Dad is Fat

I haven't actually listened to much (any?) of Jim Gaffigan's stand up. I mostly know him from his stint on My Boys, which I really liked when it was airing and re-watched several times when we first got Netflix. His mostly this cultural presence whose existence I've absorbed through osmosis. I always recognize him, and I see him more than I expect to, but I never really seek him out.

And so his memoir, sitting on the shelf at the library used book sale, was just a spur of the moment grab. I recognized his face, and I enjoy his humor more often than not, and it looked like a quick read, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I basically got exactly what I was expecting.

Gaffigan is a father of five, and his book (co-written with his wife) is basically about that. He complains about being a dad. Finds humor in the weird things kids do. Complains about being tired all the time. Finds the humor in his exhaustion. It wasn't anything I was terribly unfamiliar with (though I have one kid in a large, single-family home and he has five kids in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan which makes me shudder just thinking about it).

This book was quick and light and something I appreciated as a parent. Kids are infuriating. But you love them so much. That combination of frustration and joy is universal and it was enjoyable to spend a day reading about it from a slightly different (but really not that different) perspective.

Maybe I will look up one of his stand up specials when I have an hour or two.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shadows of Self

Let's dive right into the biggest problem I had with this book, which is Sanderson's treatment of Lessie. Wax's lady-love, in a classic case of fridging, gets killed in the prologue of The Alloy of Law , giving Wax a reason to return to the big city and mope around for a while. She turns back up in the prologue of this book, which details how she and Wax met. And at first I was excited to get a bit more backstory. I wondered if maybe all the prologues would be about her, letting her be more than the awesome woman who died to give Wax some man-pain. This turned out not to be the case. Instead, the prologue was just there to remind us that she existed. Until it's revealed at the very end of the book that she's been alive all along, having faked her own death on God's orders. (It makes slightly more sense than that.) This comes up just in time for her to die in Wax's arms again, sending him into a fresh bout of grief plus bonus loss of faith in God. That'...
Read more

Specials

I have to admit that the conclusion to this trilogy felt a little flat to me. There were definitely some good things, and I still think the series as a whole is good and tackles interesting questions with some good nuance. I even liked the actual ending of the story. But so much of this book felt like a rehash of the second one that I felt a little bored by the end of it. Once again, Tally has had her brain rewired, and once again she sets out into the wilderness where he solitude helps her figure out what she actually wants. The love triangle sort of fizzles out and the stakes are revealed to be not nearly as high as it seemed. What felt like a worldwide conspiracy is mostly confined to one city, and Tally's role shifts. She does help save the world, but it's more about preventing a war than ushering a grand revolution. Which isn't to say that the revolution doesn't happen. But it's not the complete overthrow of society that the rebels wanted. And that's pr...
Read more

Parable of the Sower: The Graphic Novel

This is one of my favorite books, so I clearly had to read the graphic novel version. It's a good story to revisit every now and then, and this edition makes that a lot easier. Since so much of the information is conveyed through images, reading it is a lot quicker. Of course, this being an adaptation, a lot of things got left out. I know the story well enough to have recognized all the omissions. The story still works well, but I'll always think the original has more depth.   Overall, it's a good adaptation of a really important novel. And if the new format helps it reach new audiences, that can only be a good thing.
Read more