Review: Bossypants by Tina Fey

Let's get this out of the way, once and for all: Who is Tina Fey?

Saturday Night Live's first ever female head writer. Sarah Palin impersonator. Producer, actor and head writer of 30 Rock. Improv machine. Comic genius. Coined the words "blorft" and "bossypants". This last, along with her perpetually hunched shoulders, are the reasons she has been hailed the 'sex symbol for the intellectual man'. She is also the woman to be held guilty for every time a guy finds out that his straight girlfriend unashamedly has a crush on her.

Also, just for the record, she signed a $5 million contract to write this book, while winning Emmy's, cutting her daughter's fingernails and spoofing Palin.

If you judge a book by how fast you finish it and its 'unputdownability' (how appropriately Fey-ish of me), this is scream-off-your-rooftops-i-wish-this-book-wasn't-just-275-pages good. It's hugely funny, before you even open the book. The spoofy cover is bound to have your simple father innocently inquiring if it's a book about a lady going through a  gender change operation. My dad did, anyway. Advance praise for the book on the back cover includes one by a guy who eats books saying, 'Totally delicious'. :D

Structured like a memoir but more like a collection of funny life experiences, Fey talks about everything from bewilderment with her first period (it wasn't blue fluid like they showed in advertisements), to her journey towards becoming the most influential funny woman alive. It's characteristically peppered with punchlines such as...

• On being asked by a photographer what kind of music to play at the shoot- Just murmur "Hip Hop" or make up the name of a hipster sounding band and then act superior when they've never heard of it. "Do you guys have any Asphalt of Pinking? [disappointed] Really? [shrug] Whatever you want, then."

Basically she makes people who think that women aren't funny (read: Christopher Hitchens) feel stupid. Her kick-ass attitude and feminist zeal light up the book even in parts that seem slightly oddly-placed and irrelevant. She takes a stab at misogyny and clears the air about gender politics with equal elan.
But  the stories conceal more than they reveal. She brings up her scar "but I only bring it up to explain why I'm not going to talk about it." It's a system of deflection and self-defense, that allows her to have the last laugh, and lets us join in as well. 


She is completely transparent and extraordinarily funny on the subjects of body image and motherhood. 
The beauty and ugliness of Photoshop, and the grudging acceptance reality that it's here to stay. 
The pain of breastfeeding, and realising the inappropriateness of watching the sexy men of Entourage talking about sex while she's at it. 
The impossible standards of beauty women are expected to conform to, and that Kim Kardashian has been 'made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.'

The thing that I loved most about the book aren't so much the crazy punchlines. It is that she did not attempt to deconstruct her own success and style of humor, like many expected from this book. Rather, her wit and comic timing is on full display in the pages of this book. Cute anecdotes prove she is hard-working and overworked. Even Oprah thinks so. A chapter that is a tribute to her father Don Fey displays her love for family and knowledge of all things important. Talking about her mentor and boss Lorne Michaels, it is clear that she bossypants her way around by example. 


Read it. :)

College Grades Are Of No Use. *sigh*

Proof: It is a fallacy because you start with a normal distribution in the first year, and because the failing students are removed from the tail, the shape of the distribution in the second year isn’t normal anymore. In particular the variance is reduced. Using a normal distribution to score tests year after year artificially increases the variance by multiplying what is essentially noise. This mechanism ensures that the final rankings at the end of college are essentially meaningless.


I found this statement in a comment on THIS article. 


The question is:
What is the point of my 3.7 GPA in my last trimester now? :(

Untangling The Web # 3: The Best 100 Opening Lines From Books / Life / Stylist Magazine

The Best 100 Opening Lines From Books / Life / Stylist Magazine

It's a brilliant compilation of the best first lines from much loved books. :)

Definitely check this out!

And lament the fact that Eat Pray Love is on the list.

And Rebecca is not.

Confessions of a Bibliophile

I try and try to accurately recollect it, but I can't. I can venture a guess and probably hit the mark, but that won't be the same as truly knowing.
I want to know what is the first book I ever read.
I'm assuming it was one of those cute little picture books with Cinderella and Peter Pan. But again, I'm not sure.

