Abandoned by Booklikes

I wish that I had liked this memoir by Zach (with a H) Anner more than I did.

If you are not familiar with him, Mr. Anner lives with cerebral palsy, and back in 2011 won his own travel show on the Oprah Winfrey Network in 2011. I recall the reality show that Mr. Anner was on that got him his own show, and I honestly don't remember much else besides saying that's cool when I heard who won. Since his show has been cancelled it seems that Mr. Anner has been hosting a web series with Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office) and also producing segments on his own Youtube channel.

I had a lot of trouble getting through this memoir in certain parts. I think the most pressing problem that I saw was that the book jumped around a lot and only seemed highly focused on the Oprah Winfrey reality show.

We get tidbits here and there about Mr. Anner's family (which I loved) but he doesn't dwell on them too much besides tossing a bone here and there in the book until we get to Chapter 17: Grandma: The Musical! That is when the book really came alive for me as a reader. Even when we do have Mr. Anner focus on certain aspects of his younger years, he bounces around a lot within a chapter in order to link it to whatever overall theme he wants to discuss.

I did find it a bit....troubling or simply naive that Mr. Anner danced around the issues that many people had with sites like Reddit and 4Chan. I don't think it's old men and women trying to control the internet, it's making sure sites like that don't just go around and do the things that some of the members do. I am glad that Mr. Anner had a positive experience with them, but I found it a bit disingenuous for him to not really delve into why Reddit and 4Chan members voted for him (it sounds like they did it to stick to Oprah because of whatever reasons) and I really couldn't get to what he was trying to say there because I felt like he was being overly cautious to not insult Oprah or Reddit.

I think the big thing was that we don't get a sense of all that Mr. Anner had gone through until the very end of the book when he acknowledges that he had some depression and medical issues in high school which sidelined him and also caused him to question a lot of things that were going on in his life at the time. And once again, I have to say, that was when I felt like I was getting to see the real Mr. Anner. I thought the whole book was him trying to be as funny and witty as possible and trying to gloss over certain experiences he had.

All in all I found it to be a so-so memoir.