Ray's Reviews > Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living

Paddle Your Own Canoe by Nick Offerman
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really liked it
bookshelves: audio, nonfic, comedy

When reading the charming memoir that is Paddle Your Own Canoe, it is important to remember that the real-life Nick Offerman is not in fact the fictional Ron Swanson. Offerman is actually an actor, who yes is good at carpentry, but this is going to be about his experiences in theater and hilarious takes on society much more than about canoeing.

Got it? Okay then, as long as that doesn't disappoint this is an interesting book.

And just to reiterate how much he's not Swanson, in the first few chapters about his childhood we shall learn all about how he hates Christianity. One might say this is a very (well, pre-2016 that is) libertarian take on rugged individuality while promoting quite a bit of sex and drugs throughout the tome.

The bulk of the book is definitely about acting. How he came up in theater, his successes in stageplay-friendly Chicago, and his struggles in the shallowness that is Los Angeles. There are a lot of opinions about what he finds stupid and what he recommends, from aesthetics to the "business." Especially on mustaches/body hair.

If there is a flaw here it's that he can get a mite repetitive and preachy. Still I'd actually quite recommend this book to anyone who is serious about acting, if that's your thing.

Then of course there's his marriage to the talented Megan Mullally. Wow, he really loves her! If you're a fan of her work, Will & Grace being great obviously, then there's some nice tidbits. I wonder what she thought of his poem...

And at last, because these things go chronologically, there's Parks & Recreation and the creation of the Ron Swanson character. It takes all the way to the very end, after a lot of slow snowballing, before he finally makes it big on that brilliant show. But again I reiterate: if you just want Swanson it's more sparse than you may think. Yet when we do get there, the backstory of that show is great.

I should probably say that for Parks & Rec fans Amy Poehler's Yes Please! is probably more up your alley, and that book is one of the all-time best comedy memoirs ever, but Paddle Your Own Canoe is pretty good too.
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Reading Progress

March 10, 2019 – Started Reading
March 10, 2019 – Shelved
March 10, 2019 – Shelved as: audio
March 10, 2019 – Shelved as: nonfic
April 2, 2019 – Finished Reading
August 10, 2021 – Shelved as: comedy

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