Paddle Your Own Canoe

By: Nick Offerman

Published by Penguin, 2014-09-02

<b><i>Parks and Recreation</i> actor and <i>Making It</i> co-host Nick Offerman shares his humorous fulminations on life, manliness, meat, and much more in this <i>New York Times</i> bestseller.<br></b><br>Growing a perfect moustache, grilling red meat, wooing a woman—who better to deliver this tutelage than the always charming, always manly Nick Offerman, best known as <i>Parks and Recreation</i>’s Ron Swanson?  Combining his trademark comic voice and very real expertise in woodworking—he runs his own woodshop—<i>Paddle Your Own Canoe</i> features tales from Offerman’s childhood in small-town Minooka, Illinois—“I grew up literally in the middle of a cornfield”—to his theater days in Chicago, beginnings as a carpenter/actor and the hilarious and magnificent seduction of his now-wife Megan Mullally.   It also offers hard-bitten battle strategies in the arenas of manliness, love, style, religion, woodworking, and outdoor recreation, among many other savory entrees.<br><br>A mix of amusing anecdotes, opinionated lessons and rants, sprinkled with offbeat gaiety, <i>Paddle Your Own Canoe</i> will not only tickle readers pink but may also rouse them to put down their smart phones, study a few sycamore leaves, and maybe even hand craft (and paddle) their own canoes.