In Which I Review Bossypants.

Those who know me will not be surprised to learn that I have had this book on pre-order since February 1. And I'm pretty sure that I don't need to delve into my Liz Lemon/Tina Fey worship in this post, but let's just say that if I reflect even a little bit of her humor, cleverness and (lack of) grace in my every day life, I am one happy camper.

Regular readers will also know of my extreme "what-am-I-reading-this-week?" ADD, and those who know me personally will know that my brain is about to explode with everything going on in my life.

So it should really come as no surprise that when Bossypants was delivered to the house yesterday, I dove in.

And then I finished it today.

This is slightly misleading.  It's not exactly a long book (275 pages), and it goes down more easily than a bowl of Baby Brother Jones' Cookies and Cream Ice Cream.  There were times I was laughing out loud. There were times I was nodding righteously.  There was always a smile on my face.

Reviews have been positive but mixed, ranging from those who wish Fey had been more explicit and personal, to those who feel that she does an admirable job of being expressive without compromising her own privacy.

I fall squarely into the latter camp.  I think Tina Fey does a marvelous job of (non-linearly) bringing us closer to her crazy funhouse life adventures, but not too close.  For example, I think hearing the woman I worship gush about her love for her husband would have been jarring and weird.  Hearing about their near-death honeymoon experience (no seriously, they almost died) was just about right.

While she can be very self-deprecating (see: just about every photo of her in the book), she's also not afraid to point out the things that she's done that she's proud of: closing the gender gap on SNL (over the span of her SNL career, she went from Chris Kattan being selected to portray Rocky's Adrian over Cheri Oteri, to Amy Poehler, at nine months pregnant, rapping as Sarah Palin); creating a show that is (at least critically) hugely successful (and employs 200 people); being a working mom who can shoot with Oprah and do SNL on a Saturday, and be at home (work-free) on Sunday for her daughter's birthday.

She also has a lot of opinons about women in the workplace.  I think this is mostly because she is always asked what it's like to be such a glass-ceiling-breaker.  But while her opinions about sexism are definite and strong (On critics of her Sarah Palin impression: "No one ever said it was 'mean' when Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford falling down all the time... I am not mean and Mrs. Palin is not fragile.  To imply otherwise is a disservice to us both."  On the ten million-person audience who watched her and Amy Poehler play Sarah Palin and Katie Couric: "so I guess that Second City director who said the audience 'didn't want to see a sketch with two women' can go eat shit in his hat."), she speaks as a woman who has battled and who has seen the common sense and reason that sexism is dumb, but she does not speak as a woman on a crusade.  In my opinion, this lends her voice more power.

Is this a stellar book?  No.  But it is very good, and it is very much worth reading.  You will laugh.  You will not cry (except maybe from the laughing).  You will think.

And these days, that's really all you can ask for.