The Vow By Kim & Krickitt Carpenter

About the Book:

Life as Kim and Krickitt Carpenter knew it was shattered beyond recognition on November 24, 1993, two months after their marriage, when their Ford Escort was hit from behind by a fast-moving truck. A massive head injury left Krickitt in a coma for weeks. When she finally emerged from the coma, she recognized her parents and everyone else-but she didn't know Kim. She had no idea who he was. The "Krickitt" Kim had married essentially died in the accident. The Vow is the true tale of the reconstruction of two lives and a marriage after an event so shattering that most others would have parted ways long ago. Though it was not easy, and it tested every fiber of who they were, Kim and Krickitt fell in love all over again.

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My Thoughts:

Again, one of those rare times, when I saw the movie first, and read the book it was based on later. This one was ok, it read more like a diary of the author's daily thoughts and feelings.
I would've also liked to know the story from the POV of the wife though, this book is very one-sided.
Very simply and clearly written.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) By Mindy Kaling

From the Back Cover:

Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck–impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her friends and coworkers with the sentence “Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I’ll shut up about it?”

Perhaps you want to know what Mindy thinks makes a great best friend (someone who will fill your prescription in the middle of the night), or what makes a great guy (one who is aware of all elderly people in any room at any time and acts accordingly), or what is the perfect amount of fame (so famous you can never get convicted of murder in a court of law), or how to maintain a trim figure (you will not find that information in these pages). If so, you’ve come to the right book, mostly!

In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, with several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls. Mindy Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door—not so much literally anywhere in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or Sri Lanka.

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My Thoughts:

I simply LOVED this book! Its a full on laugh riot! Mindy Kaling is smart, funny, pretty (yes!), and she writes really well, her writing style is very smooth and easy. While reading it, I actually felt like she was sitting right next to me, yapping away!

I first came across her in The Mindy Project, which I think is a hilarious show! Wikipedia then lead me to The Office, which has now topped my list of funniest TV shows of all time, tied off course with Scrubs!

After reading Bossypants, this was obviously the next book in my list, and I liked it better than the former, which was more sarcastic and mature. This book is simple and smart and young, and reads like a bound collection of a funny newspaper column. I wish she did write a daily column, but till that happens, I have twitter!

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A few excerpts from the book, given below for everybody's convenience. Also read this.

Revenge is a dish best served cold. But it feels best served piping hot, straight out of the oven of outrage.

There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it. (I totally agree!!)

The laws of bullying allow you to be cruel even when the victim had made strides for improvement? This is when I realized that bullies have no code of conduct.

I’m the kind of person who would rather get my hopes up really high and watch them get dashed to pieces than wisely keep my expectations at bay and hope they are exceeded. This quality has made me a needy and theatrical friend, but has given me a spectacularly dramatic emotional life.

Thank you, Teach for America! Luring away America’s finest minds so that the rest of us can snatch up their jobs.

Our cheapness was the recurring source of our creative decisions.

When people show a lack of excitement to see me, I compensate by complimenting the hell out of them. It always exacerbates the problem, but I cannot stop.

I’ve always found Steve gentlemanly and private, like a Jane Austen character. 

When smart people are nice, it’s always terrifying, because I know they’re taking in everything and thinking all kinds of smart and potentially judgmental things.

SOMETIMES I bring a script I’m working on to a restaurant and sit near people and eavesdrop on them. I could rationalize it—Oh, this is good anthropological research for characters I’m writing—but it’s basically just nosiness.

I’m pretty sure my parents have gazed into each other’s eyes maybe once, and that was so my mom could put eyedrops in my dad’s eyes.

When I was a kid, my parents smartly raised us to keep quiet, be respectful to older people, and generally not question adults all that much. I think that's because they were assuming that 99 percent of the time, we'd be interacting with worthy, smart adults... They didn't ever tell me 'Sometimes you will meet idiots who are technically adults and authority figures. You don't have to do what they say.

In psychology (okay, Twilight) they teach you about the notion of imprinting, and I think it applies here. I reverse-imprinted with athleticism. Ours is the great non-love story of my life.

On Hooking – Up:

Can’t we have a universal understanding of the term, once and for all? From now on, let’s all agree that hooking up = sex. Everything else is “made out.” And if you’re older than twenty-eight, then just kissing someone doesn’t count for crap and is not even worth mentioning. Unless you’re Mormon, in which case you’re going to hell. If Europe could figure out a way to do the euro, I feel confident we can do this.

On Irish Exits:

An “Irish exit” is when you leave a party without telling anyone (and presumably it is because you are too drunk to form words). A “French exit” is when you leave a party early without saying good-bye to anyone or paying your share of the bill and maybe you are also drunk.

The reason I pull Irish exits is not because I think I’m too busy and cool to be bothered with pleasantries.  I think it’s actually the more polite thing to do, because I’m not coercing party goers into some big farewell moment with me. Then other people feel like they have to stop what they’re doing and hug me, too. It’s time-wasting dominoes.

Irish exits are supposed to be subtle, a way to leave without creating a disruption, and yes, on occasion, a way to perhaps escape notice for epic drunkenness. (Also read this.)

On a More Serious Note:

As my mom has said, when one person is unhappy, it usually means two people are unhappy but that one has not come to terms with it yet.

One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about.

Writing, at its heart, is a solitary pursuit, designed to make people depressoids, drug addicts, misanthropes, and antisocial weirdos. 

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

The Making of a Royal Romance by Katie Nicholl

I have a secret, , long-standing secret that I've never told anyone, but if you know me well, this wont be news to you! Its not that I'm ashamed of it, I'm just very sensitive to criticism, especially from people I don't particularly know or care about! Story of my life!! But this blog is my space and if I cant be true to myself here, then where else? So without further ado, presenting to you `le secrète`:

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I'm fascinated by the lives of CELEBRITIES. Yes, its true!All of the glamor, drama & all things related enthrall me. In fact, People is among the first websites I open every morning!!!

And IMHO,  looking beyond the regular celebs like movie stars, musicians & such are the Royals, the ultimate celebrities, you know, like actual royalty!

 

So, this book was an obvious pick for me (The Diana Chronicles has been on my wishlist for a long long time). It was not that great, though not as much drama as I expected.

Most of the book is focused on both the princes as boys and their years in school.
I found the book to be too sympathetic to the royal family. Like the poor children had no privacy, divorced parents, etc. I agree these are valid issues, but when you look at the bigger picture, all these things look so silly. Like how much does privacy matter when you don't have a house to call your own! I know it sounds harsh, but I'm just sharing some of the thoughts I had while reading the book.

However I was happy to learn about all the charities being supported by them.

There's not much of a love story here, which was the main reason I picked up the book. So all in all, a disappointment, though I shouldn't have expected much in the first place!