Audiobook Review: Bossypants by Tina Fey

Bossypants is the hugely successful memoir by comedian Tina Fey and, like her, it is intelligent and witty. The author reads the audio herself and it is like listening to one of her monologues on Saturday Night Live - I caught myself laughing out loud on my walk home from work and smiling to myself while listening on the subway (fortunately, this really doesn't stand out much in NYC!). In addition to laughs, however, Tina Fey delivers commentary on how women can succeed in the workplace - even though her workplace is very different from the one most of us go to every day - and a peek into the family that made her who she is and the family she has created with her husband.

 I use the word "peek" intentionally because while Tina Fey has an amazing ability to laugh at herself and therefore can be quite revealing I was impressed by how she held some parts of her story to herself. I certainly got a well drawn picture of her family growing up - from her frugal Dad to her Mom who had Tina as a "change of life" baby. Tina's love and respect for her parents and how they have shaped her also shines through but there is nothing voyeuristic about this memoir - I get the feeling Tina could easily sit at a family dinner after writing this memoir and not look sheepishly around at the family she exposed in her book. In much the same way, Tina shares funny anecdotes about her husband - their courtship and their honeymoon (more about that later) but she doesn't slavishly reveal their entire relationship. It is almost as if she recognizes that she has decided to live a public life but doesn't want to subject her family to the exposure that accompanies that public life.

Now - on to the laughs. Tina's dry, sarcastic wit is evident throughout this book as she tells anecdotes from her personal and professional life. The one I found funniest and the one which still brings a smile to my face is the story of her and her husband's honeymoon cruise. The couple decided on cruising because her husband is afraid of flying. After enjoying a few days of extravagant buffets and formal nights, Tina and her husband are enjoying a day on the ship when they hear one of the cabin maids desperately bleating into the intercom "Bravo, Bravo . . . ". They later learn this is code for a serious emergency aboard and discover their cruise ship is on fire! Something about her breathless delivery of the maid's alert over the intercom still makes me laugh.

On the professional front, Tina recounts her time at Second City in Chicago, her early days on SNL and her success on 30 Rock. She also takes us through her period of playing Sarah Palin during the 2008 election season Tina tells many self-deprecating anecdotes about her professional gaffes and occasional humiliations. However, in the midst of those, a theme emerges - Tina has worked very hard in a male dominated field to achieve what she has and it was by no means arrived at through pure luck.

If you are looking for intelligent, witty and laugh out loud funny, pick up Bossypants (preferably in audio!)

Review: You Don't Sweat Much For a Fat Girl by Celia Rivenbark

You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl: Observations on Life from the Shallow End of the Pool by Celia Rivenbark is a humorous collection of essays by the sassy Southern comedian.  With her irreverent humor, Rivenbark comments on all aspects of pop culture and current events and really says what many of us think.  As she muses about the challenge of tweeting her thoughts in only 140 characters ("Twitter Woes: I've Got Plenty of Characters, Just No Character") or the paucity of quality in reality TV ("Loonies Litter Landscape of (snicker) The Learning Channel"), she puts words (albeit much funnier ones than I would string together) to the observations we all make about politics, entertainment and the human condition. 

My Thoughts

I literally laughed out loud while reading this book - this drew some interesting looks on the plane and by the pool! Despite being in public places, I could not contain myself - Rivenbark's pithy commentary is spot on and the spin her snarky humor puts on daily occurences just made me laugh.  In addition to doling out witty commentary on others, Rivenbark also includes some self-deprecating humor.  My favorite example of this is when she describes asking David Sedaris to "blurb" her new book - she is pretty thoroughly rejected by Sedaris.  When someone can be so withering in their humorous criticism of others, it is good to see them share their own foibles and vulernerabilities  - it softens the edge of their snarky humor.  Rivenbark's ability to do this kept her book from just being a collection of stories with laughs at other's expense and the book is all the better for it.

If you like Sedaris (he may not agree) or Dave Barry, this collection by Rivenbark may be for you.  It makes for great light reading and its essay format means you can easily pick it up between other books or projects.   I can also recommend Rivenbark's last book You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start in the Morning (sage advice, no?) if you are want more from this author after finishing "You Don't Sweat Much . . . "  (review here).  

Thank you to Tanya Farrell of Wunderkind PR for the review copy of this book

Review: I Know I Am, But What Are You? by Samatha Bee

I Know I Am, But What Are You? by Samantha Bee
From Amazon:

A senior correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the Toronto-born comedian pokes fun at herself in a witty collection of personal essays. Recalling her upbringing, she lightheartedly and hysterically skewers her parents, stepparents, grandparents, and even the nuns who taught her math, half of whom "looked and smelled like the rejection of life itself." Bee's stepmother took camping "very seriously," and preparing for a trip was "like preparing for the End of Days;" her father, claiming to be thinking up strategies for better fuel efficiency, was really "just reading Penthouse on the toilet." Regarding the nuns at her Catholic school, Bee doesn't hold back: "You could see that they had all their lady parts, but you just knew that once a month they menstruated dust." Bee takes readers from childhood to adolescence and beyond, reminiscing along the way about her first boyfriend, comparing their sexual chemistry to that of a "sea cucumber that sits motionless on the cold, dark ocean floor and dreams of dry-humping a nearby scallop." Bee successfully brings her witty, self-deprecating, slightly cynical, and semi-scathing world view from screen to page.

My Thoughts:
This memoir is told in a series of essays each recounting a cringe-worthy story from Bee's childhood or adolescence.    Now most of our childhoods and certainly adolescences offer material galore in the humor department but it takes talent to write and package those scenes into funny, sardonic essays with just the right amount of detail.  Samantha Bee definitely has a self-deprecating sense of humor and is not afraid to make fun of her younger self which makes for a more humorous story.  With divorced and somewhat eccentric parents, Bee seemed older than her years as a child watching and assessing the exploits of her parents.  She may not have realized it at the time but all that observation would turn into a funny, entertaining book!

