If At Birth You Don't Succeed: My Adventures With Disaster and Destiny by Zach Anner

Goodreads Summary

"Meet Zach Anner...He's handsome, smart, and funny [and] has won...legions of online fans."--Tara Parker-Pope, The New York Times

Comedian Zach Anner opens his frank and devilishly funny book, If at Birth You Don't Succeed, with an admission: he botched his own birth. Two months early, underweight and under-prepared for life, he entered the world with cerebral palsy and an uncertain future. So how did this hairless mole-rat of a boy blossom into a viral internet sensation who's hosted two travel shows, impressed Oprah, driven the Mars Rover, and inspired a John Mayer song? (It wasn't "Your Body is a Wonderland.")

Zach lives by the mantra: when life gives you wheelchair, make lemonade. Whether recounting a valiant childhood attempt to woo Cindy Crawford, encounters with zealous faith healers, or the time he crapped his pants mere feet from Dr. Phil, Zach shares his fumbles with unflinching honesty and characteristic charm. By his thirtieth birthday, Zach had grown into an adult with a career in entertainment, millions of fans, a loving family, and friends who would literally carry him up mountains.

If at Birth You Don't Succeed is a hilariously irreverent and heartfelt memoir about finding your passion and your path even when it's paved with epic misadventure. This is the unlikely but not unlucky story of a man who couldn't safely open a bag of Skittles, but still became a fitness guru with fans around the world. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll fall in love with the Olive Garden all over again, and learn why cerebral palsy is, definitively, "the sexiest of the palsies."

My Thoughts

I’ll be honest, I had actually never heard of Zach Anner before I was contacted by the publisher and asked to read and review this book.  You would think that I must live under a rock or something because I didn’t even know that Oprah had done a show on her channel to choose a new reality show!  Where have I been?! Oh, probably reading books!

Anyways, this book was pretty funny!  There were a few things that I wasn’t crazy about (language and things like that) but for the most part, I enjoyed this book a lot.  Fun fact about me: I tend to research things… a lot.  So, about halfway though this book, I started looking up Zach, watching videos, and reading things about him.  It made me like him even more and that made me enjoy the book more.

I haven’t read many memoirs so I don’t have many to compare this one to, but I think it was a pretty good one!  If you don’t know much about Zach Anner, look him up.  You’ll definitely want to pick this book up once you learn more about him.

*Note:  I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.