Parks and Recreation

Book Review: Parks and Rec

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Parks and Rec
by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

My rating: 2 / 5
Genre: Non-fiction

There was a little bit of interesting information in this book, but it was a slog to get through. Half of the time the author was giving us the backstory of every actor/writer as they joined the show or giving us a synopsis of an episode, sometimes up to a few paragraphs, usually with no reason for it other than to tell us about the next great episode they made. I have seen the show several times, but I am not one who has already read a lot of other books that talk about the show, so in a way, I feel like I’m in the middle of the fandom in regards to knowledge of the show. The explanations of various episodes was completely unnecessary for me, and the background details just didn’t interest me. There were a few tidbits here and there that I appreciated, but it wasn’t enough to keep the book from feeling slow and boring.

Weirdly enough, this book made me question my feelings for Parks and Recreation, a show that I have always liked and rewatched multiple times. I never liked it as much as The Office, though, and I think this book gave me insight into the reasons for that. The show was funny and well-cast, but very liberal (which I am not). Though yes, veiled under a local government trying to be bipartisan and show people from different sides working together, having one libertarian does not cancel out the overall liberal leaning of the show, especially since. I’m used to this from Hollywood, of course (both the people there and what they produce, generally speaking), but this show actually being about government and politics brought all of that more to the forefront. And in this book, the author doesn’t even pretend to be unbiased with her political leanings, praising the Obama era continually, denigrating President George W. Bush, and basically demonizing President Trump. Whatever your feelings on any of these past/current presidents, I really feel like Armstrong crossed a major line. She apparently either assumes that every fan of Parks and Recreation is a hardcore liberal like her or she could not care less about those who aren’t. Being from a rural area in Indiana, the state in which the show is set, and being a Christian (the conservative kind, since there are liberal Christians as well), I was already aware that this show heavily mocks people like me, or to be more accurate, a caricature of people like me, but somehow, this book made it bother me more. I don’t think I’ll rewatch the show anymore after this.

If you are a huge fan of this show, are a liberal, and haven’t already consumed info about how the show was made elsewhere, you’ll likely enjoy this book more than me (though keep in mind that wasn’t my only gripe; if it was, my rating would have been higher). Anyone else…you might want to pass. (I’m currently re-watching The Office (superfan episodes) while slowly going through the book Welcome to Dunder Mifflin by Brian Baumgartner and Ben Silverman. It’s amazing. I was hoping this book would be something at least similar to that. It’s not.)

Thank you to Netgalley and Dutton for providing me a copy of this book to review.

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America

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Finished Reading: Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America
by Leslie Knope

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: TV tie-in, humor

Pawnee

In season 4 of the show Parks and Recreation, the main character Leslie Knope (played by Amy Poehler) writes a book about her hometown of Pawnee. This is that book. Sort of. Filled with many show references and articles written by several other characters as well, this book showcases the best and worst of Pawnee. Mostly the worst.

Okay, I love Parks and Recreation. Honestly, it’s one of my absolute favorite comedies. Goodness knows why, though, considering the way it paints my neck of the woods as a bunch of racist, backwards idiots. At its best, it is laugh-out-loud funny, with hilarious characters brilliantly portrayed by some great actors. At its worst, it makes me cringe, roll my eyes, and sigh at the mockery it makes of small cities in the Midwest. Unfortunately, the book has plenty of the worst, but not enough of the best.

I think the book might be better read in snippets over time. The kind of thing you pick up, turn to a random spot, and read what’s there, then put it down and come back to it later. Reading it all the through over the course of a few weeks only highlights the fact that the city of Pawnee is just terrible. The people who Leslie touts as the best department in their city’s government are completely apathetic about the assignments she gives them for the book.

There are a few gems (an article written by Chris Traeger that had to be severely cut down for length, for example), and it did bring a smile to see references to some of my favorite aspects of the show. But overall, as a pretty hardcore fan, I think this just could have been better. Though the sad thing is that maybe it couldn’t have been, because Pawnee really is that bad. It’s just less obvious spread out over the show, which focuses more on the Parks Department than on the rest of the ridiculously dysfunctional town.

I would say that for fans of the show, it’s worth reading the book, but again, I’d suggest reading it as vignettes now and then, rather than cover to cover in only a few weeks.

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Christmas Book Haul

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Because of the holidays, my reading has slowed way down this week. Normally I post a book review every Friday (and sometimes in between if I read more than 1 book in a week), but I don’t have any new reviews to post today. So instead, I thought I’d do a sort of follow-up post to Tuesday’s post of books that I hoped to receive for Christmas. I actually didn’t directly receive anything specifically listed there, but did get a couple of books, and thanks to cash-type gifts, I bought some more myself yesterday.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
 by Ransom Riggs
My sister strongly recommended this series to me (amongst several other books/series), and I mentioned it to my daughter, who bought a paperback copy for my stocking.
Hollow City by Ransom Riggs
Though I normally wait to make sure I like the first book in a series before I buy any others in the series, I found a copy of book #2 at Half Price Books for $3, and my sister continued to extol the series (she was at the store too), so I went ahead and got the second one.

Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America by Leslie Knope
This was a gift from my husband. Parks and Recreation is one of my favorite shows, and I’ve seen the whole series many times. I’ve already thumbed through the book a little and can tell it’s going to be amazing.

The Martian by Andy Weir
Of the books I read this year, this was one of my favorites. I like owning copies of my favorites, so I was happy to find a paperback copy at Half Price Books for cheap. (See my review here.)

No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty
I was pretty excited when I spotted a copy of this on the clearance shelf at HPB for a couple bucks. It was written by the founder of NaNoWriMo, and I’ve heard a lot about it from people who use it for NaNoPrep. I’ve done NaNo for 10 years, and I think the book is meant more to help first-timers, or at least early-timers. I’m still glad to have it.

I Want to Punch You in the Face But I Love Jesus by Sherri Lynn
We got an email with a $10 Kindle book credit from Amazon about 2 weeks ago. My husband insisted I wait to use it until after Christmas, and then I could buy something on my wish list that I didn’t get. This book was at the top of that list, and I can’t wait to start reading it!

Illusion by Frank E. Peretti
This was probably my favorite of the books I read this year. My husband and I have all but 2 of Peretti’s adult fiction books, and with this one, we’ll have all but 1. I’ve got a used hardcover copy of this coming from eBay for only a few dollars.  (See my review here.)

Have you read any of these? What books are you excited about recently acquiring?

Daily Challenge Check-in: August 9, 2015

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Words/Time: 2:48 hours, doing a hodgepodge of things writing related. I spend about an hour doing typical revision work for “Pithea” late last night. This afternoon, I was ready for a break from all of that, so I tried out using story cubes to spawn a story. (There will be more detail on that in a later post.) Then I spent nearly an hour working on getting scenes from “Pithea” into Scrivener in my quest to organize chapters.

All of this was during the last day of my writer’s retreat. I came home in the early evening, spent some time with my family, and looked forward to diving back into a normal revising routine in the evenings. That didn’t happen tonight, though, as my husband and I ended up binge watching the rest of the penultimate season of Parks and Recreation. Still, my weekend away helped me push past the looming section of revision that was causing me to lose all desire to do any work, and I do expect to be back to work tomorrow.