Review: Bossypants by Tina Fey

Genre: Non-Fiction
Publication: 04/05/2011 by Reagan Arthur Books
Pages: 277 Pages
Source: Overdrive Audiobook
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars
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Goodreads 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.

My Thoughts
Why haven't I read this sooner? I listened to this on a road trip and I laughed my butt off the whole way. I watched Tina Fey when she was on SNL and now in whatever else she does. She is hilarious and relatable. I laughed out loud so many times. Some of my favourite parts were when she was talking about being Sarah Palin on SNL. I remember those sketches so well it was awesome to hear some of the behind the scenes action.

Tina has some good insights into the world, and I can really relate to what she says. I love listening to hilarious book from other strong women. Being a comedian and being a women can be hard and Tina is really inspiring. If you like memoirs, especially funny ones, check this one out. It's awesome and I will always highly recommend.

Review: Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling

Genre: Memoir
Publication: 09/15/2015 by Crown Archetype
Pages: 228 Pages
Source: Overdrive Audiobook
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars
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Goodreads Summary:
n Why Not Me?, Kaling shares her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life, whether it’s falling in love at work, seeking new friendships in lonely places, attempting to be the first person in history to lose weight without any behavior modification whatsoever, or most important, believing that you have a place in Hollywood when you’re constantly reminded that no one looks like you.

In “How to Look Spectacular: A Starlet’s Confessions,” Kaling gives her tongue-in-cheek secrets for surefire on-camera beauty, (“Your natural hair color may be appropriate for your skin tone, but this isn’t the land of appropriate–this is Hollywood, baby. Out here, a dark-skinned woman’s traditional hair color is honey blonde.”) “Player” tells the story of Kaling being seduced and dumped by a female friend in L.A. (“I had been replaced by a younger model. And now they had matching bangs.”) In “Unlikely Leading Lady,” she muses on America’s fixation with the weight of actresses, (“Most women we see onscreen are either so thin that they’re walking clavicles or so huge that their only scenes involve them breaking furniture.”) And in “Soup Snakes,” Kaling spills some secrets on her relationship with her ex-boyfriend and close friend, B.J. Novak (“I will freely admit: my relationship with B.J. Novak is weird as hell.”)

Mindy turns the anxieties, the glamour, and the celebrations of her second coming-of-age into a laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays that anyone who’s ever been at a turning point in their life or career can relate to. And those who’ve never been at a turning point can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper.

My Thoughts: 
I love Mindy Kaling and her books are always really fun to listen to. I always listen to her books on audiobook because hearing her stories in her voice makes the reading experience 100 times better. I really connect with Mindy and I love her outlook on the world. She freely admits she isn't perfect which is something that's awesome for other girls to see. Just because you are on TV doesn't make you perfect by any means and Mindy definitely tells it like it is. 

One thing about this book is that it is very similar to her first book "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?". They could easily have been the same book and I wouldn't have known the difference. However, I don't mind listening to more Mindy. The stories in this book are very typical of a comedy writers book. It's similar to Amy Poehler's and Tina Fey's, which is probably because they are all female comedy writers/actors. 

Why Not Me? is certainly a funny book and if your a Mindy Kaling fan, I suggest you check this one out. I really enjoyed listening to it and found myself giggling in public again. 2 thumbs up. 

Review: Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari

Genre: Non-fiction
Publication: 06/15/2015 by Penguin Press
Pages: 277 Pages
Source: Library Audiobook
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
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Goodreads Summary
At some point, every one of us embarks on a journey to find love. We meet people, date, get into and out of relationships, all with the hope of finding someone with whom we share a deep connection. This seems standard now, but it’s wildly different from what people did even just decades ago. Single people today have more romantic options than at any point in human history. With technology, our abilities to connect with and sort through these options are staggering. So why are so many people frustrated?

Some of our problems are unique to our time. “Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?” “Should I go out with this girl even though she listed Combos as one of her favorite snack foods? Combos?!” “My girlfriend just got a message from some dude named Nathan. Who’s Nathan? Did he just send her a photo of his penis? Should I check just to be sure?” 

But the transformation of our romantic lives can’t be explained by technology alone. In a short period of time, the whole culture of finding love has changed dramatically. A few decades ago, people would find a decent person who lived in their neighborhood. Their families would meet and, after deciding neither party seemed like a murderer, they would get married and soon have a kid, all by the time they were twenty-four. Today, people marry later than ever and spend years of their lives on a quest to find the perfect person, a soul mate.

My Thoughts:
I am a Parks and Recreation fan so naturally I needed to pick up this book. I may be biased but I loved it. I listened to it on audio which is the only way that I read memoirs. I absolutely love when someone reads me their own story, especially when they are hilarious like Aziz. 

