathematics suggest that I would like a book by Patton Oswalt. But the comedian writing a book of short essays/stories/miscellany concept is a well-worn one. It’s not inherently exciting, even if tends to be enjoyable.
What gets me about this is how sad it tends to lean. Granted, the whole thing does lean toward humorous in one way or another for most of it. And parts are there solely for humor. But parts of it have a near-horizontal lean away from humorous. Nobody was clamoring for an essay of Patton Oswalt examining his mentally ill uncle’s life. They got it, though, and the book is so much better for it. It’s the kind of thing that is legitimately surprising and the kind of surprise that is legitimately rewarding.
Actually, I guess what really gets me is reading him detail his desire to make a better, more interesting life for himself through hard work. I kind of get the same message out of it that I got out of Tom Lennon and Ben Garant’s book (even as far removed as their focus was from anything I can really relate to), that you can always work harder and, hey, that’s kind of the thing to do. So I should do that thing.
