This was the 8th book I read in 2021.
After reading “The Woman Who Smashed Codes“, I was looking for something light to read and this book served that purpose. When I was reading the last 50 pages of “The Woman Who Smashed Codes“, I was looking for the next book to read. Being the sucker for memoirs that I am, I was browsing through Amazon’s Humorous Memoir section and stumbled upon this memoir by Colin Jost, one of the hosts of the Weekend news at SNL, one of my favorite shows. The title of the book was catchy and the index seemed interesting too, so I ordered it and read it in just a week.
The first impressions
The first impression of the book was okay. I mean I really wanted a chill reading, so I wasn’t expecting much from the book. This book served the purpose in the best way possible, because I wasn’t looking forward to learn anything from it, as I mostly do while reading memoirs. There was only one thing I was looking forward to reading in the book was how he got in Harvard. Guess what? I missed that part as the rest of the chapters and stories in the book became too interesting for me.
The thing I will remember the most
The story of 9/11. Before reading the book, I didn’t know Colin’s mom was a doctor. That was the first surprise for me; But, nothing prepared me for the fact that she was one of the first people who were present at the scene when the planes crashed in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on the dark day of 9/11/2001. My respect for his mom went through clouds immensely as he described how she was handling the situation, being the only medic at the scene. It was heartbreaking to know all the damage and human lives we lost, but it certainly gave us some unsung heroes of the tragedy such as Colin’s mom. I was in awe to read that she barely came home to see her family during those days and whenever she came home was for a quick shower and nap, before heading off again to hospitals to take care of the injured.
I will not forget this piece from the book for the time to come.
What about the remainder of the book?
The rest of the book seemed a collection of ups of downs. I am speaking honestly when I say that I don’t remember most of the stories from the book, but, at the same time, there were a few which will stay with me for a long time. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention while reading the other stories as much as I was reading the stories which I found worthy to remember.
The most fascinating thing that I remember in the book was his incident at Google Headquarters. When Colin was invited at Google Headquarters to try on some VR stuff, he was led into a room with a couple engineers at Google who were developing the tech. This was the first time Colin was trying out the VR, so he was both scared and excited.
When the engineers put a video of him standing near the edge of the cliff and asked Colin to jump, unaware of the fact that they were just trying what he does next, Colin did jump and injured himself on a sharp metal thing. The title of the story in the book is “You should have sued Google”, which I think is true, because after the incident, the engineers didn’t apologized and were not courteous enough to ask him whether he was okay, since he was bleeding from his abdomen. It was not a cool thing on Google’s part, I think.
SNL
How can I end this post without talking about SNL.
The stories in the book about SNL are very fascinating, ranging from his early days till the 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic. I found it very strange and amazing how he had climbed the corporate ladder at SNL from being a young writer to the head writer. Being part of SNL is big and he was the head writer, which couldn’t have gone any better. Having watched SNL for quite some time now, I have an absolute respect for everyone involved in the show.
There were so many instances in the book, when Colin mentioned how many times he had failed in the show; His failure being his acts not getting picked up for the final cut, which crushes some people; But, I loved how Colin had never-give-up attitude, which helped him survive initial years at SNL. This inspired me to never give up on this blog, even when I am not attracting traffic. I just need to keep writing until it becomes what I imagine it will become one day. Thanks for that, Colin. This seems like a good spot to stop.
See you at the next book review!
stochasticity 