For this month's book club I chose a bit of a newer book that I snatched up from Amazon a few weeks ago - Sick in the Head by Judd Apatow! This book is a collection of interviews that Apatow has conducted by a wide range of famous comedians that he has worked with in the past. I'm so excited to read this because I love so many of the projects that Apatow has worked on (Superbad, Anchorman, Pineapple Express, and one of my all time favorites Forgetting Sarah Marshall, just to name a few!). I've heard it's a great light read, so it will be awesome to end 2015 with this book.
A collection of intimate, hilarious conversations with the biggest names in comedy from the past thirty years-including Mel Brooks, Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, Roseanne, Harold Ramis, Louis CK, Chris Rock, and Lena Dunham. Before becoming one of the most successful filmmakers in Hollywood, Judd Apatow was the original comedy nerd. At fifteen, he took a job washing dishes in a local comedy club-just so he could watch endless stand-up for free. At sixteen, he was hosting a show for his local high school radio station in Syosset, Long Island - a show that consisted of Q and As with his comedy heroes, from Garry Shandling to Jerry Seinfeld. They talked about their careers, the science of a good joke, and their dreams of future glory (turns out, Shandling was interested in having his own TV show one day).
Thirty years later, Apatow is still that same comedy nerd-and he's still interviewing funny people about why they do what they do. Sick in the Head gathers Apatow's most memorable and revealing conversations into one hilarious, wide-ranging, and incredibly candid collection that spans not only his career, but his entire adult life. Here are the comedy legends who inspired and shaped him, from Mel Brooks to Steve Martin. Here are the contemporaries he grew up with in Hollywood, from Spike Jonze to Sarah Silverman. And here, finally, are the brightest stars in comedy today, many of whom Apatow has been fortunate to work with, from Seth Rogen to Amy Schumer. And along the way, something kind of magical happens: What started as a lifetime's worth of conversations about comedy becomes something else entirely. It becomes an exploration of creativity, ambition, neediness, generosity, spirituality, and the joy that comes from making people laugh. Loaded with the kind of back-of-the-club stories that comics tell one another when no one else is watching, this fascinating, personal, and borderline-obsessive book is Judd Apatow's gift to comedy nerds everywhere.
While I'm excited to read this book, I wanted to note that I will be putting the Book Club on pause for a while. I've been finding it difficult to sit down and read lately (I've barely made a dent in The Hobbit!) and I want to be consistent with my book club posts if I'm going to continue them! So while I catch up with my November selection as well as my new December selection, I'm going to put the Book Club on hold. I'll definitely review these titles as I finish them, but for 2016 I'm thinking I'm going to come up with a new strategy for the Book Club. More on this soon!
Let me know what favorite titles you've read lately so I can start compiling my book list for 2016! :)
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