The Joy of Politics: Surviving Cancer, a Campaign, a Pandemic, an Insurrection, and Life’s Other Unexpected Curveballs

Amy Klobuchar is a Democratic senator from Minnesota. I’ve heard good things about her. She’s pretty conservative for a Democrat (a Kennedy Democrat?), and several people have told me that she and John Thune (one of my state’s senators) are actually good friends, despite being on opposite sides of the aisle.

This is a political memoir of the last few years of her life. She discusses her battle with cancer, her aborted run for president, and then all the Trump mess that happened after.

And that’s where I bailed out.

Here’s the thing: Klobuchar’s brand is “boring.” That’s kind of her thing.

And this book was boring – very, very on-brand. There was just no real “hook” to it. It wasn’t interesting. It seemed to be a random collection of memories of that last few years.

And then the Trump stuff came up, and I just couldn’t handle it. She started in on the January 6 insurrection, and I just couldn’t go there with her. I’m absolutely sympathetic and on her side, I just couldn’t handle reading yet another recitation of what happened. When it comes to Trump and January 6, I’m just very tired.

I paged through the rest of the book, and it was a bunch of outrage at Trump, and she was just preaching to the choir at this point. I couldn’t go any further.

She seems like a lovely person and an effective legislator. But there was nothing here that made me want to pick up the book.

Book Info

Here are some notes I took on the acquisition of this book:

I bought this at a tiny bookstore in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. I was in Klobuchar’s state, and it seemed like an appropriate thing to do.