The author I can most easily compare Bee to is David Sedaris - she has a similar sarcastic tone and tells personal stories as he does - however, I think her book approaches the humor found in a David Sedaris story.  I definitely found myself laughing out loud but I feel Sedaris is just that little bit more witty and exacting in his prose.  With that said, I Know I Am, But What Are You?, takes dysfunction and makes it funny - and maybe makes us all feel just a little bit better about our own childhoods!

FYI - Although I read it in print, I think this book would likely be excellent in audio (check out S. Krishna's review of the audio) as I am sure Samantha would deliver her witty one-liners with just the right inflection. 

Thank you to Kristin at Simon and Schuster for providing a copy of this book for review

Review: Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson

As an unabashed Anglophile, I am a big fan of Bill Bryson. Even though Bryson was born and raised in Iowa, he lived for much of his professional life in North Yorkshire, England after meeting and marrying his wife while working in the UK following college. In 1995, however, he and his family decided to return to the United States - his observations upon return to the country of his birth are chronicled in I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away, another great Bryson book. I love how he recounts his reasons for returning to the US:

"I had recently read, that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another,so it was clear that my people needed me."

That quote is typical of Bryson's dry wit. His books are found in the travel section of a bookstore but could as esily be shelved in the humor section. Before leaving the UK, he decides to travel the country one final time. Notes from a Small Island is the book that came of that final trip.

Bryson travels through England and stays in charming British towns - each in which he inevitably heads out for a walk and finds a pub for a meal and a good pint. As he completes this ritual in every town, he shares the locale's history, comments on its architecture and topography. That may sound dull but as Bryson conveys it all with his sarcastic wit, it is anything but dull. Furthermore, he peppers these descriptions of the towns with his real specialty - observations of Brits and their customs. From Dover to Bath and to Devon, Bryson offers up his witty commentary on the British. This type of commentary could easily drift into criticism told with a foreigner's superior tone (read my review of Lysall's Anglofiles) but Bryson's affection for the country and its people shines through and makes this humorous travelogue a real winner!

Auidobook Review: You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start Drinking in the Morning

You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start in the Morning by Celia Rivenbark is laugh out loud funny! This is the first book I have read (ok listened to) of hers (she has several and a weekly column) and I enjoyed her sassy, southern humor as she shared her commentary on "eco-geeks", "fitness mommies" and "clay mates". I especially loved her theory on why southern women are such aggressive drivers - they are raised to constantly defer to others and suppress their real feelings ( Bless her heart) but when they get behind the wheel they can hold back no longer and in the safety of their own car they inflict their wrath on fellow drivers. Of course, she is Southern so she can get away with this commentary!

Here is a sample of the essays from the audiobook:

• Why Miss North Carolina is too nice to hate
• How Gwyneth Paltrow wants to improve your pathetic life
• Sex every night for a year? How do you wrap that?
• Get yer Wassail on: It’s carolin’ time
• Airlines serving up one hot mess

Rivenbark's snarky humor is unrelenting at times and she seems to rant about just about everything. What I really liked, however, is that she also shared a more personal, softer side in an essay about her father and her thoughts on caring for him while he suffered from dementia and ultimately passed away. Her touching reminiscences and reflections on her father's life and what he meant to her were a refreshing turn in this otherwise funny, sarcastic book.

I chose to listen to this as opposed to read it because I find that enjoy listening to comedy on my walk to and from work - it puts a smile on my face (since I live in NYC, the fact that I am laughing out loud as I walk the streets alarms no one!) Although the essays were very funny and kept me entertained as I walked, the author's reading seemed a little stilted at time. Unlike David Sedaris whose books I feel are best when listened to, I wonder if this book lost a little in the audio. When the narrator/author is stilted, I find it distracts from the content.

Other than this minor criticism, I have only great things to say about this book - it will keep you laughing and taking comfort in the fact that you are not the only one that thinks Gwenyth Paltrow has no right telling you how to live you best life!

Review: Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster

Bitter is the New Black : Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass,Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office (whew - that's a mouthful) is Jen Lancaster's hysterical memoir that recounts her tumble from a high-powered exec making a healthy six figure income to an unemployed (albeit very well-dressed - note the Prada bag in the book's title) woman who continually adjusts her standards as her money-making prospects dwindle. The memoir begins with the author's description of her high-flying lifestyle as a sales exec - from her spectacular apartment (aka the dot.com palace) complete with granite countertops and private deck to her expensive but very necessary hair coloring and pampering schedule. Despite her demonstrated success at work and her obvious dedication to her job, Jen loses her job and finds herself facing indignities such as the unemployment office. Over the next 12 months, Jen is unable to find a job even though she pursues every lead and lowers her expectations progressively over the year. She is driven to taking extreme measures to preserve some semblance of her former life - including getting married to her long-time boyfriend in an effort to secure health insurance and ulitmately moving from the dot.com palace to "the ghetto".

The entire story is told with Lancaster's signature wit - I literally laughed out loud while reading this book. The humor in the book is smart and cutting and very relatable - I swear many of the thoughts Jen articulated have run through my mind! No one is immune to her sarcastic commentary - she doesn't suffer incompetence easily. I think that is part of what makes this book work for me - despite Jen's over the top princess persona, you want to like her and find yourself rooting for her. She is clearly intelligent and hard-working and although her criticism of co-workers, clients, neighbors and customer service staff seems harsh, she speaks the truth. That honesty shines through all the humorous commentary and makes you want to read more.

I would definitely recommend this book - it is funny and refreshingly honest- you will relate to Jen and laugh along with her throughout the book!