ABA Journal The digital English academy
Welcome, book worm!
At the ABA Book Club, each month we review and recommend a great book for you to practice reading in English.
Today, the ABA Book Club will be reviewing comedian Tina Fey’s book Bossypants. It is, as you would expect from a comedian, very funny. Also, insightful and full of lessons learnt.
Tina Fey is an American actress, comedian, writer and producer. She has received many, many awards, including seven Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards.
| Reading Level | Advanced |
| Genre | Memoir |
| Length (pages) | 272 |
| Original Date of Publishing | 2013 |
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Bossypants is short, messy, and impossibly funny (an apt description of the comedian herself). From her humble roots growing up in Pennsylvania to her days doing amateur improv in Chicago to her early sketches for TV, Fey gives us a fascinating glimpse behind the curtain of modern comedy with equal doses of wit, candor, and self-deprecation.
But the chaos of Fey’s life is best detailed when she’s dividing her efforts equally between rehearsing her Sarah Palin impression, and planning her daughter’s Peter Pan-themed birthday.
Here is an excerpt from Tina Fey’s Bossypants:
“Don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions; go over, under, through, and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it.”
“My ability to turn good news into anxiety is rivaled only by my ability to turn anxiety into chin acne.”
A great book to make you laugh and think.
Vocabulary
Insightful – having or showing a very clear understanding of something : having or showing insight.
Apt – likely to do something : having a tendency to do something.
Humble – not proud : not thinking of yourself as better than other people.
Amateur – a person who does something (such as a sport or hobby) for pleasure and not as a job.
Improv – the act of performing without preparation : the act of improvising.
Sketches – a quick, rough drawing that shows the main features of an object or scene.
Glimpse – to look at or see (something or someone) for a very short time.
Doses – an amount of something that a person experiences.
Wit – an ability to say or write things that are clever and usually funny.
Candor – the quality of being open, sincere, and honest.
Self-depreciation – meant to make yourself or the things you do seem unimportant.
Rehearshing – to prepare for a public performance of a play, a piece of music, etc., by practicing the performance.
Rivaled – to be as good or almost as good as (someone or something).
Acne – a condition in which the skin on a person’s face, neck, etc., has many small, swollen spots (called pimples).
Bossypants Book
To read more reviews and find out where to buy this book, if you think you’d enjoy reading it, visit Goodreads.
I enjoy a good memoir. It seems there’s always something good to learn from other people’s life experiences. And while I’m not a huge Tina Fey fan, I enjoyed her as Sarah Palin on SNL and occasionally watch 30 Rock. So after reading a review of the book, and being without anything to read at the moment, I took a chance and bought Bossypants, and I’m glad I did.
We’re glad you liked it 🙂