Bossypants

Excerpted from a New York Times book review: "Tina Fey is an ugly, pear-shaped, bitchy, overrated troll." Somebody once wrote that on a mean-spirited Web site, whence it could have vanished into oblivion. But Ms. Fey liked the remark too much to let it go. So she has used it (sans "bitchy") as one of the blurbs on the back of "Bossypants," her dagger-sharp, extremely funny new book for which even the blurbs are clever. ("Totally worth it." - Trees.) She also includes it in the book's "Dear Internet" chapter, which she treats as a happy occasion to eviscerate a few well-chosen haters. "Bossypants" isn't a memoir. It's a spiky blend of humor, introspection, critical thinking and Nora Ephron-isms for a new generation. But it chronologically follows Ms. Fey through an awkward girlhood spent in Upper Darby, Pa., teenage years with a coterie of gay friends and a fish-out-of-water stint at the University of Virginia. "What 19-year-old Virginia boy doesn't want a wide-hipped, sarcastic Greek girl with short hair that's permed on top?" asks Ms. Fey, who calls herself Greek when she isn't calling herself German. "What's that you say? None of them want that? You are correct. So I spent four years attempting to charm the uninterested." For all Ms. Fey's efforts to depict herself as "a little tiny person with nothing to worry about running in circles, worried out of her mind," she comes off as a strongly opinionated dynamo with a comedic voice that is totally her own.