I love the TV show “Parks and Recreation” so I was intrigued
to read a book by the actor who plays one of my favorite characters. For every chapter in the book, Nick has a
“post-chapter” (I don’t know what else to call it) at the end of the
chapter. The main chapters chronicle
Nick’s life to date. In the
post-chapters, he expounds upon a different subject, usually a topic where he
feels the need to state his opinion to the populace. While the regular chapters were somewhat interesting,
I found the post-chapters to be the funnier parts of the book.
Something that did throw me was the way Nick writes. It’s not really his writing style that got
me, it was the amount of “$1000-dollar words” that he uses. I am very glad I read this book on my
e-reader, because I had to look up a word at least every 3 pages (and I
consider myself fairly well-read). It
wasn’t necessarily that I didn’t know what the word meant, it was just that I
didn’t understand why Nick was using it the way he was. In a lot of cases, he was using words
incorrectly. I’m not sure how his
editors didn’t question this. He used
words in such “creative” ways that he really does alienate himself from his
readers; I can’t tell if he’s writing like this to amuse himself or to make
himself look smart to his readers. If
it’s the latter, then he fails miserably and looks both like a fool for using
words incorrectly and arrogant for trying too hard to impress his readers.
