The Rare Occasion When the Movie Is Better

I adore Mike Birbiglia. I think he’s hilarious, to the point where when I heard he was a panelist on an episode of Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me…I almost ran my car off the road with glee. I watched Sleepwalk With Me on Netflix a few months back, and I really enjoyed it. When I got the chance to said book it was based on, I was psyched. I was looking forward to a more detailed, interesting journey into this mans mind and what I ended up being was rather disappointed.

The book starts out with his first case of sleepwalking, a little tease to pull you in. And then…that’s it. Until the very end, it doesn’t come up again. You wend your way through his life, learning bits and pieces about what shaped him. I finished this book less than a week ago and I’ve already forgotten most of it. It just wasn’t that memorable at all to me. The movie, I think, did a much better job pulling the narrative together and really creating a cohesive story. This was a collection of anecdotes that were amusing, but rarely that funny.  I didn’t expect the book to be laugh out loud hysterical, being somewhat familiar with his comedy, but I didn’t really find much humor in it at all.

Birbiglia is an okay writer. After I finished, I can say his strength is much more in the area of performance. Maybe an audio book version of this would have been better. Without his voice, his inflection, and his mannerisms, this just fell flat for me.