The Life of Dad, escapes the trap that catches its competitors

The thing about being a dad and having ‘daddy’ in our business name, as well as, writing about books is that we get all manner of book pitches about paternal instincts. More often than not, as a book, they tend to fall short of being entertaining unless you happen to be a diehard fan of said athlete or entertainer. The Life of Dad is a book that collects very short snippets from interviews that have been conducted on the LOD podcast.

This is not a dad advice book. That is the type of book that soured us on the genre. The Life of Dad brings it back home and uses an economy of words as its greatest strength.

The Life of Dad seems to know that another ‘advice’ book isn’t needed. Instead what is presented are 12 chapters with dozens, upon dozens of dads briefly chatting about things that they’ve learned, didn’t know, have come to love and a takeaway that each opining dad has to offer. However, this is not an advice book.

To understand this, one almost has to listen to the LOD podcast. In that podcast they’ve interviewed more than 300 fathers who work in entertainment, pop culture, sports, music or any other field to where they’re known on some level. Case in point is that I knew all of the dads associated with comedy, literature or comic books in The Life of Dad, yet I had to read the brief 2-3 paragraph introduction to most of the athletes to remind myself of who they were.

These introductions are not pompous, tell-people-how-great-you-are PR pieces. They’re relatable,  quick and make readers know that, despite the successes in their respective fields they’re just a dad. Again, this is not an advice book. At times the line between story and advice can get blurred, yes, but the book never has a preachy tone.

If anything, each dad who is highlighted in the book has too brief of a time in the spotlight. However, if it were any longer than wit, brevity and enjoyment of the stories would suffer. Initially we thought of The Life of Dad as a really superior toilet book because each dad story that’s told takes about :90 to two-minutes to read. Truth be told that’s where The Life of Dad started out in our house. However, after a day a funny thing started to happen. The Life of Dad left the bathroom and came into the bedroom. The length of the stories were still the same, it’s just that we started reading six or seven stories at a time.

The Life of Dad transcends other ‘dad’ books by having so many dads to talk about. There are many subjects and each one is given the perfect amount of time. Plus, some of the guys in this book have their own book on sports, parenting, music, entertainment or politics that give you the chance to do a deep dive into their life.

Ultimately what’s so surprising about The Life of Dad is how it turns a topic that I couldn’t see any of my dad friends reading about, into a topic I can see them reading about. It’s a cliché to say that The Life of Dad is a great Father’s Day gift, but it’s a great gift. It’s much at home in the waiting room of a doctor or dentist office as it is moving between the bathroom and the night stand.