You're Doing Great!

And Other Reasons to Stay Alive

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Pub Date 12 May 2020 | Archive Date 26 May 2020

Description

Comedian and Live from Here head writer Tom Papa, author of Your Dad Stole My Rake, tackles the modern condition in a heartwarming group of short essays.

Tom Papa is a little worried about you. You seem stressed, overworked and, frankly, a little mixed up.

Everyone is fighting an overwhelming feeling that things are getting worse, that we should be doing more, that we’re not good enough. Well, life isn't perfect. There have always been problems and there always will be. You can fight for the things you believe in, you can work really, really hard, but you shouldn't lose track of the fact that while you’re doing all that, life is flying by at lightning-fast speed. If you actually take a breath and look around you’ll realize you’re actually doing great.

Here’s the thing: We live in an amazing time filled with airplanes, scooters, and peanut butter cups. We have air conditioning, blenders, and martini shakers. It's time to refocus, enjoy it all, and stop waiting for something better! Relax with comedian and Live from Here writer and performer Tom Papa as he explores his favorite subjects in 75 essays, including:

You Don't Have to Live Your Best Life
Don't Open the Mail
I'm So Baked
I Love Your Love Handles
Don't Go Tubing
Shut Up and Eat

Recalibrate, turn off your device, and open your eyes to a better reality: You’re doing great!

Comedian and Live from Here head writer Tom Papa, author of Your Dad Stole My Rake, tackles the modern condition in a heartwarming group of short essays.

Tom Papa is a little worried about you. You...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781250240392
PRICE $27.99 (USD)
PAGES 304

Available on NetGalley

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Average rating from 22 members


Featured Reviews

I absolutely LOVED this book. It had me looking like a crazy person laughing out loud in the dentist's chair. Who does that?!?! This girl when reading Tom Papa. This book was hilarious, but also really touching and beautiful. I was very sincerely impressed with his writing style, his voice, and his ability to make me laugh and touch my heart. Just a fabulous book. I know what you should do on May 12th...buy this book! You will not regret it!!

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With everything going on lately, I was looking for a lighter read and this book delivered. I've heard of Tom Papa, the comedian but now I'm happy to say I know of Tom Papa, the author. Thank you so much to Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book. It was very much enjoyed and served as a great (funny) reminder to not sweat the small stuff!

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I swear that Tom Papa is my brother from another mother. He and I think alike on so many things. Like, a cruise ship is just a floating toilet in the sea, for one or living with a teenager isn't much different than living with a broke coke head, for another. I could go on and on.

Here is a positive message that is delivered with wit and humor. We really are too hard on ourselves much of the time. Maybe we need to re-evaluate because we aren't half bad. Truly. Aren't we all just trying to do our best in this crazy world? Okay, maybe not ALL of us but I think for most of us we have good intentions with good hearts. I'm a firm believer in kindness unless you give me a reason not to be kind.

This book was a nice change of pace for me. I loved Tom since I caught his Rob Zombie comedy special a few years back and when I saw this on NetGalley I nearly squealed in delight because I knew I would love it and I was right. 4 stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

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Tom Papa's "You're Doing Great!: And Other Reasons to Stay Alive" is a warm hug of a book. I'm not talking about one of those semi-friendly one-armed hugs, but one of those full-body, two-armed wrap-around hugs that make you feel as if you can listen to the person's heartbeat when you're hugging them.

If I were to meet Tom Papa on the street now, I would feel like I know him and I would feel like he knows me. If I were to go watch Tom Papa perform, I would feel a special bond like I was watching an old friend hit the big time. I would want to shake his hand and give him a hug and it would be a familiar hug because I would feel like I knew him and he would instantly know he knew me even though we'd just actually met.

Truthfully, I didn't expect to end up giving "You're Doing Great." Truthfully, I'm not even totally sure it's a great book. For most of the book, I was in the solid 4-star range - hey, that's no shabby rating. It's like 1-star down from the best and it's quite a bit better, in my opinion, than the more middling-range 3-star rating. A 4-star rating says "Hey, you're doing great!"

But then, I got to the end of the book and I realized I felt great. I had laughed. I'd been hugged. I'd smiled. I'd never actually cried, but that would be kind of weird in a humor book. Still, I was incredibly touched by the stories because you can tell that Tom Papa loves his wife and loves his two daughters and loves his friends and loves his life, though none of these things could be called perfect.

After all, he refers to both himself and his wife as mutts. I have a feeling his wife considers it a compliment, though probably a weird compliment.

"You're Doing Great!" occasionally wanders. There were a handful of the 75 essays where I asked myself "What does that have to do with being great? That's just a life story that's kind of cute." I wanted to go ahead and dock the book a star because it wasn't perfect, but it's kind of hard to justify that when the entire theme of the book is that it's okay to not be perfect.

Mission accomplished. Imperfectly.

If you don't know Tom Papa, though you probably do know Tom Papa, he's a comedian who I believe mostly does clean comedy and "You're Doing Great!" is most certainly all clean comedy. Most comics will tell you that doing clean comedy is much more difficult than doing the more hardcore stuff and it's pretty impressive that Papa has built a pretty darn amazing career out of clean comedy including being the head writer and a performer for NPR's Live From Here and a popular SiriusXM host among quite a few other gigs.

He's probably not a household name, but he's doing great.

"You're Doing Great!" is at its best when Papa actually focuses his essays around the entire theme of "You're Doing Great!" These essays are simultaneously warm and affectionate and funny without the pressure of having to live up to standards that we don't really need to live up to in order to be truly happy. "You're Doing Great" lands with a little less of an impact when Papa moves away from this theme, which is something that's probably going to happen when you write 75 essays. You can really only pull off the humorous sideline life coach meets best buddy shtick for so long, but Tom Papa makes it work and it never feels like a shtick. It feels like the friend you meet at Denny's when you've had a crappy day at work and you feel like your life sucks - your friend looks at you with dead-on sincerity and says "You're doing great!"

Indeed.

So, "You're doing great!" is probably a 4-star book that I'm giving a 5-star rating because I'm a paraplegic/double amputee with spina bifida who's been off work for three months following what is actually my 3rd amputation and I needed to laugh and I needed to feel like I was still worth something. Tom Papa made me feel like I was doing great and I'm guessing he'll do the same thing for you because, well, it's true. "You're doing great!"

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