Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang
(Libby/OverDrive eBook, Kindle)

Comedian Handler does a credible impersonation of being drunk or high. Since a significant portion of this wafer-thin memoir involves characters who are drunk or high or both, her narration is generally dead on. In mocking tones, she critiques the perpetual disapproval of her straight-laced religious sister, Sloane, and recounts multiple arguments with her boyfriend, Ted, a Hollywood executive. Throughout various raunchy capers, she maintains a sunny voice as she seeks out the next pleasure-whether it's a new episode of Sex and the City or drugs. Sometimes she seems aware of the irony in her own words, as when she deadpans that she doesn't want children because she finds them "incredibly immature." Mostly, however, she keeps the tone light and the pace brisk, her fast-talking recitation allowing few pauses for reflection. A Grand Central hardcover. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

I admit I don't know who Handler is [editor's note to Doug: she's the best-selling author of Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea]. Yet I'll say this: she is poop-your-pants funny. Whether describing an all-girl third-grade masturbation party ("Two hours and twenty minutes later I was covered in sweat with rug burns of my forehead and both cheeks") or taking her 300-pound chauffeur on vacation, Handler's one funny chick. Seemingly effortlessly, she pulls off anecdotes that blend controlled amounts of sass, brass, profanity, and funny. She marches right up to the line in the sand that crosses from "acceptable" to "crude" and launches spitball attacks. Take the episode when she's nine and puts the full-court press on her parents to get her a Cabbage Patch Kid-despite her father's protestations of being broke as he reads the financial pages. "I wanted to tell my father to go fuck himself. If he knew so much about the stock market, why did we have air-conditioning only in our dining room?" Or upon discovering the joys of (ahem) self-pleasure: "Who knew that the little albino pincushion I was carrying around all these years would end up turning into the equivalent of a watermelon Jolly Rancher? How many other women knew about this? And if they did, why did anyone ever get jobs?" I wish that the experience of reading this could have been more than mere amusement, that I could have helped humankind or something, but in the end it's just a laugh. Rating: R for cussing, cursing, blaspheming, bad words, and sexual content. And for making me poop my pants.-Douglas Lord, "Books for Dudes," Booksmack! 9/2/10 (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Comedienne, talk show host and daring author Handler (Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea) indulges her fans with a new compilation of shockingly direct essays, from which she emerges as a scheming farceur with an expansive range of practical jokes and winning sarcasm, pulled off beautifully against (and with help from) her closest friends and family (including her boyfriend, the CEO of the E! television network that employs her). Handler spins a deliriously sticky web of running jokes while suckering the gullible, again and again, with made-up stories of her transgendered friend, a ludicrous movie deal, and her infamous personal pilot. Never shy, Handler finds room for even more irreverent honesty regarding sex-including her earliest encounters with male genitalia and with "the feeling"-and also lets readers in on her family life, including a family dinner that ends with her missing brother found intoxicated, naked, and celebrating on a dock in the early morning hours. Whether Handler is plotting to get her father committed or convincing her dog never to "shadoobie" in her presence, her essays are packed with enough laugh-out-loud moments to rival a first-rate stand-up act. B&W photos. (Mar.) Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.