Bossypants (audiobook) by Tina Fey, read by the author

I needed a change in work-time listening, so I decided to go back to audiobooks for a while. This one seemed like it would be fun.

In Bossypants, Tina Fey talks about her childhood, her father, comedy, feminism, Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock, parenting, and more. I didn't always follow the shifts between topics very well, and some things that I'm guessing were sidebars and section breaks in the original book were a bit odd when read aloud. Even so, I'm glad I listened to it rather than read it. I was never a big viewer of SNL, and I've never seen 30 Rock, so I mostly know Fey for her Sarah Palin impersonations. When she rattled off lists of various people's best SNL sketches, I rarely had any idea what she was talking about. The details about 30 Rock meant even less to me, but Fey's narration kept it from being boring.

While some parts seemed a bit strange in an audiobook format, others were very good. For example, disc 1 ended with Fey directly addressing listeners, asking them to take a break for an hour and try to picture the guy she'd just mentioned, who was supposed to have looked like a “handsome Robert Wuhl.” Later in the audiobook, Fey cut to an actual audio clip of her first impersonation of Sarah Palin. She also frequently mentioned image files that were supposed to have been part of the audiobook (I didn't go looking for those, so I can only comment on the audio aspects of the book).

That's pretty much it, I guess. Bossypants made for a nice few hours of listening. Some parts were more humorous than others, and there was some nice behind-the-scenes info (off the top of my head, I'd say the bit about Sarah Palin's appearance on SNL was my favorite). I also enjoyed her comments about women in the workforce and in the media.