I felt like he could have been a lot more addicted. Still, he's congenial company. ( )

This is written by from the perspective of someone who has achieved a level of enlightenment, by someone who clearly hasn't. What it amounts to is a guy who hates his former self, but hasn't seemed to learn about life ... just addiction ... from that self.

There are some great stories about stand ups and the business in here, and some nice movie talk, nestled in among judgey, go-nowhere assertions that his current self is where it's at.

I wonder how the book would read if he'd made less money or hadn't had a kid. ( )

This book was rad. ( )

2.5 stars

I don’t think I was the right audience for this. I like movies, and I really like Patton Oswalt, but the movie talk in this was too esoteric for me. I haven’t seen most of the movies he talked about—and there was a multitude—and I’m definitely not as close a watcher as he is. I’m astounded by his memory, though. I know he took notes at the time, but still, to talk so specifically about the thoughts and emotions inspired by individual films he saw in the 90s was really impressive.
I enjoyed the anecdotes about his career in comedy, the path it took and the lessons he learned. I liked the short story that was plunked down amidst a mishmash of entertainment writing (most of which I either didn’t care about or didn’t like) that finished off the book. I liked various turns of phrase enough to highlight them.
But I can’t say I liked the book as a whole. If you’re a hardcore film buff, you might react differently. By the time I got to the appendix, listing every movie he saw over a 4-year period of obsessive moviegoing, I was ready to edge away and make my excuses. ( )

I love movies. I love memoirs. I love Patton Oswalt. So I was a little nervous, reading the first three chapters of this book, because I couldn't get into it. And I really really wanted to. By the time I got to chapter 4, something clicked and I couldn't put it down. As someone who is easily lured by checklists, I appreciated Oswalt's last chapter, an illuminating epiphany of the risks we run when we enslave ourselves to checklists of any sort: "The engine of your life should be your LIFE." So glad I stuck with him until the end. ( )