#CBR7 Book 83: "You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost)" by Felicia Day

Page count: 288 pages
Audio book length: 6 hrs 17 mins
Rating: 4.5 stars

I'm trying to recall where I first encountered Felicia Day. I think it may in fact have been on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where she played one of the many potential slayers in season seven. I know I saw her in Dr Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog (true story, on our honey-moon seven years ago, I declined to go out and explore Stockholm with my husband until I had used the hotel wi-fi - which was really rather slow - to download and watch the second episode) before I actually watched and got completely hooked on The Guild.

I've known of and admired Felicia Day for a long time, is what I'm saying. I've been a member of her online book club, Vaginal Fantasy since it started, and one of the highlights of my month is watching her and her co-hosts talk about fantasy and/or sci-fi romance. I've probably watched most of the stuff she's put out on the web, including Co-Optitude, where she plays video games with her brother. So naturally I was going to pre-order this book. I chose to get the audio book, so Felicia herself could read me her memoir.

While I knew that Felicia Day was a good actress in the things I'd seen her in, as well as extremely smart, creative, fond of video games and romance and an internet entrepreneur, I learned so many new things about her from this book. That she and her brother were home-schooled, that she went to college at sixteen and ended up with a double major in violin and mathematics, or that the reason she cut her hair in a pixie cut a while back (which she, naturally, as a woman on the internet got so much hate about) was because stress and other very serious medical issues made her hair fall out in clumps.

I suspect that even if you don't really know who Felicia Day is, you'll enjoy this book. She's very honest and open and recounts stories from her life and her many impressive achievements in a very entertaining way. Being a successful woman in the social media age is not easy, being a successful woman who dares to have an interest in and opinions of video games on the internet has made her the target of a lot of hate and harassment. She's very forthcoming about her anxieties, the two years she was completely addicted to World of Warcraft, her obsessions and what drives her. I found her impressive and admirable before, now I'm very much in awe of her. This is not a funny celebrity autobiography like Bossypants or Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, although there are absolutely bits that made me laugh out loud. The closest comparison I can think of is Jenny Lawson's book, but they're really not all that similar.

This isn't a very long book, I listened to it in less than twenty-four hours. It pretty much made me feel all the feels and I can highly recommend it.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 130: "Yes, Please" by Amy Poehler

Page count: 288 pages
Audio book length: 7 hrs 31 mins
Rating: 5 stars

As far as I can tell, I'm the fifth Cannonballer so far to read and review Amy Poehler's new book Yes, Please. I'm a huge fan of Parks and Recreation and the episode where Ann and Chris leave nearly destroyed me, because Ann and Leslie's friendship in many ways reminds me so much of that between me and my best friend Lydia (who unfortunately lives across the Atlantic in New York City). I've liked Amy Poehler in Mean Girls and on  SNL, and I love her various hosting gigs with her friend Tina Fey, whose celebrity autobiography I read way back in 2011. I think Bossypants is funnier in terms of laugh out loud moments and hysterical anecdotes, but Yes, Please affected me more and seemed more honest somehow.

In a book that's part autobiography, part advice book, and in terms of the audio book that I got, part  humorous banter with celebrity guests (supposedly recorded in the audio booth Amy built herself, the book has audio cameos from Kathleen Turner, Patrick Stewart, Carol Burnett and Amy's parents, plus one whole chapter is read by Seth Meyers), Amy Poehler covers a lot of different things. The book is divided into three parts: Say whatever you want, Do whatever you like and Be whoever you are, which I think illustrates quite nicely what Amy Poehler wants for the lives of pretty much everyone, certainly herself. She's not afraid to be honest about the less admirable qualities about her personality here, and claims that despite what her public persona has led people to believe, she's really not all that nice, and she thinks that it's important that people, and especially women, are allowed to not always be quiet, polite and pleasant. The final chapter of the audio book is recorded live at a theatre, complete with the audience reacting enthusiastically to her reading.

While not all of the chapters were as funny, I still appreciated hearing all her various opinions, and as I said, of the various funny celebrity autobiographies I've read, this is probably the one that felt like it was the most relevant to me. I may not have laughed out loud as much while listening to this book, but I still think about parts of it now and come back to it, even weeks after I finished it. Amy Poehler is a brilliant woman, she has strong opinions and she's a staunch feminist without any of this becoming the focus of the book. She seems to be a devoted and hard-working mother, a loyal friend and a really fun woman to hang out with. I respect her greatly and wish she could be my friend.

