Tuesday, 12 April 2016

Book ~ "You're Better Than Me: A Memoir" (2016) Bonnie McFarlane

From Goodreads ~ It took Bonnie McFarlane a lot of time, effort and tequila to get to where she is today. Before she starred on "Last Comic Standing" and directed her own films, she was an inappropriately loud tomboy growing up on her parents’ farm in Cold Lake, Canada, wetting her pants during standardized tests and killing chickens. 

Desperate to find “her people” - like-minded souls who wouldn’t judge her because she was honest, ruthless and okay, sometimes really rude - Bonnie turned to comedy. In her explosively funny and no-holds-barred memoir, Bonnie tells it like it is and lays bare all of her smart (and her not-so-smart) decisions along her way to finding her friends and her comedic voice.

From fistfights in elementary school to riding motorcycles to the World Famous Comic Strip to "Late Night with David Letterman", and through to her infamous “c” word bit on "Last Comic Standing", "You’re Better Than Me" is her funny and outrageous trip through the good, bad and ugly of her life in comedy. McFarlane doesn’t always keep her mouth shut when she should but at least she makes people laugh. And that’s all that matters, right?

I've never heard of Bonnie McFarlane.   I'd read a review about this book in the Toronto Star last month and it sounded interesting.  Plus she is Canadian.

Bonnie was born on a farm in Cold Lake, Alberta, the youngest of four children.  Farm life wasn't for her so she eventually headed to Vancouver, where she did her first open mic and she was hooked.  The manager of the club told her that she should enter "The Search for Canada's Funniest New Comic" ... she did and she won.  She ended up in Los Angeles doing stand-up, acting and writing.  Her goals included becoming best friends with Janeane Garofalo and getting on Late Show with David Letterman.

This book tells her story ... growing up on the farm and her best friend being her cow (which she later age), her highs and lows as a comedian, actress and writer, her love life and more.

Her writing style was interesting, humorous and vulgar at times (some might be offended ... I wasn't).  As a head's up, there is a lot of swearing, descriptions of adult activity. drug use, etc.

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