Austin Improv

I'm about half way through this book:

Gig: American's talk about their Jobs by John Bowe (Editor), Marisa Bowe (Editor), Sabin Streeter (Editor)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/060980 ... oding=UTF8

The book is just basically a compilation of people in their own words talking about their jobs. And they cover all sorts of jobs.

I'm interested in seeing the commonalities and differences, as well as the improv applications to many different fields. Has anyone read this book too? I'm interested in your thoughts.

I picked up the book a few years ago. I liked it so much I bought
several copies for my friends.

It's nice short attention span reading. Each job description is independent
of the others, so you can just randomly open the book and read the 3 to 5
pages devoted to a job description.

I was mainly interested in little details of the jobs, the behind the
scenes stuff and the stories of rewards and annoyances that as a customer
you don't know about. It's kind of like watching those films on the PBS
kids shows where they show how twinkies or lightbulbs are made.

There are tons of improv applications : points of view the people in
the book, the journey of how they became what ever profession they work in,
even their diction.

There is a caveat. Each profession is represented by one person's account,
so it will be incomplete and may not be representative of that job. I looked
at the jobs that either I or my friends have done and there is stuff that I
disagree with or would have added. I am curious what other people think
about a job description as compared to their own experience of that job.

I just randomly read through the book in my pre-improv life. I'm going to
read it from cover to cover with an eye on improv.

I love this genre of non-fiction. There's a guy named Mark Baker who wrote
a whole series of books like Gig about vietnam vets, cops, DA's and criminals

The one on Vietnam Vets is terrific:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/081541 ... e&n=283155

Although like Gig the stories should be taken with a grain of salt.