Book Nook - Bossypants

Bossypants by Tina Fey is such a hilarious book!  If you've seen her on Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock, or caught her impersonation as Sarah Palin, then you already know how funny she is.  This book will have you laughing out loud, and liking Tina Fey more than ever.

Listed as a memoir, Fey tells story after story about her life growing up, as a young adult and her current successes in her career.  She talks about how she got her scar and being able to read people based on their reaction and questions about it.  She talks about her profanity-loving father, and how he once made her wait at the store for him while he drove home to get something to return - when she was 9.  She tells stories of all her gay friends at the summer theater camp she attended.  She talks about the power she wielded when she worked at the YMCA in Chicago & the office workers relied on her to buzz them into the building.  And more recently, she relates stories about her daughter Alice (who knows the difference between brown hair & "yellow"), her husband (& how they almost perished at sea on their honeymoon), her former boss Lorne Michael (how he called her back to work after the big anthrax scare in 2001 by asking her what kind of takeout she wanted) and how she juggles her busy schedule (she says you know you have a problem when Oprah Winfrey herself tells you that you're taking on too much).

Of course, none of this does the book justice, because Fey tells every story with humor, wit, intelligence, insight and some curse words.  I listened to the book on CD, which I highly recommend because it's read by Fey herself, so you get to hear all the funny voices she does (her Alice, Don Fey & Alec Baldwin impersonations are hysterical).  And, on the book on CD you get to hear the famous SNL skit when she played Sarah Palin & Amy Poehler parodies Hillary Clinton.  There is a PDF CD with pictures, but I never loaded it.  I expect that the paper version of the book also has pictures in it.

The book is admittedly, a bit more for women than for guys.  This is even addressed in the book when after a more feminine-centric story, Fey stops to thank all the men who have bought her book.

Tina Fey is completely at fault for making me frog (knitter-speak for rip out) a few rows in my current project because I was laughing so hard I lost all sense of what I was doing!  But it was worth it - who couldn't use a good laugh now & then?

-Cheryl