Review | 'Bossypants'

Bossypants
Tina Fey
275 pg., U.S. paperback
Hachette Book Group
4 stars | A-



From Goodreads:


Before Liz Lemon, before "Weekend Update," before "Sarah Palin," Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV.

She has seen both these dreams come true.

At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon -- from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.

Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.

(Includes Special, Never-Before-Solicited Opinions on Breastfeeding, Princesses, Photoshop, the Electoral Process, and Italian Rum Cake!)

I don't really think there was anyway I could have given this book anything less than 5 stars without ridiculing Tina Fey's life itself. That's the thing about memoirs and autobiographies: you can't really give them a low rating. Tina Fey's book was nothing less than fulfilling. It was funny, but in a way that I didn't find exactly "laugh out loud", more of a kind of intellectual humor, just like Fey's show, 30 Rock. 

Truthfully, if Tina Fey hadn't written this book, I probably wouldn't have liked it. The first few chapters of the book are about Fey's early life, her womanly developments, etc., and if there hadn't been humor to lighten up the intensity, I probably would have been a bit bored and turned off. Thank God for Tina Fey, though, for she really made a book that would've otherwise been dull, not dull. After getting over the early life, I was interested in her writings about the development of 30 Rock, her performance on SNL, and her impersonation of Sarah Palin. The writing was really fresh and different than many other autobiographical authors. It was so relieving to have a fun read about a very serious business, and the impact that Tina Fey's presence has had on comedy as a whole. It was a quick, nice read, and I definitely recommend it.