Title: Bossypants
Author: Tina Fey
Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books
Genre: Biography, Humour
First Publication: 2011
Language: English
Major Characters: Tina Fey
Theme: Being comfortable with oneself, Impossible Standards for Women Due to Patriarchy
Narration: first person
Book Summary: Bossypants by Tina Fey
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; and 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.
Book Review: Bossypants by Tina Fey
Bossypants by Tina Fey is a collection of essays about different experiences Ms. Fey has had, such as being a working mom and making a career in the predominantly male field of sketch comedy.
Tina Fey gives a witty and relatively personal account of her professional and private life. It includes many aspects of Fey’s childhood such as growing up in a middle class American family, and being a child with a slight facial deformity. It’s one of the best memoir written in recent time.
The reader also gets an insight into the professional steps that this woman took to utilize her aptitude for writing and performing. From then on, Fey dishes details on marriage, parenthood and her experiences in showbiz. All of the moments, jobs and people she has experienced throughout her life come together in this book to show how she became the quirky, likable and successful woman that she is today.
“Do your thing and don’t care if they like it.”
Bossypants by Tina Fey is a very nice mix of serious and humorous. There are some parts of the book that hold little interest for me – like her detailing of the rules of improvisation. But, even then she infuses the whole thing with so much witty humor and so many universal truths that I couldn’t stop laughing. She has quite a lot to say about more serious topics like the pigeon-holing of women by the entertainment industry, and the challenges of motherhood, but this book never ceases to be uproariously funny.
Along with having tongue in cheek and ego in check, Fey is witty, confident, and healthily aware of the inflation and absurdities of show business, especially the TV business. She’s generous to her peers and collaborators, and she describes a life story that may be familiar to those of us who spent a lot of time in community theater hanging out with gay boys growing up.
“My ability to turn good news into anxiety is rivaled only by my ability to turn anxiety into chin acne.”
In my opinion, biographies are the best possible option for Audiobooks. This may come from my love of talk radio and podcasts or perhaps audio interviews in general but hearing the author talk about his/her life can be very satisfying. It can lend a quality that cannot be experienced while reading the physical book. In Bossypants by Tina Fey, those qualities are Fey’s impressions, which are often hilarious (listen for Fey’s Alec Baldwin) as well as her natural skill for storytelling and sarcasm.
