Brian Baumgartner

After finishing Jenna and Angela's book I was left sort of wanting just a bit more of an in-depth look at The Office as a whole. Their book had a lot of stuff about The Office, but it was still primarily about them. This is exactly what I needed! I loved both books, this one worked slightly better for me as a broad overview with enough specificity to keep it interesting. I loved being able to hear the perspectives from everybody. It was a great time.

I listened to this as an audiobook, I show more don't know if my experience would have been different reading it because the narration is mixed with interview-like sections of cast member dialogue. I'm sort of curious how this was formatted on paper. I thought the audiobook worked really well, but I was pretty bummed that everybody except Brian had voice actors reading the parts instead of the actual actors. I get why, but with sooo many different people it was really hard to tell who was talking sometimes. Some of the voice actors sounded similar enough to who they were portraying, but with others I couldn't tell. I also got the voices of the producers and non-actors confused quite often. I think it would have been easier to follow if I could read the names of who was talking each time. That didn't really hinder my enjoyment too much, but I probably didn't know who was speaking at least a quarter of the time. show less

What an entertaining and gorgeous cookbook! Yes, it's chili (yummy), but the photos were a work of art and there are some eclectic and unique recipes in this book. It's organized well and there's even a vegetarian chili section. Seriously, I can't wait to try out the chili and waffle cornbread recipe. I've never seen The Office, but there's loads of awesome chili recipes with brief backgrounds of chefs here.

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I love chili! And now, thanks to this book, I have a TON of new recipes to try out. Easily understood recipes.
I have my own "The Office"-like chili episode to share.....
About 15 years ago, I was working in a governmental office in DC. Every year there was a chili cookoff fundraiser. And people working there took it SERIOUSLY! They guarded their chili recipe secrets more closely than the most top secret documents we worked with. They worked for days preparing their chili. And it was show more cutthroat! More than one friendship was threatened by being beat out by a friend. I never wanted to participate. It just was not my cup of tea. However, I was approached by my boss, and told that, to be a good team player, I should enter the competition. So I submitted to the peer pressure and threw my hat into the competition.
I really did not want to waste a lot of time preparing anything (I was commuting by train from Maryland, and didn't have a lot of extra time). I went to the grocery store and bought 5 of the cheapest cans of pre-prepared chili off the shelf. Threw it in a slow cooker and took it to work the next day.
Lo and behold, to my great shock, I took second place! Who would have believed it? It was one of the funniest things I ever saw. In a perfect world, I would have taken the ribbon and shut up....but no....I had to rub people's faces in it. At the awards ceremony, I accepted the ribbon, and when asked for my "secret", I told them. OMG!!! You would have thought I murdered someone! Ostracized and berated, banned from the competition for life, the only good part was when my boss pulled me aside and told me that she thought it was hilarious!
Anyway, that has nothing to do with the book, other than Kevin's chili fiasco reminded me of it.
This is a fun book, and if you like chili, you should give it a try! show less

When I first came across Brian Baumgartner’s book, I knew I had to read it. I’ve always been a big Office fan thanks to my son who was in college when the show premiered. Since then I’ve been known to not miss any showing of an episode on tv, which means I usually see one about every day. And, yes, I never see anything new because I’ve seen all of them. I’m even in that club that knows the episodes by their titles. So this book is for anyone who is a fan. If you aren’t a fan of show more The Office and/or you watched it but didn’t like it, it’s best to keep on moving on by. It just won’t be your cup of tea.
I bought the Kindle version and checked the audio version out from our local library. I always read a book and listen to a book (almost always a different book) while I do my 30-minute daily walk. I chose to “read” almost all of “Welcome to Dunder Mifflin” by listening to the audio version. That was a mistake. In fact, I don’t even think this book should have been made into an audio book. I imagine Brian Baumgartner and Ben Silverstein went to a lot of trouble to round up all of the quotes from interviews with the show’s characters from Brian’s podcast. The problem is none of the dialogue read on the audio version of the book is read by the actual characters from the show except for those by Brian and Ben. And most of the narrators (aka. actors) don’t sound a bit like the original characters. So, that means it’s hard to keep track of who is speaking. Occasionally, especially when a character is first introduced, another narrator will come on and say, “John Smith reading for Steve Carell.” That is very annoying and confusing. So I would recommend that if you are a big fan of The Office, buy the print or Kindle version of the book and pass on the audio.
One other annoying thing about the book is the number of times the word “like” is used by the characters as in “Well, I’m like, ‘We better do that scene again,’ and “She’s like, ‘ I don’t get it.’ And then I’m like, ‘Well, I do.’” I suppose if you’re under the age of 40, you’re used to hearing “like” used as every other word in dialogue. And it might not read too badly, but if you’re listening to the audio version of the book, it’s really annoying.
One last negative thing I found about the book was how planned, scripted, and un-spontaneous the show was. Being a “mockumentary” I always assumed The Office was very spontaneous, However, reading this book you hear that the writers and other production people analyzed and overanalyzed just about every aspect of the show and even did multiple (sometimes double digit multiples) takes of scenes. Even the famous proposal scene between Jim and Pan was this way. I guess I should be making this a positive thing since all of the scenes I’m talking about came off as looking typically spontaneous, and that spontaneity is what made The Office the great show it was. Well, that and Steve Carell.
All in all, two big thumbs up for “Welcome to Dunder Mifflin: The Ultimate Oral History of ‘The Office.’” show less