Now, while there is no way I have the time and energy to complete a full triple of 156 this year, it feels good that this book is my 130th, which marks my two and a half Cannonball. Having reached this milestone also means that I will be posting  less frequently. I need to recharge a bit for next year. So with the exception of books so excellent I think the world needs to know about them, or the books I need to review to complete my various reading challenges, I will probably not be posting. This means that there may be another tend or so reviews, but unlikely more than that. Thanks for reading my reviews, commenting and cheering me on in 2014. Bring on CBR7.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR5 Book 140. "Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem and Other Things That Happened" by Allie Brosh

Page count: 369 pages
Rating: 5 stars

I knew I was going to love this book when I pre-ordered it several months ago. There was absolutely no question about it. There is barely a single thing Allie Brosh has ever posted on her website that I haven't absolutely adored (oh, the hours of my life that site stole when I first discovered it, thanks to a colleague telling me about the Alot.) Even when Allie didn't update as often any more, it was always a delight when there was something new. So many of the things she wrote about made it feel like she saw the world in exactly the same way I do. We both fear spiders, we both love procrastination on the internet, we both have a mentally challenged animal (one of my cats is a very dim light bulb indeed). Then she wrote about her depression, and it became clear why she wasn't updating her blog very often.

Her two blog entries about depression (both shared in this book as well as on her website) are among the truest and most recognisable things I have ever read. I was depressed during my final year of university, but after years of medication, seem to have had the luck of getting well again. I've experienced some of the things she shares in her stories. I can now show other people what it's like to live with my husband when he's having one of his rough spells, which he will keep having on and off for the rest of our lives, because he's never going to not be depressed, he's just going to be able to cope with it better during the stable periods. I've never met Allie, but I love her for this.

About half of the stuff in the book has already been on Allie's blog. I love her writing, so this was not a problem for me at all. There is also half a book full of new and amazing material, like her letters to her past selves, that had me laughing so hard my stomach hurt and I had trouble breathing. I have ordered the book as a Christmas present for several of my friends, and I wish I knew more people, just so I could gift them this book. It's a hilarious and wonderful book, which you will enjoy if you've enjoyed the stuff on her site. Just buy it already, to make sure she writes a follow-up. After all, I want the Alot in book form too.

CBR4 Books 40-42: "Empowered vol 1-3" by Adam Warren

Total page count: 664 pages
Rating - All three volumes - 4 stars
Date begun: April 17th, 2012
Date finished: April 22nd, 2012

The somewhat ironically named Empowered is a C-list superhero whose powers are given to her by her ultra skintight supersuit (so much so that she can't wear underwear underneath it and even has to have very careful personal grooming so that nothing shows when she's wearing it). While the suit is intact, she's strong enough to lift and throw cars and even zap people from a distance, but the suit is also ridiculously fragile, prone to ripping if she catches on a nail, thorn, tack or say, gets shot at. The more the suit tears, the faster she loses a her powers, leaving her frequently captured, bound and gagged (in ridiculously skimpy, yet conveniently strategically covering tatters) by various super villains. Her team, "The Super-homeys" rarely take her seriously, and she's most frequently used as bait. She's blond and buxum, but has terrible self-esteem issues and is convinced that her butt is too big.

The first volume is pretty much a series of short vignettes, interrupted by fairly meta chapter breaks where  "Emp" explains her origin as a bondage prone sketch Adam Warren would draw for fans at conventions, then flesh out with a back story and turn into a surprisingly sweet and very clever satire on sexy superhero comics. Over the course of the first volume, Emp (her real name isn't revealed until volume 3) meets her boyfriend, a sometime super villain henchman, and her best friend, Ninjette (who is unsurprisingly a ninja), and ends up sharing a flat with the "Caged Demonwolf", a cosmic beast entrapped in alien bondage gear who lives atop her coffee table (possibly my favourite character). In volumes 2 and 3, the stories are longer, and continue to explore the world of Empowered, the Superhomeys, the various rather ridiculous super villains they fight, and the myriad ways in which  poor Emp can be captured, humiliated, bound and gagged.

While the art is very sexy, and Emp is frequently more unclothed than not, there is never any complete nudity, the book is very good about equal opportunity cheesecake art, with Emp's boyfriend Thugboy frequently shown just as scantily clad as her. It's clearly a aimed at an adult audience, with quite a few sex scenes in especially volumes 1 and 3 and quite a lot of violence (in a very manga style) in all 3 volumes. Refreshingly, as a female comics reader, I never felt this comic is as insulting to or exploitative of women as several more mainstream superhero comics. For all it's near nudity and bondage prone heroine, the main premise of the comic is sweet. I very much agree with this article on Comics Alliance, that Empowered is a comic that gets sexy superheroes just right. I will absolutely be getting more, as soon as my budget allows it.

CBR3 Book 56: "Heartless" by Gail Carriger

Publisher: Orbit
Page count: 400 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: July 21st, 2011
Date finished: July 22nd, 2011

This is the fourth book in a series, and this review will undoubtedly contain spoilers for earlier books. If you mind this, skip the review, and begin the series at the beginning, with the delightful Soulless. Book 2 in the series is reviewed here and book 3 here.

