Jerry Seinfeld

This audiobook is an entertaining ride through the wit and insights of some of our brightest comic minds. The final two-thirds of the book provides just that, and on the front end, a behind-the-scenes look at how the "Comedians in Cars" series came together. The interviews with comedians that make up the majority of the audiobook are a lot of fun. The interviews with the production team are choppier and some are of poorer quality, likely the result of remote recordings.

The other thing to show more overcome is Jerry himself. There's no denying his talent or his ability to execute a creative idea. He's just not the most likable comedian. Most people already know this, and Jerry himself happily admits as much. He's a bit of a jerk, even to President Obama, who one might forgive for not being aware that Jerry was still doing stand-up. "You still giving speeches?" Jerry snaps back. It's this kind of arrogant defensiveness that makes him hard to warm up to, but it's also a strength. He only cares about the work, about the chemistry and alchemy of comedy. Anything that gets in the way of that for a devoted comedian - recreation, family, hobbies - is a perceived weakness on his part.

Jerry's job is not to be my friend, it's to make me laugh. He does that...but so do Patton Oswalt, Garry Shandling, and Tina Fey, and they all seem to have a streak of empathy that makes me appreciate their work more, not less.

Do I recommend this audiobook? Yes, especially for fans of comedy. It's a pleasure to listen to. Just be prepared for some delightful passengers...and an occasionally prickly driver. show less

The title of comedian Jerry Seinfeld's 2020 book asks the question “Is This Anything?” Sometimes, sadly, the answer is no.

Yet more often the reader will give a positive answer, especially when one can imagine Seinfeld himself delivering these lines. The question in the title, he explains, is what comedians ask each other when they develop new routines.

Seinfeld has kept all the routines he has written since he began working comedy clubs back in the 1970s. He reproduces them here, decade show more by decade. The comedian is famous for his commentary on everyday life — parking lots, consumer products, women's pocketbooks, the competition for armrests in movie theaters, etc. Usually he finds gold in these bits. Sometimes not.

One of his worst is about kitchen sponges. What's funny about sponges? Even Jerry Seinfeld doesn't know. Yet he does find the humor when he observes that sports fans basically just root for laundry. Players come and go and are swapped for other players from other teams. The only constant is the uniform — the laundry. Or when he comments that your home is basically a "garbage processing center." Everything that comes in — new phones, new furniture, new clothing, etc. — eventually winds up in a landfill.

Seinfeld's routines, because they cover so many decades, provide both a cultural history of America and an autobiography of the comedian himself. Early routines cover such topics as dating, sex and childhood memories. Later on his jokes move on toward marriage and raising children. His humor is nonpolitical and non-topical, meaning that it has more staying power than most comedy acts.

At the beginning of his book Seinfeld explains the appeal of his chosen career: "I love hearing a laugh that's never existed in the world before." He didn't hear my laughs as I read his book, but they were audibly there just the same. show less

In the history of human endeavor, no one has ever propelled themselves to wealth and fame from whinning. That is until Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry's probably not the first person to whine their way to the top; Jack Benny comes to mind, but he certainly the greatest. Jerry Seinfeld is the Muhammad Ali of whining. He tells us it's stand-up comedy, and since he's unbelievably funny, we believe him. He talks about comedy blossoming from the right mixture of dumb and brilliant, and he does this show more masterfully. Jerry took Mary Poppins basic premise that a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down, and genius tweeked it into a spoon full of chuckle helps people listen to you whine and pay you millions of dollars for the privilege. And it is a privilege. I highly recommend the audiobook, which Jerry reads himself. If you've been following him since his first appearance on Carson, you'll recognize many of his classics, like the bit about socks escaping into the wild. But there is also a ton of newer material allowing Jerry to bitch and moan about his wife and children. A splendid time is guaranteed for all. show less

3.5

If you need to escape, I recommend listening to Jerry Seinfeld read his latest book, Is this Anything, on audio. The book contains Seinfeld's stand-up bits from the 1970s to the present, interspersed with short humorous passages on his life as a stand-up comic. His routines range from hysterically funny to mildly amusing and focus on everyday life's absurdities in the US.

Six+ hours of jokes are a lot of jokes, and there is a reason that stand-up concerts, even by the top comics, rarely show more last more than two hours. However, if you listen for short intervals, the book grows on you. It is an entertaining anecdote to the news. show less