Staff Book and Media Recommendations

Just a Guy: Notes from a Blue-Collar Life

Bill Engvall

I've had a mild obsession with Bill Engvall's career for at least 15 years or so. I was very excited to find his book Just a Guy: Notes from a Blue Collar Life. Rather than compile a book of shtick, he wrote an autobiography. Some of it's funny, some of it is completely unfunny but emotional.

You can see where he got some of his stand-up bits (or perhaps he used his stand-up bits to embellish the book?). Most likely, it’s a little of both, heavy on the life side. He talks about growing up in various places, his love of baseball, his parents' divorce and his father's subsequent remarriage, how he met his wife, and the story of their 2 children.

Reading this book was like getting a day-long dosing of Engvall stand up. Instead of watching the same hour of two of the same stuff over and over again, it was new every time I picked it up. And even though I had heard some of the stories before, there was a lot of new material in there. Jana Atkins

Reviewed November 2009