I was thinking about this when I was up till 3 reading last night. (I was re-re-reading 1984, if you must know.) My sister still finds it incredulous that I read for fun, and that I don't have a perpetual book report assignment! The fact that I can stay up all night reading novels of my interest, but have trouble keeping my eyes open by twelve a.m. the night before my board exam troubles her. It is now common for my father to get up in the middle of the night for water, find my reading light on and me curled up under my blanket with a book.

A large part of me is defined by my love for books, and consequently, for the written word. What started off as being mesmerized by fairy tales and using the word "famished" instead of hungry at age 5, has now turned into something I cannot even sleep without.

There is one lady I would like to blame for this.
Her name is Enid Blyton.
I devoured every single book she served, and every chapter of my childhood has the indelible imprint of a Blyton book. From my innocent little Noddy days to naughty prankster Amelia Jane, from the adventurous Famous Five series to the Oh-I'm-a--grown-up-girl Mallory Towers books.
Although there is no retirement age for Enid Blyton, I switched loyalties by the end of 5th grade to the dark, gloomy, mysterious world of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. Yes, I admit to falling head over heels in love with Sherlock Holmes. And I always found comfort in grandmotherly Miss Marple to solve a small-town murder. Soon enough, I entered the eccentric little world of Roald Dahl and the Big Friendly Giant became my best friend. :)
Then, in 7th grade, my English teacher goaded me to read classics. When I first placed hands on the paperback Jane Eyre, I didn't know what to think. For one thing, it was fat and bulky! And the vocabulary was beyond my comprehension! I had no clue what the words conventionality, self-righteousness, clamored and agonized meant. I sat with a dictionary, underlined words and slowly, I learned.
I discovered that I loved words sometime around then. And it is a discovery that has shaped a huge portion of my 17 years on this lonely planet.

I can write about discovering Sidney Sheldon, Jeffrey Archer, John Grisham, Lee Child, James Patterson and the like. But you get the drift. I really started enjoying books. I used to love going to the school library and picking out these books.

But now, with college and work, I find myself unable to devote as much time to my books. When I return home at 9 p.m., I am too tired to divert my energies towards a McCarthy or Murakami. Numbing televised entertainment is all I can take for an hour before I crash my head into my pillow.

However, I eagerly wait for Friday and Saturday nights for a marathon book read, so I can wake up leisurely over the weekend. On those days, the thrill of written words takes over. I am magically transported to make-believe worlds where I can imagine characters and situations that are NOT conjured by television networks. I trust literature to challenge my perceptions and enrich my intellect. Time flies when I set my mind and eyes on some good writing, and I forget all about an unfinished episode. The pleasant smell of old books as I stand a few inches from my bookshelf, the yellowing old pages of a Jeffrey Archer, the comforting weight of a book in my hands- it all reminds me why reading is the most satisfying and compelling experience.

I think I'll read a Famous Five sometime soon. I just need my Blyton shot. :)

The Lowest Animal

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."

You know how almost every examination that tests your grasp over the English language has this question after the most mundane "Unseen Comprehension" passage- "Write a suitable title for this passage."
Well, the aforementioned Douglas Adams quote seems a fitting opening for one of the most sarcastically and intelligently essays I've read. Wave hello to "The Lowest Animal" by Mark Twain.

Yes, I admit Huck Finn was one of my favourite fictional characters growing up, (What's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? is still as endearing today as it was when I first read it!) but it was after reading this essay and realizing that a book like Letters to The Earth existed, that I finally accord Twain the status of a literary genius!
(Hint, my 18th birthday is coming up in 6 months. :D)


Although this essay has been written very obviously as a satire and we can only guess if these are the thoughts genuinely echoed by the author, it is sharp, crisp and surprisingly well-supported in logic and argument. He uses rhetoric and wit to prove that man, rather than ascending from animals like Darwin proposed, actually descended from animals.

