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119 Books Every Comedy Fan Should Read


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Constantly interrupting herself with jokey but relevant life advice (“talent isn’t sexually transmitted”) and self-deprecating one-liners, Fey charts her rise from Pennsylvania nerd to Chicago improv comedian (and employee of the city’s creepiest YMCA), up through SNL, 30 Rock, and motherhood. The brilliant English writer Samuel Johnson had his biographer and acolyte in James Boswell, and legendary comedian Garry Shandling found a similar compatriot in Judd Apatow.This book is a deconstructed and reconstructed autobiography, told in fits and starts and bits and pieces, compiled and sequenced after the death of the former with love and respect from the latter. He also includes some short comic books, a story about a lackluster vampire, fake greeting cards, and a cultural manifesto on par with his Star Wars rant on Parks and Recreation — about how all young genre fiction writers will eventually write about zombies, spaceships, or wastelands.

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