Is This Anything?
Ratings32
Average rating3.6
The first book in twenty-five years from Jerry Seinfeld features his best work across five decades in comedy. Since his first performance at the legendary New York nightclub “Catch a Rising Star” as a twenty-one-year-old college student in fall of 1975, Jerry Seinfeld has written his own material and saved everything. “Whenever I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation, or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old school accordion folders,” Seinfeld writes. “So I have everything I thought was worth saving from forty-five years of hacking away at this for all I was worth.” For this book, Jerry Seinfeld has selected his favorite material, organized decade by decade. In page after hilarious page, one brilliantly crafted observation after another, readers will witness the evolution of one of the great comedians of our time and gain new insights into the thrilling but unforgiving art of writing stand-up comedy.
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A book that's an easy mood booster!
It made me snort and had me hiding my laugh in public, definitely worth the $24 I spent on this book.
It would be 5 stars but his jokes in the 00s and teens were too... “I'm old and don't understand young people things” and it got repetitive and i didn't like it lol
I wasn't sure what this would be when I bought it for my dad as a Christmas gift (yes, yes, sometimes I read books I give as gifts before I give them, but only because my dad takes years to read so give me a break, okay??). I thought it might be a memoir, or something, and that could be fun, as in my experience, comedians write pretty funny memoirs. Turns out, it's just every (or most of the?) jokes that's he's written/performed over his career. The way they're structured are almost like poems – the way they are broken up mimics the pacing of verbal delivery – which, indeed, does add to the comedic effect once you get used to it. Some of these I'd heard, some of them I hadn't, but the time reading: time laughing ratio made this a good time.
