Bossypants by Tina Fey

Amazon Synopsis: 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.

Before 30 Rock, Mean Girls and '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.

This is the first auto-biography that I have read. As a huge fan of Tina Fey, I figured this was a good place to start. Plus I didn't have to pay for it as it was another recommendation from my brother, which has been sitting on my shelf for the good part of a year.

Something that I was looking forward to was the reference to means Girls and how that was made... that didn't happen. I think there was a single reference into it as Fey mentioned what book it was based on. Considering the huge success of the film, this was a huge surprise. A lot of my friends have Mean Girls as their favourite film and though I do not, I do enjoy watching it a couple times a year so I would have like some background information about this.

As a UK citizen, I can say with complete honesty, I did not get the majority of the jokes told in this book. There were references to things that I have never seen or heard of, which meant that I was not getting Fey's witty comments about them. Did not mean I did not see where they where, I just did not understand the reference and I did not have the energy or investment to look it up.

It didn't help that  I got lost in the timeline a little bit. This was not really a consecutive narrative so I got lost about half way through. I will admit I don't take in dates well (real good history student here) so it may just be my stupidity.

Large amounts of the book was about Fey's time as Saturday Night Live. I do not like this show. It is not aired in the UK but all clips I have seen online (and I have seen a lot) make me physically cringe so I found all of Fey's anecdotes about sketch's a bit dull. Her stories about the back stage workings for a woman were laugh out loud funny so I hope that makes it up to any SNL fans reading this. When reading about 30 Rock, I would sit and read for ages. Primarily because I love the show and its cast. 

Overall, I wish I had got it on audio book and listened to it in the car. Then I would have Fey's voice to bring the story to life.

Rating: 3.2/5