by Leslie Jones
Read by the author
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Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: This is sweary. SO very sweary. Like, I don’t know how many sentences didn’t have the f-bomb. (Plus 10 uses of the n-word, but that’s her prerogative.) It’s in the humor section of the bookstore.

I tell so many people that the best way to read a celebrity memoir is to listen to it on audio. I’ve even gone as far as to say that I actively won’t read a memoir if the author doesn’t read it. (Case in point: I have yet to read Elton John’s memoir, even though I have a copy of it on my shelf downstairs. He doesn’t read the audiobook.) I don’t know why I put Leslie Jones’s memoir on hold at the library (it was a good two months between when I put the hold and when it came in; I no longer remember it), but I have to admit I was curious about the book.

Friends: this audiobook is NOT the book. Well, it’s loosely the book. But you will get an entirely different experience listening to it than reading it. See, Jones says “Chapter X” and then just takes off. Like pretty literally. It’s a 16-hour audiobook for a less-than-300-page book. This is not a criticism. Once I realized that she was riffing on the book, taking the chapters and just going with the flow, telling you her story, I got into the groove of the insanity and enjoyed myself. (At a certain point, when she said “Hey, I like what I wrote here, let me read it” I pretty much figured that if I wasn’t willing to change my expectations about this book, I needed to get off the train. Reader: I stayed on the whole way.)

She’s had a hard life, but she is one of the most positive people I’ve read about. She laughs at herself, her past mistakes, she has Thoughts about pretty much everything, she doesn’t take any crap from anyone, and she knows her worth. It’s pretty amazing. I appreciated her vulnerability, her laugh, her story. So, yeah: not at all what I expected from an audiobook, but definitely worth my time to finish it.