Customer Reviews

I Know I Am, But What Are You?

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Any time a comedian writes about their life there's a "through the looking glass" tendency to question how much of it is truth and how much is played strictly for comic effect. As a regular contributor to "The Daily Show" Samantha Bee has shown herself to be one of the sharpest wits on television and a master at deftly skewering an array of idiots, gasbags, blowhards, and freaks. What will shock and surprise readers the most is not only Bee's sharp sense of humor and wit, but her laying bare her past in shocking details. "I Know I Am" is by turns not only hilariously funny yet also thought provoking as you read all the drama that Bee has gone through in her life. Like any good comic Bee finds the humor and laughs in her past and plays it to comic effect. Ostensibly a series of essays on various aspects of her life, "I Know I Am" holds together well as a biography of sorts and also as musings on the absurdities of a misspent life doing an array of crazy things. That she wound up on "The Daily Show" is nothing short of surprising, given the strange things she's done in her life, all told in a voice that is distinctively hers. If you've enjoyed Samantha Bee on "The Daily Show" and want to know more about what makes her tick then you'll definitely enjoy "I Know I Am"! But there remains an otherworldly strangeness to the book that makes you wonder if its all true or invented; such is the nature of Bee's humor.

The key to Samantha Bee's humor is in her contradictions - she plays a repressed person who is outrageous. And unlike many comics whose work is hilarious on TV, she can actually write funny stories that are worth reading. This memoir of exaggerated tales of her childhood, adolescence and early adulthood probes the frustrations, hurts and stupidities of growing up human on planet Earth. Her strongest material is the least self-conscious. Bee's portrayal of herself as an ugly, awkward, indoorsy bookworm and TV watcher is both affecting, worrying and probably close to the truth. Her adolescent years, in which she made dangerous visits to older men, are scary and true-sounding, echoing the way that naïve youngsters find their way in the tricky and perilous word of the sexually savvy. Bee hit a few sour notes in her diatribe against May-December relationships. Her comments about the problems of older people crossed from wickedly insightful to needlessly mean. She redeemed herself with tales of her hunky college roommate, simultaneously irresistible physically and repulsive mentally.

"I Know I am" is a quick read -- I devoured it over a weekend, which is superfast for me. While Bee doesn't have the depth, insight and subtlety of a David Sedaris, the book was a fun read. It didn't achieve Sedaris's laugh-out-loud funniness, or oh-my-god appallingness. But it was a nice autobiography of tarted up truths about growing up in the Western world.

*small spoiler alert* I listened to the audio version of this, and found myself cringing. For example, I don't think a 13-yr-old girl being seduced by a 30-something man is funny. These stories felt icky, disturbing, and sad. I stopped listening half way through. Perhaps it improves, but I just couldn't take any more.

"I Know I Am, But What Are You?" is an intermittently comic, hopefully exaggerated memoir of Sam Bee's childhood and young adulthood. The blurb on the back cover promises "candid, outspoken, laugh-out-loud funny essays," and while they are certainly candid and outspoken, I never laughed out loud. In fact, I found the in-your-face sexuality and crudeness in many of the essays rather icky and sad. The overall effect was the one you might have when an acquaintance decides to overshare: too much information, thank you!

You may need a stronger stomach or a different sense of humor than I have to really enjoy this book. I could see the absurdity in Bee's recollections (her crush on Jesus, for instance, or her work at what she calls a "penis clinic"), but her graphic descriptions of strangers' genitals and her pets' sexual aggressiveness and her much older lover's poop problems all grossed me out, and the story of how a friend's stripper boyfriend "entertained" her was squirm-inducing.

Especially grim are her memories of the desperately poor parenting she received from her mother. The woman attempted to enlighten her daughter by giving her sex manuals and showing her porn and letting her gay friends regale her with tales of fisting, autoerotic asphyxiation, and other things one should not share with an eight-year-old. This goes a long way toward explaining how neurotic and caustic Bee became as she grew up and why she found refuge and healing in comedy.

If you enjoy Bee's work on the Daily Show and would like to learn more about her personal background, this book will fill you in. Indeed, it will probably tell you more than you'd like to know. She was a victim of emotional abuse by people who exposed her to vulgarity of the worst kind, left her to her own devices most of the time, and gave her endless opportunities for weirdness, misadventure, and overdoses of pop culture.

Congratulations, Sam. You survived your youth, prospered as an adult, and extracted comedy from catastrophe. But reading about it was often an uncomfortable experience.

and I worship Tina Fey. I've never written an Amazon review before, but I kind of get the feeling that Samantha B. reads these and wanted to give her some props. This is a must-read for anyone with a less-than-ideal upbringing in the 70s and just plain made me feel better, in a twisted way, about a lot of things. It's very well written, has a lot of heart, and I think anyone who gave a mediocre review may just have a mediocre sense of humor. I also have 100% Ontarian genes, which may explain something (as do 95% of successful comedians/Hollywood writers). Can't wait for her next book.

First of, let me start of by saying I LOVE Samantha Bee on the Daily Show. For some reason, I have not been able to get into this book. I have read several of the short stories and they just have not grabbed my interest. That said, still a fan of her humor - just did not translate to the written word, for me personally.

I love Samantha Bee and The Daily Show. I thought this was well-written (and quite an easy read). Many laugh out loud moments and some very raw moments as well. You will have a new appreciation for this lady (and her husband) after reading this book.

My only wish is for more discussion of The Daily Show. There was not a lot of that. This was more about Samantha growing up. Maybe a future book!

Samantha Bee is funny. If you've seen her on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, you know she has a quick and biting wit. That same wit is applied to her own life in "i know i am, but what are you?" Brutally, terrifically blunt musings on her childhood are delivered often with self-deprecation and more often are aimed at the motley cast of characters she refers to as family.

The quintessential voice for this genre of writing is David Sedaris. Unfortunately, Samantha Bee is no David Sedaris. But, she never claimed to be. Once I pushed through the first few pages (and decided to read even though she is no DS), I found myself immersed in her rhythm and really enjoyed the book. It was an easy read, but not something I was glued to; I read it on occasional nights over the course of a week or so. Most of the stories have already been lost to the ether, but the one that sticks with me is "the birds and the bee". I must say that was laugh-out-loud funny! There were other moments of LOL, but none that I can recall with clarity a week after completing the book.

This is a good book to read, but not really a book to own.

I have been a fan of "The Daily Show" for a long time and Samantha Bee is one of my favorite "correspondents". It's one of those shows (for those that either do not watch tv *gasp* or don't have cable) that takes your average everyday WTH stance on politics and gives it the proper twist so that you don't feel all alone in your horror and can actually laugh at that horror.

This book is hilarious! I caught myself laughing on several occasions annoying my sleeping dog (he hates to be waken up during his beauty sleep). It is definitely an adult read and not for the youngsters as you might well guess. And although I am thoroughly convinced that Samantha will go to gerbil/rodent hell in her afterlife I still will say this is one good read. If you like your biography with a large dose of humor, do pick up this book. You won't be disappointed.

I give this book 5 stars. It is exactly what I expected and a bit more.

I like Samantha Bee on "The Daily Show" and got this book eagerly anticipating a good read. What I got was... well, it isn't bad, but it isn't great. It basically just "is". It exists.

The book is an account of Bee's life growing up, being Catholic, moving along in the world. It's not notably hilarious, and frankly much of it is pretty dull. Her writing style is not what I had hoped for. It's breezy and informal, but not particularly amusing, at least not to me.

I'd wanted to be left laughing and instead I was left shrugging. It's not a bad book, but it's not great.