Agent Palmer

Magician, comedian, actor, writer, producer, musician, and author. Steve Martin is many things more than just a “wild and crazy guy,” and how that all came to be is found in his autobiography Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life.

This may be one of the more realistic show business books I have read in recent memory. This isn’t a book about name-dropping or what happens after success. This is a book about how Steve Martin reached the top. While you can take some of the lessons to heart on your own, this is not a how-to; this is just a how it happened.

Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy and other rules to live by is a collection of columns and essays written by comedian David Mitchell.

A lot of these columns take a satirical or humorous look at things that inspired the writing of the column in the first place, be it a news event in Great Britain or across the globe, from entertainment to science, politics to religion, or any number of things. So in my best attempt at a Mitchell-like column, I’m going to comment on the back cover paragraphs to explain more about what this book is about, why you may be interested in it, and what’s in it for you.

I often get people asking me what I’m reading. Perhaps it has something to do with talking to authors on my podcast or other creatives who also read. Either way, I find myself talking about books quite a bit.

When asked about Gracie: A Love Story by George Burns, I described it as perhaps the most romantic book I have ever read. And that was when I was only about a third of the way through it.

Wired: The Short Life & Fast Times of John Belushi is a very intriguing and thought provoking detailed trip of Belushi’s life by renowned journalist Bob Woodward.

The book wants to be a straight-forward, facts forward retelling of Belushi’s life with the words and experiences of those who were around him at the time. On the surface, that might be exactly what it is, but it is so much more than that.

R.I.P.D. is the perfect comic book movie. I know it got panned, but trust me when I tell you that a lot of that is circumstantial.

People generally prefer to complain rather than just sit back and enjoy something. If you can believe it, that’s more prevalent now than it was in 2013 when this was released, but it was still true then.