Bossypants

Bossypants – Tina Fey

Although she may be one of the most well-known comedy figures of pop culture, Tina Fey spends her entire books trying to convince you that everything was either an accident or good ol’ blind luck, and all those pictures where she looks so beautiful? Photoshop. She dedicates a significant chunk of one chapter to praising Photoshop, and, along with all her other arguments, I find myself fully convinced by her reasoning. Except her theory on going on a cruise – I still disagree with her there.

Fey begins telling her story from her summers spent at a church theatre camp, to her extremely un-romantically involved college years, the drudgery of her one and only desk job, and her many, many, many failures before she ended up on NBC. Along the way, she gets married, has a daughter, and offers her opinion on everything from towel animals to how to achieve the maximum fun on the annual Christmas celebration that includes both sets of in-laws, and her personal advice for love, sex, and beauty.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I didn’t think Tina Fey would be so well-informed on various aspects of life. She makes well-reasoned feminist observations about topics ranging from the role of women in comedy to political campaigns to being a working mom. Fey is obviously a genius of a writer, and the books reads so easily you could probably multi-task while reading it. You could, but you wouldn’t want to because you spend the entire book marveling at how normal she actually is despite all her fame, and drawing attention to yourself by uncontrollably laughing out loud at her ridiculous metaphors, dead-on descriptions, and satire. It is almost impossible to put this book down. I kept wanting to rush through to know what her next brilliant observation would be, but it actually took me a long time to read this book because I really wanted to savor every word. Yes, brilliant, I think, is the best way to summarize this book.