Bossypants - Tina Fey ----------------- 2.5 Stars

Another short review, as there is not much to this book. 

Bossypants is a comedy book by Tina Fey.  It's pretty funny but not that great.  It's sort of half autobiography and half jokes interwoven together.  The problem I have found with comedy books is that so much of comedy is timing and seeing it and hearing it.  My voice was the comedian when reading this and I'm not that funny.

Overall, the book has some very interesting anecdotes.  Tina starts with her childhood and works through to her time on SNL and 30 Rock.  I found the more recent stuff much more interesting than her time growing up.

In general, I find the book was not funny about 90% of the time, which seems high, but remember it's a book trying to tell jokes; not the best way to do it.  However, the 10% of the time when a joke was funny, it was really funny.  There were a few jokes that I was literally laughing out loud and felt the need to tell someone about the joke.

I would recommend this book to any people who are big Tina Fey fans.  If you like her, or liked 30 Rock, you will probably enjoy this book.  That being said, I fall into that group and did not find this book that enjoyable.  It is an easy read and short, so it won't take up much of your time, but as the majority of it not funny, you are really spending most of your time reading about Tina Fey's life, which frankly, ain't all that interesting.  However, when she does hit her jokes right, it's pretty funny.

The Art Forger - B.A. Shapiro ---------------- 3 Stars

This will not be a very long review.  First, I am tired.  Second, I finished this book like 3 weeks ago but forgot about writing a blog because of how busy I am.  Third, there is not a ton to say.

The Art Forger is a pretty fun, fictional read very loosely based on real art forgery stuff.  It tells the story of a down on her luck girl who is an art forger (legitimately) who gets into doing some forgeries (not legitimate).  It also tells three stories in parallel: current day  events, about 10 years ago telling the story that made this down on her luck, down on her luck, a story about a century ago about this famous piece of art the story is based on.

On a positive, the story is a pretty easy read.  Good plot and action.  Good dialogues and keeps the reader engaged for nearly the entire novel.  I also learned a lot more about art, in general, and much, much more about art forgeries.  Art forging is actually really interesting and, so the novel says, approximately 40% of all art sales each year are forgeries (the best forgeries are actually in museums).  The book had a cute ending and was decent, overall.

The bad -- well, the whole book is still about art; not my favorite subject.  I think the biggest problem I had with the book was how contrived the entire story is.  It kind of reminded me of one of those John Grisham books that I used to be into when I was young and thought they were amazing (before realizing how impossible they actually were).  This book was kind of like that; fun and entertaining but not really all that realistic. 

So, The Art Forger is worth reading if you've got some time.  It's a nice book and not much more.  Good plot and interesting ending.  You actually will probably learn a lot more about art forging than you planned, but it's pretty interesting.  Just know that you're getting into a story that's a bit hard to believe (even for a piece of fiction).