Lady Alexia Maccon, neé Tarabotti, is back in London, back in the good graces of Queen Victoria and the rest of society, having proven that her current pregnancy, extremely unlikely as the conception was, is not the result of an affair. The vampires are still extremely worried about the nature of Alexia's future child, however, and keep trying to assassinate her. With the help of her husband's second in command, Professor Lyall and her good friend, the very influential vampire Lord Akeldama, she manages to figure out a solution that ensures the safety of her unborn child (not to mention herself), and results in her and Lord Maccon, Alpha of the Woolsey werewolf pack being next door neighbours with Akeldama.

While everyone urges her to rest and stay calm so close to her confinement, Alexia is warned by a ghost that someone is trying to kill the Queen, and is obviously determined to thwart the attempt. Despite warnings from various friends and acquaintances not to delve into the past, Alexia keeps digging and investigating, and finds out interesting things about the previous attempt to assassinate the queen, and links to her husband's former werewolf pack. Alexia's younger sister is suddenly a suffragette and insists on staying with her, her brilliant inventor friend seems out of sorts and keeps trying to avoid her. Biffy, the most recent addition to the Woolsey werewolf pack is having trouble adjusting to his new life, and if he doesn't learn to adjust to pack life, he could become an unprotected loner or worse, fade away to die. Alexia's life is certainly never restful.

In this book, Carriger is back on form, and the book was delightful and very entertaining. There are dirigible chases, zombie porcupines, a giant mechanical octopus, ghosts, werewolves, vampires, dastardly plots, abductions, explosions and a lot of witty banter between the various characters. I really hope Carriger can keep this up for the next one, which I think may be the last in the series, at least for now.

CBR3 Book 34: "Bossypants" by Tina Fey

Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books
Page count: 288 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: April 24th, 2011
Date finished: April 26th, 2011

I picked up Tina Fey's autobiography after reading very positive reviews by fellow Cannonballers. I don't read a whole lot of non-fiction, but as a big fan of Mean Girls and 30 Rock, I was pretty sure I'd like this, even before I read the glowing reviews.

Bossypants is not a very long book, and anyone expecting great revelations about Tina Fey and her life may be in for some disappointment. While Fey reveals a lot about herself through stories of her adolescence, insights into her honeymoon, tid-bits about working for Saturday Night Live, creating 30 Rock and even trying to arrange her daughter's birthday party while getting ready to parody Sarah Palin on SNL and having Oprah guest on her sit com, most of the book is observational comedy, not a tell all book about the life of a female writer and sit com creator.

It is a very funny book, however, and I frequently laughed out loud, both on public transport and in the comfort of my home (much to the annoyance of the husband, who kept having to have jokes that may not be that funny out of context explained to him). If you find Liz Lemon on 30 Rock amusing, you'll probably like this book, as it seems Tina Fey has put a lot of herself into her TV character.

CBR3 Book 25: "One of Our Thursdays is Missing" by Jasper Fforde

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Page count: 400 pages
Rating: 3 stars
Date begun: March 28th, 2011
Date finished: April 1st, 2011

This is the sixth book in the Thursday Next series, and I can absolutely assure you that it makes little to no sense if you haven't read several of the others in the series. The first book in the series, The Eyre Affair, is excellent, so go start there if you're interested. Also, may contain spoilers for previous books etc. etc.

There's a war brewing in the Book World, and Thursday Next, the famous heroine and literary detective who is needed to manage the peace talks, appears to have gone missing. No one seems to know where she is, and the life of her fictional counterpart is starting to take odd and unexpected turns as a result.

Yes, that's a super short summary of the book, but I'm really at a loss to even begin to explain the intricacies of the plot of this book. Jasper Fforde's literary universe is a very complex one, both with his alternate version of reality, where the real Thursday Next lives, and the one he explores more closely in this one, the Book World. Simply put, every time someone in the real world reads a book, the fictional counterparts in the Book World act that story out. When the reader puts the book back down, they can go on with their normal lives. The fictional Thursday starts out being very little like her real-life counterpart - she's calm, sedate, a bit boring, and a bit of a tree hugger. As increasingly more complicated puzzles and challenges get thrown her way, she starts realizing that she has the potential to change and be so much more.

The previous novel in the series, First Among Sequels, took me ages to get into, and I didn't really feel that it got good until shortly before the end. In this one, Fforde suddenly explores an entirely different aspect of his world, and very different characters, and it just didn't grab me much. Several people have given this book a very enthusiastic review, so I had high hopes for it. It did not live up to my expectations, and at this rate, I'm not going to be in a hurry to read any more books in the series either.