Bossypants By Tina Fey

From the back cover:

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!)

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My Take:

I'm not a big fan of non-fiction books, but this was one of the exceptions. I found the cover a little stupid, but still picked up the book in spite of my strict "judge a book by its cover" rule, and it did not disappoint. Its not really LOL-funny, but leaves you with a silly smile on your face which can be attributed to the wisecracks made throughout the book. I know, because I had one myself, until a co-worker pointed it out!
Its more like a collection of magazine/newspaper articles, and the chapters are not really related to each other in any way.
And there are a lot of funny tips & tricks help with the daily dilemmas of the working woman. 
I felt like she used the book to clarify all misunderstandings/misconceptions regarding her, which is fine by me. An easy, fun read.

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Editorial Reviews:

From Barnes & Noble

In her acceptance speech for Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, Tina Fey announced that she was proud to make her home in "the 'not-real America'." It is perhaps that healthy sense of incongruity that makes the head writer, executive producer, and star of NBC's Emmy Award-winning 30 Rock such a cogent observer of the contemporary scene. Bossypants, her entertaining new memoir, shows that strangeness has been her constant companion. Fey's stories about her childhood in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania are only appetizers for LOL forays into her college disasters, honeymoon catastrophes, and Saturday Night Live shenanigans. Most funny read of the month; the best possible weekend update.

Janet Maslin

…[Fey's] dagger-sharp, extremely funny…Bossypants isn't a memoir. It's a spiky blend of humor, introspection, critical thinking and Nora Ephron-isms for a new generation.
—The New York Times

The Internet

"Tina Fey is an ugly, pear-shaped, overrated troll."

A Guy Turning into a Werewolf

"Hilarious and insightful. Laugh-out-loud funny — oh no, a full moon. No! Arrgh! Get away from me! Save yourself!"

College Boyfriend

"You'd be really pretty if you lost weight."

From the Publisher

Once in a generation a woman comes along who changes everything. Tina Fey is not that woman, but she met that woman once and acted weird around her.

Tracy Morgan

"Mommy, where are my pretzels?"

Don Fey

"I hope that's not really the cover. That's really going to hurt sales."

Mark Twain

"Do not print this glowing recommendation of Tina Fey's book until I've been dead a hundred years."

A Guy Who Eats Books

"Absolutely delicious!"

Trees

"Totally worth it."

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Funny lines from the book:

Gay people were made that way by God, but not solely for my entertainment.

Every interaction between blacks and whites was somehow supposed to be a life-changing lesson, especially for the white people. My generation carries that with us, only to be constantly disappointed by Kanye West and Taylor Swift.

You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.

Some people say “Never let them see you cry.” I say, if you’re so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone.

On Photoshoots:

If a bout of “creepy face” sets in, the trick is to look away from the camera between shots and turn back only when necessary. This also limits how much of your soul the camera can steal.

Someone should do a study of the human brain and how quickly it can adjust to luxury. You could take a homeless person who has been living on the street for twenty years, and if you let them do three magazine photo shoots, by the fourth one they’d be saying, “Louboutins don’t really work on me. Can I try the Roger Vivier?”

I feel about Photoshop the way some people feel about abortion. It is appalling and a tragic reflection on the moral decay of our society… unless I need it, in which case, everybody be cool.

Tina Fey answers fan mail:

“Tina Fey is an ugly, pear-shaped, bitchy, overrated troll.”

To say I’m an overrated troll, when you have never even seen me guard a bridge, is patently unfair. I’ll leave it for others to say if I’m the best, but I am certainly one of the most dedicated trolls guarding bridges today. I always ask three questions, at least two of which are riddles.

As for “ugly, pear-shaped, and bitchy”? I prefer the terms “offbeat, business class–as*ed, and exhausted,” but I’ll take what I can get. There’s no such thing as bad press!

 

On 30Rock:

You know those scientists who were developing a blood-pressure medicine and they accidentally invented Viagra? We were trying to make Viagra and we ended up with blood-pressure medicine.

 

We decided not to decide. This is another technique I’d learned from Lorne. Sometimes if you have a difficult decision to make, just stall until the answer presents itself.

On Motherhood:

My parents raised me that you never ask people about their reproductive plans. “You don’t know their situation,” my mom would say. I considered it such an impolite question that for years I didn’t even ask myself.

When people say, “You really, really must ” do something, it means you don’t really have to. No one ever says, “You really, really must deliver the baby during labor.” When it’s true, it doesn’t need to be said.

“Sleep when your baby sleeps.” Everyone knows this classic tip, but I say why stop there? Scream when your baby screams. Take Benadryl when your baby takes Benadryl.

What’s so great about work anyway? Work won’t visit you when you’re old. Work won’t drive you to get a mammogram and take you out after for soup. It’s too much pressure on my one kid to expect her to shoulder all those duties alone. Also, what if she turns on me? I am pretty hard to like. I need a backup.

The Mother’s Prayer for Its Daughter:

First, Lord: No tattoos.

Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance.

And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister,

Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends,

For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it.

And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord,

That I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored,

and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back.

“My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My

mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and

she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget.

But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

Amen