He goes on to write, and substantiate with examples, how man is consciously loose in morals, is territorial, experiences the desire to seek revenge and subsequently is the only animal that practices cruelty and engage in organized crime and mutilation. Twain's remark on the hypocrisy of patriotism is hilarious in particular.

"He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy ex­pense to grab slices of other peoples countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his.  And in the intervals between cam­paigns, he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man, with his mouth."

What separates this essay from so many others is that his arguments, no matter how flimsy they seem at the outset, are backed by several studies and social experiments. This isn't sitcom-inspired satire, this is intelligent sarcastic writing.

My opinion? No, I don't think man is the lowest animal.
By their very DNA structure and the complexity of their neuron functions, man should be the greatest. It is its vices that hold it back from being superior, virtue-wise.
But then again, virtues are subjective, aren't they?

Humans and animals make bad judgment calls alike.
Otherwise why would that fly come and sit on my hand right now, and expect not to be killed? :P

The Way to my heart.

No, it's not food. Or apple juice. Or music. Or a glass of chilled Coke. Or even dark chocolate.
The way to my heart is books.

Someone I know did this a while ago, and it worked really well for her, so I will shamelessly do the same.
I will scream from rooftops, through my blogposts, status updates etc., that my birthday is on 6th January.
Yes, yes. My 18th birthday.
And, I will make a big huge enormous mammoth gigantic deal about it, just because I want a lot of books!!!

1.Beyond Good and Evil- Friedrich Nietzsche
2.Enduring Love-Ian Mcewan
3.The Comfort of Strangers-Ian Mcewan
4.Black Dogs-Ian Mcewan
5.Vanishing Point- David Markson
6.Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
7.The Wind-up bird Chronicle- Haruki Murakami
8.Summertime-J.M.Coetzee
9.Youth-J.M.Coetzee
10.Leviathan-Paul Auster
11.The Metamorphosis and Other Stories-Franz Kafka  (Got it!)
12.Life of Pi-Yann Martel
13.The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
14.The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams.
15. The World According to Garp – John Irving
16. Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
17.The Silence of the Lambs-Thomas Harris.
18.Wall and Piece- Bansky.
19.Death is not an option:Stories-Suzanne Rivecca
20. Invisible-Paul Aster
21.The New York Trilogy-Paul Aster
22.Jonathon Livingston Seagull-Richard Bach
23.On Beauty-Zadie Smith
24.The End of Innocence-Moni Mohsin
25. Disgrace- J.M.Coetzee

These are the ones off the top of my head.
So, if anyone's listening, please buy at least one of these for me!! :) :)

Quote-Hanger

 I never seem to tire of quotes, well written passages, notes, comments, wordplay and the like. Certain times, these words expose the vulnerability of humanity, their power, their love and their faith.And these are the words that I love the most.

Carpe diem! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think. Horace(Ancient Roman poet :65 BC-8BC)

Don't tell me God works in mysterious ways. There's nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. That's the kind of god you people talk about - a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena such as phlegm and tooth decay is His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatalogical mind of his when he robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements?
- Yossarian, in Catch 22.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.
Bono
I write to understand as much as to be understood.
Elie Wiesel

Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.
Yossarian, in Catch 22.




We're the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives.
- Brad Pitt as 'Tyler Durden', Fight Club



If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person? - The Narrator, Fight Club
                        (^^Damn, I love that movie!)

Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.
Friedrich Nietzsche  
 

Duty is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less.
- Robert E. Lee

All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?
Friedrich Nietzsche


Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
- William Butler Yeats, 1899
Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.
Maya Angelou

Vampires, don't kill me.

 

"The phone rang and I sprinted downstairs to get it. There was only one voice I wanted to hear; anything else would be a disappointment. But I knew that if he wanted to talk to me, he’d probably just materialize in my room."
Bella Swan, Twilight, Chapter 17, p.354

Wow, that IS profound. :/
To think that Ian McEvan and Haruki Murakami coexist in the same world as these big hair, white faced vampires!

Night : Book Review

I'll be honest.
'Night' was a hard book for me to read. The language was simple, almost too simple which made it all the more compelling. The writing was intense, stark, terrifying, moving.

