Name: Robin M Cabana's review of My Squirrel Days by Ellie Kemper
Item: My Squirrel Days
Rating: 4
Author: Robin M Cabana

Ellie Kemper

Comedian and star of The Office and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Ellie Kemper delivers a hilarious, refreshing, and inspiring collection of essays “teeming with energy and full of laugh-out-loud moments” (Associated Press). “A pleasure. Ellie Kemper is the kind of stable, intelligent, funny, healthy woman that usually only exists in yogurt commercials. But she’s real and she’s all ours!” —Tina Fey “Ellie is a hilarious and talented writer, although we’ll never know how much of this book the squirrel wrote.”—Mindy Kaling Meet Ellie, the best-intentioned redhead next door. You’ll laugh right alongside her as she shares tales of her childhood in St. Louis, whether directing and also starring in her family holiday pageant, washing her dad’s car with a Brillo pad, failing to become friends with a plump squirrel in her backyard, eating her feelings while watching PG-13 movies, or becoming a “sports monster” who ends up warming the bench of her Division 1 field hockey team in college. You’ll learn how she found her comedic calling in the world of improv, became a wife, mother and New Yorker, and landed the role of a bridesmaid (while simultaneously being a bridesmaid) in Bridesmaids. You’ll get to know and love the comic, upbeat, perpetually polite actress playing Erin Hannon on The Office, and the exuberant, pink-pants-wearing star of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. If you’ve ever been curious about what happens behind the scenes of your favorite shows, what it really takes to be a soul cycle “warrior,” how to recover if you accidentally fall on Doris Kearns Goodwin or tell Tina Fey on meeting her for the first time that she has “great hair—really strong and thick,” this is your chance to find out. But it’s also a laugh-out-loud primer on how to keep a positive outlook in a world gone mad and how not to give up on your dreams. Ellie “dives fully into each role—as actor, comedian, writer, and also wife and new mom—with an electric dedication, by which one learns to reframe the picture, and if not exactly become a glass-half-full sort of person, at least become able to appreciate them” (Vogue.com).

Tales from the Star of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and The Office

My Squirrel Days

Samantha King

Robin M Cabana

If you’ve enjoyed Ellie Kemper on The Office and Kimmy Schmitt, you’ll find she’s also witty and adorkable in her essays. I recommend the audiobook, which she narrates. I think her reading makes some of her dorky asides come across as hilarious, whereas they might seems cheesy on paper. While she shares some great stories about her acting career, I really enjoyed her stories about her childhood in St. Louis, where she lead her siblings and friends in original Christmas productions, as well as her the essays about her quirks, adventures with squirrels and deep knowledge of the Sound of Music. It’s a really fun book!

Elodia

I love Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and The Office, so I had to pick it up. I read this as an audiobook and she reads it herself, which I think really brings out her humor and personality. While I found some parts really funny, there was nothing too interesting or fascinating as I have found in other memoirs.

Becca Futrell

Note: I received a copy of My Squirrel Days by Ellie Kemper via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Let me express that I love Ellie Kemper. Granted, I have only watched the pilot episode of The Office, but Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is one of my all-time favorite comedies. & I get so excited when she pops up as a guest appearance in other shows such as The Mindy Project. Y’see, I have two types when it comes to women: the woman that would punch me in my face & I’d thank her for it (i.e. Jessica Jones & Rosa Diaz) & the type of woman who’s so extremely bubbly & ridiculous that you just want to kiss on the forehead (i.e. Jess Day & Kimmy Schmidt); obviously, Ellie Kemper often satisfies the latter of the two.

My point to this entire thing is that I love Ellie Kemper. & reading My Squirrel Days was such a satisfying read, because of it. With every word typed into Ellie Kemper’s memoir, her voice screamed through it. I could perfectly picture every scenario listed & found myself constantly exclaiming, “yep! That’s Ellie Kemper for ya!”

Some of the anecdotes that Ellie Kemper wrote in My Squirrel Days could seem incredibly random (for example, she tells a story about a future Ellie Kemper in her deathbed, telling her grandchildren about how she rode a stationary bike 500 times), but were still fun & flowed nicely with the rest of the memoir.

If you’re a fan of memoirs & more importantly, a fan of Ellie Kemper, I strongly recommend that you get your paws on My Squirrel Days! It’s a pretty quick read & full of good ol’ laughs.

For more reviews, check out my blog!

Samantha King &
My Squirrel Days by Ellie Kemper

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Samantha King &My Squirrel Days by Ellie Kemper

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Join the club

Samantha King &
My Squirrel Days by Ellie Kemper