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Born Standing UpBook

by Steve Martin

Who uses, recommends or left Born Standing Up, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

1 person

Waqas Younas
Software engineer and essayist who writes about programming, philosophy and literature at thoughts.wyounas.com.
liked

It's a nice, short, and moving memoir by the comedian and actor Steve Martin. The book details his early working days at shops and clubs, his relationships, and eventually his rise to fame. He shared his struggles, his failures, long hours of practice, his reflections to refine his craft, and his efforts to find his own unique voice as a comedian. Any memoir that only talks about successes and never discusses struggles, rejections, or weaknesses is suspect. This one is not. What I like about his writing is that it feels candid and, at times, funny.

His year-end post on the books he most enjoyed reading in 2024, with a long note on each.

2024-12-30·thoughts.wyounas.com ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.