"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"

I guess I went into this book expecting something that it wasn't. I read this with a book club and was expecting something a bit more biographic than what I was given. Rather than it laid out like a life story, it came off more like grandpa at the Thanksgiving table telling you the same sorts of embellished stories he's told you every year previous. Sure they're amusing anecdotes to a certain degree, but it's definitely not biographic.

If you take everything you read here at face value the guy clearly led an extremely varied life, which is more than I can say for myself. But the difference here is that, while I maybe lead a boring life in comparison, I'm not quite the quirky jerk that Mr. Feynman was in many of the stories laid out here. Many (most?) of the anecdotes here hinge on Mr. Feynman pulling one over on someone else, and reveling in how much more clever he is than everyone around him. It was funny in the beginning, but quickly got old for me.

I also thought his views on women around him were problematic, and while an argument can be made about him being a product of his time, it's never too late for improvement and self reflection. You won't find a lot of either here.

It's so strange to find a book beloved by everyone else, and find it so disappointing. The more I kept listening to the audiobook, the more and more I kept getting annoyed at his false modesty and complete sense of disrespect for people that he made fun of. Maybe he was a charming, goofy guy in his personal life - and there's no question about his legacy in his professional life - but if the intent of this book was to show how down-to-earth, carefree and charming Dr. Feynman was, it had exactly the opposite effect on me.

Pulling a prank on innocent bystanders and having a good laugh about it is one thing; deliberately keeping your tips in glasses full of water and then boasting about the mess that the waitress had to deal with in his memoir is a completely different thing altogether. And I had just started the chapter about his "bar outings" and how he used to pick up girls there, that's when I lost all patience for the book.

For people having some time on their hands, please read this: Surely you're a creep, Mr Feynman