I am really interested in relationships and I loved the academic approach to this book. In addition, Aziz's insights on relationships were on point and hilarious. I am apart of the generation where dating seems to have changed so drastically. However, I've missed the online dating obsession because I've been in a relationship since Tinder has been popular. My favourite part of the book was that it was still hopeful about this generations take on love. Aziz could have easily taken the popular opinion and have been very cynical about relationships. He addresses the fact that there are cons in our quest for love but there were also cons in relationships in the past. 

I honestly loved this book and if you are interested in relationships I highly recommend. It doesn't matter if your single, dating or married I think there is something for everyone. Modern Romance gives hope that technology isn't the end of romance and it can actually help to bring us together. 

Review: Paddle Your Own Canoe - Nick Offerman

Genre: Memoire, Humour, Nonfiction
Publication: 10/01/2013 by Dutton
Pages: 340 Pages
Source: Overdrive Audiobook
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
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Goodreads Summary:
Growing a perfect moustache, grilling red meat, wooing a woman—who better to deliver this tutelage than the always charming, always manly Nick Offerman, best known as Parks and Recreation’s Ron Swanson?  Combining his trademark comic voice and very real expertise in woodworking—he runs his own woodshop—Paddle Your Own Canoe features tales from Offerman’s childhood in small-town Minooka, Illinois—“I grew up literally in the middle of a cornfield”—to his theater days in Chicago, beginnings as a carpenter/actor and the hilarious and magnificent seduction of his now-wife Megan Mullally.   It also offers hard-bitten battle strategies in the arenas of manliness, love, style, religion, woodworking, and outdoor recreation, among many other savory entrees.

A mix of amusing anecdotes, opinionated lessons and rants, sprinkled with offbeat gaiety, Paddle Your Own Canoe will not only tickle readers pink but may also rouse them to put down their smart phones, study a few sycamore leaves, and maybe even hand craft (and paddle) their own canoes.

My Thoughts:
Why haven't I read this book sooner! Nick Offerman is such an amazing human, because he is a real ass human. He doesn't pretend to be anybody but himself and isn't scared to tell you his opinions or life events. I found a lot of what he talked about in the book to be super relatable. 

I honestly have a weird crush on Nick now. He's such a romantic human it's kind of hard not too. He talks about love a lot on this book and I really love, love. I love when people are in love, when they are falling in love and when they do adorable things together. Nick and Megan are too cute together. The part where they travel to Paris made me giggle like a crazy person. Me and My Boyfriend went on a similar trip to Paris & London which made it even better. 

The main reason I listened to this book on audiobook is because I love Parks and Rec. Nick Offerman plays Ron Swanson. There are a lot of parallels to Nick and Ron but Nick isn't Ron. I love hearing about the behind the scenes at Parks and Rec and I openly laughed in public while listening. If you are planning to read this book I highly recommend the audiobook. Nick reads it himself which is the best way to hear anyones memoirs. You also get to hear his hilariously amazing giggle which is awesome.

Conclusion: I am a Nick Offerman fan, so clearly this was always going to be well rated. I recommend to anyone who enjoyed Parks and Rec or just some hilarious mussing about the world.

Review: Columbine by Dave Cullen

Genre: Non-fiction, True Crime 
Publication: 04/06/2009 by Twelve
Pages: 417 Pages 
Source: Library Audiobook
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars
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Goodreads Summary:
On April 20, 1999, two boys left an indelible stamp on the American psyche. Their goal was simple: to blow up their school, Oklahoma-City style, and to leave "a lasting impression on the world." Their bombs failed, but the ensuing shooting defined a new era of school violence-irrevocably branding every subsequent shooting "another Columbine."

Now, in a riveting piece of journalism nearly ten years in the making, comes the story none of us knew. In this revelatory book, Dave Cullen has delivered a profile of teenage killers that goes to the heart of psychopathology. He lays bare the callous brutality of mastermind Eric Harris, and the quavering, suicidal Dylan Klebold, who went to prom three days earlier and obsessed about love in his journal. 

The result is an astonishing account of two good students with lots of friends, who came to stockpile a basement cache of weapons, to record their raging hatred, and to manipulate every adult who got in their way. They left signs everywhere, described by Cullen with a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, thousands of pages of police files, FBI psychologists, and the boy's tapes and diaries, Cullen gives the first complete account of the Columbine tragedy.

My Thoughts: 
I don't know how I am suppose to rate or review this book. It's a difficult thing to do considering the tragedy that this book digs into. I picked this book up because of a recommendation from WhyMermaids' T5W post about Book with Mental Illness. I was interested in seeing what happened at Columbine and how people moved on afterwards. This book did exactly that, it talked about Eric and Dylan's transition into mass murder, it de-bunked many myths associated with the tragedy and it talked about the victims and how everyone began to move on with their lives. 

