American on Purpose

Ehh. It's alright. The first few chapters definitely gave me a feeling of having been ghostwritten—they don't come off in Craig's voice whatsoever, and often end in obviously false feel-good sorts of fluff writing. One chapter ends, for example, “[When I was a kid, I used to think my dolls could talk.] I'm not sure either one of us has properly grown up or completely left the attic. Lynn, like me, still believes the toys can talk.” Nope. No you do not. This is awkward pandering, and unfortunately isn't by any stretch the only example.

But if you can ignore that, which I had a problem doing, the rest of the book is fine I guess. It has an interesting arc about Craig's alcoholism which paints it less gloriously than most authors do. But at the end of the day, there are no insights and no takeaways from this book. It's just a bunch of uninteresting stories about a relatively uninteresting man, but told in a funny sort of way.

It really and truly feels like the book version of late-night television, so that's something.