My Squirrel Days by Ellie KemperMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I know Ellie Kemper from her role as Kimmy in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which is hilarious and touching and ridiculous, often all at once. When I heard that she'd written a book (via an appearance on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me), I wanted to see if the book was as entertaining as her acting. Good news, it absolutely is.
As one would expect, Squirrel Days contains many anecdotes from Ellie's life and career. Unlike many similar books, this one tells you right up front (page 4!) that much of it may be made up. And I think this describes the tone of the book quite well. The author is an entertainer, knows how to amuse an audience, and is going to make that happen without letting small details like complete accuracy get in the way.
Which is not to say that the whole book is nothing but outrageous stories. Most of it is fairly normal life experience, from childhood antics to career decisions to friends and family. Which are generally described not just as what happened, but what Ellie had been thinking and hoping for and often utterly failed to achieve. Usually in extremely amusing fashion.
I'm sure that not everyone will love this book as much as I did, as I think you need the right sense of humor to be as entertained by it as I was. For your sake, I hope you have that, so you can have as much fun reading Squirrel Days as I did.
