Is This Anything? – Jerry Seinfeld

Is This Anything is a collection of Jerry Seinfeld’s best material in the five decades that he’s been performing stand-up. The book is separated into five eras: 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s and teens.

I’m not shocking anyone when I say that Jerry Seinfeld is one of my favorite comedians to watch. I’m sure he’s on many top five lists out there. So when it was announced that I could own a physical record of his best and most famous material, I was looking forward to getting my hands on it.

I’m not going to lie, the first half of this book, there were moments where I was crying with laughter. The bit about his mother putting a mirror in her living room to try and make the room look bigger is one of my favorites of his. However, as time wore on, I found myself getting tired of the non-stop barrage of jokes. I can only compare this to going to see Jimmy Carr a few years ago on his “Solid Gold Hits” tour where he just relentlessly attacked us with joke after joke after joke. It gets exhausting!

Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to power through the book as quickly as I did. There’s also the fact that you’re reading these jokes that are meant to be performed live along with Jerry’s signature cadence and delivery. That’s not really a fair criticism of a book, but there is certainly something lost when you’re just reading them rather than hearing Jerry deliver them (although, it’s hard not to hear Jerry’s voice in your head).