Bossy Pants - Tina Fey

Summary: 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.  (Summary from Amazon.com and image from npr.org)

My Review:  I have always found Tina Fey to be hilarious.  What I didn't realize is how TV-edited she is!  This book is crass.  Very crass.  If you have any aversion to swearing or harsh language and crude jokes, this is NOT the book for you.  If you can turn a blind eye to those things, or even enjoy the humor that slides into the gutter at times, it's the hilarious Tina Fey you're used to but without a filter.

I listened to this on audio, so one of the aspects I found jarring was the jumping around of chapter to chapter with regards to topics.  It really didn't feel like one chapter had any connection to the previous or subsequent.  I'm sure this was easier to follow with the visual of the chapter headings, but listening made it confusing at times and disjointed at best.

One of Fey's charms is how unassuming she is.  I adore the fact that she honestly doesn't think she's attractive, that she doesn't view herself as anything special, and she knows that a lot of success is working hard, and having connections.  I enjoyed seeing how her career took off.  It's always interesting to see how people's trails are blazed.  Her openness to share how precarious her success and the show 30 Rock was in the beginning is authentic; it doesn't seem that much on TV is authentic any more, so this was a nice change.

A friendly warning to those who are conservative: Fey is a die-hard liberal and makes it very apparent in this book.  If you don't like jabs at all things not liberal, this won't be your book.

Rating:  3.5 Stars

Sum it up:  Tina's hilarious perspective on how her life has come to be.