"That night the soup tasted of corpses."  Eliezer's comment after he has witnessed the agonizing death of the child who was hanged. 

In fact, there were times when I questioned the veracity of the statements made, but I knew they were seemingly impossible but true facts. Facts that cannot, should not be questioned.
The Holocaust had happened. Less than a hundred years ago. People had been killed, had suffered unmentionable atrocities. By the end of the Nazi regime, 2 out of every 3 European Jews had been tortured and killed.
"Night" is the story of Elie Wiesel, a man who survived.

"Men to the left! Women to the right! 
Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight short, simple words. Yet that was the moment when I parted from my mother."

It is the true story of a 15 year old who lost his parents and sister in the concentration camps, who lost the immense faith he held in God, who turned on his own family following his inherent instinct to survive himself. It is a story of remembering the travesties of that dark time, that demands that the reader never succumb to conveniently forgetting what civilised humans are capable of, how much they can make others suffer, how much pain they can choose not to see.

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. 
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.
Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never."

These are probably the most powerful and cogent words in 20th century literature.
The sheer magnitude of the importance of this slim volume can't be limited to words. But this is what I came away with after reading those words.
    That I'm still in a state of disbelief that people could be brainwashed to such a level, in the 20th century. Even more disturbing, the fact that the civilised world calmly looked on as it happened.
   That the world didn't learn enough lessons in humanity, because the genocide in Rwanda, bloody conflict in  Sudan and global terrorism is still reality.
   That I'm amazed at the impossible courage of people who survive the harshest of human crimes.

This book is definitely not a light read. I'm sure no one really enjoys reading about unspeakable violence and inhumanity on a Saturday night, unless of course, you're a sadist of the worst kind.

However, this is a book that must be read.
To keep the memory alive, and to learn that surviving the darkest phases of life requires proactive work and a little more than just candle-lit hope.

The Book Thief : Review.

My first thought after reading a good book, is automatically, why didn't I come up with that first? And then, I begin to contemplate on how the idea struck the author. Where was he? What was he doing?
And these questions definitely did spring to mind, once I turned the last page, closed the book, and wiped the tears from my eyes.

I read this book, during my Board examinations. I borrowed it from a second-hand library nearby, and well, to be honest, I never gave it back!

This book, by Australian author Markus Zusak, has a concept that I'm sure could have had much more of an impact, had it been a little more certain of its own strength. It leans towards the youthful sensibilities of the people, but only to the effect of portraying the inherent innocence of the protagonist. Leisel Meminger, a little child, with a love for words and flair for language, trapped in a world of indiscriminate bloodshed and merciless Nazi atrocities.Obviously, she is the Book Thief here. She steals books, for a reason revealed early on in the story. To make sense of the death of her little brother.

I'd not like to give away the plot, but this I just have to tell you.
The story-teller here, or the narrator, is Death. Yes, death, the time heralded enemy, witnessing crimes from the darkest zones of man, who is empathetic towards himself, and at times, is scared of the power of mankind himself. However, he presents a light-hearted, self-deprecating picture of a grim concept and a horrible time.

The characters of her best friend Rudy and her parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann, are meticulously crafted, compelling and they stay with you long after you've finished reading. You root for them all, laugh at their joys and get teary-eyed at their disappointments. An innocent, as well as horrifying view, of the Holocaust.

Could the author have been a little less metaphorical, and more effectively to the point? Sure.
For example-
"For the book thief, everything was going nicely," Death observes, as the extermination camps flourish in the summer of 1942. "For me, the sky was the color of Jews." Wordy, sure. But it does leave a stark,vivid image in your mind.

But this story in itself, and the way Zusak marvelously toes the line of quiet horror and innocent joy and wraps it into this delightful endearing concoction, is definitely original and worth a read.
In fact, I'd go as far as to say that it is the contemporary "The Diary of Anne Frank".
I give it a 4 out of 5.

"I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right."

                   -The last line written by Liesel Meminger in "The Book Thief."