I recently joined Audible.com, the website where audiobooks go to breed and make little audiobook babies; there are more selections than there are stars in the sky. I’ve had the app on my iPhone for a while now, but I’ve mostly used it to deplete my PayPal account by buying everything Gervais. I’ve recently run out of Ricky Gervais material to listen to, and needed something new. Something else to make me laugh.
As I was browsing the offerings, I saw the new book by Tina Fey, Bossypants. I read some of the reviews on the Audible site and after several had said, “Don’t drive while listening to this, it’s so funny you’ll crash/pee your pants/spew milk out of your nose”, I said to myself I have to have that book. So I bought it and began the download.
And I listened to it. But I didn’t laugh. Not even once, I don’t think. OK, maybe once. But I wasn’t peeing my pants or spewing milk out of my nose, and I certainly wasn’t crashing into any concrete barriers, as promised. The book was read by Tina Fey herself, which I thought would be a plus, since half the time with an audio book you get someone with a snooty British accent you can barely understand. I thought her reading the book would be as if she were sitting in the passenger seat next to me, telling the story herself. It wasn’t. It was just eh.
She talked a lot about growing up, her experience with the Second City comedy troupe, how she got to Saturday Night Live, her success with 30 Rock; much of it about her struggle as a women not only in the comedy business, but in a position of power, such as being an Executive Producer. How the business is still very much a boys club, etc. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, great. She made it. But she didn’t make it funny. And that’s what I was expecting.
The best nugget I got from the book was where she was talking about her problems in the business, in particular, how men don’t think women are funny. She felt that if those people weren’t her boss, she really didn’t care what they had to say. Her “unsolicited advice” to women in the workplace was that if that person wasn’t between what you and what you wanted to do, ignore it and move on. If they were in your way, tackle the problem like they did on Sesame Street by going over, under and through. Basically, she boiled it down to “Do your thing. Don’t care if they like it.”
Great. I just spent twenty dollars to hear advice on something I’d been doing my entire life. I reluctantly finished listening to the book knowing it wasn’t going to get any better, but since I paid for it, I endured. It would pass the time and I needed something to keep my mind occupied as I traversed the plains. My final thought? Don’t buy the audiobook. I wouldn’t even buy the book in print, but that’s up to you. Your “voice” in your head might make the reading more exciting than her reading it did for me.
So there you have my two cents. Now if you want to read a real review, check out what the New York Times had to say.
I’ve gone a little crazy with the audiobooks lately and have more to tell you about. Look for that post tomorrow!
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