Over the past month or two, I’ve been reading through Kevin Smith’s new book My Boring-Ass Life: The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith. As you may know, it compiles posts from his personal blog (strangely, also titled, My Boring Ass Life) between March 2005 and December 2006. I’ve just now reached the conclusion of this 470 page compendium, so I thought I should sit down and offer my thoughts on it.

I’ll start by saying that I was sure it would be a quick read and that I would probably have the book polished off within a week or two, but that wasn’t quite the case. It’s not that it was difficult to get through, but rather, it turned out to be a lot more hefty than I thought (which isn’t a bad thing… more bang for your buck!). There are a LOT of blog posts reprinted here; Smith goes through stretches for weeks at a time where he is posting his activities for every single day consecutively. At the very least, I have to respect the man for being so dedicated to his blogging.

Now, a good chunk of the book is made up of these day to day journal entries, documenting his daily experiences right down to every last detail, no matter how tedious or private. At first I found this to be quite fascinating in itself: developing a picture of his routines and what life is like when you live in a big mansion in Hollywood and don’t work a typical 9 to 5 job. I found his honesty refreshing and charming, and there was a certain sense of connection that came when I realized that my life wasn’t all that different from his (minus the celebrity cameos of course). His days are spent blogging, watching movies, watching Tivo, hanging with his wife and kid, playing poker with friends, autographing merchandise, and — occasionally — working on a movie project of some sort.

The problem is that after a while I found some of the day to day stuff became a bit monotonous, and I started wondering what I was really getting out of reading it (and also questioning whether anyone should bother keeping a daily online journal in the first place). The 700th time he wakes up and takes a shit, or gets it on with his wife, or falls asleep to some Tivoed episodes of The Simpsons or Law and Order, I started thinking they were details I could do without.

And yet, still, I couldn’t stop reading. Smith is a great writer (in fact, I think his non-fiction storytelling is better than his fiction) and you never knew when an entry might contain an amusing anecdote, some tangential insight into showbiz, or just Smith’s own philosophies on life itself. There are also periods where he documents starring in the movie Catch and Release in Vancouver, and preproduction on Clerks 2, for example.

Towards the end of the book is when it really gets good, however. This is because the daily journal entries essentially cease, and are replaced with posts that are intended to tell specific stories or to address a certain topic. These more focused pieces are the best part of the book, particularly the epic and moving tale of Jason Mewes’ struggle with heroin addiction (told in 9 parts, no less). If you ask me, this is worth the price of admission alone. Not because it gives all this juicy dirt on Mewes, but rather because it’s amazing how bad it got and how he managed to overcome it. Truly a riveting yarn if ever there was one. The story about serving jury duty while simultaneously trying to cope with a painful anal fissure was also another highlight (albeit a slightly less emotional one).

Although it might seem like a bit of a cash grab to take blog entries that are available for free online and release them as a book (Kevin Smith is the master of merchandising, after all), I have to admit that the book is still something I will be proud to have on my bookshelf afterwards. My guess is we’ll be seeing a lot more blogs jumping into book form over the next few years, and although sometimes a little bit of editing is in order, in the case of Kevin Smith I’m kind of glad we got the “unabridged version”, as it were. My Boring-Ass Life definitely makes a great Christmas gift for the View Askew fan in your life, and hey, who knows — it might actually inspire a few kids to take some time away from downloading pirated movies online or chatting on MSN, and instead take part in the age old ritual of reading a book. For that, I give it a thumbs up.