The chapter titles-e.g., “The Windy City, Full of Meat,” “Peeing in Jars with Boys” and “There’s a Drunk Midget in My House”-provide hints at the author’s tone, but Fey is such a fluid writer, with her impeccable sense of comic timing extending to the printed page, that near-constant jokes and frequent sidebars won’t keep readers from breezing through the book with little trouble, laughing most of the way. In typical self-deprecating style, the author traces her awkward childhood and adolescence, rise within the improv ranks of Second City and career on the sets of SNL and 30 Rock. Perhaps best known to mass audiences for her writing and performances on Saturday Night Live, Fey’s most inventive work is likely her writing for the critically acclaimed TV show 30 Rock, in which she stars alongside Alec Baldwin and fellow SNL alum Tracy Morgan. 'When Oprah Winfrey is suggesting you may have overextended yourself, you need to examine your (expletive) life,' she writes.One of the world’s cleverest comedy writers debuts with a frequently hilarious memoir. Saturday had Oprah Winfrey coming in to shoot her scenes in a '30 Rock' during the day and Fey doing her first Palin imitation on 'SNL' that night. There's one weekend where her daughter's 3rd birthday party was on Sunday.

In the book's series of set pieces - mini-essays, mostly - Fey paints a tale of a harried, working-mom existence, albeit with some special work. She helped overcome institutional sexism at The Second City, she says, where she was part of the 'first gender-equal cast' (three women and men, rather than the standard two and four), and where a director once told her audiences 'didn't want to see a sketch with two women.'ĭescribing how she and Amy Poehler killed as Palin and Hillary Clinton, she brings up the director again (and, again, not by name), and tells him to 'go (defecate) in his hat.'

Where she doesn't hide her passion is in discussing comedy itself, and especially the place of women therein. An Oscar-y Spielberg movie where I play a mean German with a scar? Yes.' 'I'm not interested in acting out a TV movie with you where you befriend a girl with a scar. 'To these folks, let me be clear,' she writes. But there's an edge to her explanation, as well, that suggests there's more to this story: The scar, she says, served as a litmus test for people she would meet, especially the ones who insisted on talking about it because ''it's so beautiful.''

Tina fey book