I am only really marking this book down based on my own enjoyment. I found it very difficult to listen to at times based on the material and I occasionally got lost in the narration. I didn't always know what the narrator was referring too so I was often confused. However, this is a well written book and if you are interested in finding out more about what happened at Columbine this is an excellent one to pick up. It truly is scary how this could have happened anywhere. I went to High School long after this happened, but I knew a lot of the policies that were put in place such as a lock down or evacuation procedures where put into place because of Columbine and other tragedies like it. 

Even though this book covered such a intense and emotional topic, it still ended with hope which I very much appreciated. "Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, when one only remembers to turn on the light" - Albus Dumbledore

Review: Still Foolin' Em by Billy Crystal

Genre: Memoir, Humour
Publication: 10/09/10 by Henry Holt and Co.
Pages: 288 pages
Source: Library Audiobook
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars
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Goodreads Summary:
Billy Crystal is turning 65, and he's not happy about it. With his trademark wit and heart, he outlines the absurdities and challenges that come with growing old, from insomnia to memory loss to leaving dinners with half your meal on your shirt. In humorous chapters like "Buying the Plot" and "Nodding Off," Crystal not only catalogues his physical gripes, but offers a road map to his 77 million fellow baby boomers who are arriving at this milestone age with him. He also looks back at the most powerful and memorable moments of his long and storied life, from entertaining his relatives as a kid in Long Beach, Long Island, his years doing stand-up in the Village, up through his legendary stint at "Saturday Night Live," "When Harry Met Sally," and his long run as host of the Academy Awards. Readers get a front-row seat to his one-day career with the New York Yankees (he was the first player to ever "test positive for Maalox"), his love affair with Sophia Loren, and his enduring friendships with several of his idols, including Mickey Mantle and Muhammad Ali. He lends a light touch to more serious topics like religion ("the aging friends I know have turned to the Holy Trinity: Advil, bourbon, and Prozac"), grandparenting, and, of course, dentistry. As wise and poignant as they are funny, Crystal's reflections are an unforgettable look at an extraordinary life well lived.

My Thoughts: 
I love Billy Crystal. When Harry Met Sally is my all time favourite movie ever so I had to pick up him memoir. I listened to this one on audiobook, which is awesome because Billy Crystal narrates the story which is my absolute favourite way to listen to memoirs. I love hearing the author actually read their story, I feel like you get a fuller picture. 

This book is set up in essay format like a lot of memoirs. Billy talks about different life experiences and gives you some of his life insights. This books was hilarious when it wanted to be and it was endearing when it wanted to be as well. I even teared up a little during certain spots. The only thing about this book that didn't entertain me as much was the parts about Billy being old. Don't get me wrong, they were still funny parts but I'm 22 and at this point in my life I can't really relate. 

My favourite parts of this memoir was the behind the scene stories about The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally. The book pretty much started off with a Princess Bride quote so I was so excited. I love hearing about how these got made and how things came together behind the scenes which is awesome for any serious movie fan.

 Conclusions: If you love Billy Crystal, check this out. Billy is funny and this is an interesting memoir. If you have the opportunity, pick up the audiobook. Have fun storming the castle!

Review: I Hate Myselfie by Shane Dawson

I received a copy of this from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I Hate Myselfie is a collection of 10 essays by the Youtuber Shane Dawson. In this book he explores his childhood as a fat kid, losing weight, his life as a youtuber and just generally being a bit different from the rest of the general population. The first thing I really want to say about this book is that if you love Shane you are going to absolutely love his book. He is very true to himself and how be portrays himself online. However, if you don't like Shane's videos than stay away from his book. I have watched Shane's videos in the past and find them funny. He tends to push the envelop with his humor and his book is no different. 

I want to start by saying I benign read this book over 3 or 4 days. It's super easy to get through because each of the essays are quite short. Everyone has it's own qualities that make it different and special. You can really tell that Shane has a distinct voice which shines in every essay. In addition to the writing, each essay started with art by a young artist. I really loved that addition and want to lurk them all on social media to see more of their art. But back to the story, it was funny and emotional in places. I really appreciated Shane's honest and anybody who has ever felt like they are ugly or different will relate. Sometimes I did feel a bit offended his jokes, specifically the rape jokes. However, I knew what I was getting into when I read this book and I know that's just the kind of humor he does and I was prepared for it. I can see how other people could be highly offended so if you offend easily avoid this book! 

Conclusions: Overall, an awesome collection of essays from a very funny guy. It was hilarious and surprisingly relatable and emotional. However, a draw back that it isn't for everyone and can be offensive to some. Shane has an interesting take on the world and makes you appreciate how other people live. 

Rating: 3.75/5 (Tearing up and laughing at once)