Customer Reviews

Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea

5 star:		(389)
4 star:		(106)
3 star:		(53)
2 star:		(48)
1 star:		(55)

 

 

I actually bought this book for my wife, since she had enjoyed Chelsea Handler's previous book, "My Horizontal Life." When the book arrived yesterday, I picked it up to peruse it and I couldn't put it down. This book is laugh-out-loud funny. The book contains stories from the author's life from around the age of 9 through adulthood that are funny from the perspective of men and women alike. As should be clear from the title, this book isn't for kids and the content can be pretty racy. If you aren't easily offended, however, it will probably be the most humorous book you read this year. I'd give it more than 5 stars if I could.

Note to Kindle owners - download the first chapter of the book. If the first chapter makes you laugh then you may enjoy the book. If you're not laughing at that point it doesn't get much better.

I've just finished reading the book and it was one of the hardest times I've ever had finishing a book. Although there are a few laughs here and there, the book wasn't hilarious to say the least. You might laugh once and then wait another chapter or three before the next one comes along. I bought the book because of all of the "rave - laugh out loud" reviews I saw from other readers.

I didn't have a problem with the language, the off-color humor or any of the "offensive" things that were said in the book - it was just boring and not funny. What made it even worse is when some of the gags were used multiple times. For example in one story someone looks like they have Buckwheat in a leg-lock, a few chapters later someone looks like they have a clown in a leg-lock. Again, I was compelled to review this book because I couldn't believe so many people rated it 5-stars. I like her on TV, but the book was a snoozer.

Having seen Chelsea doing stand up and on Girls Behaving Badly, I was anxious to see how her wicked sarcastic wit would translate into text. It's fantastic! A seriously gifted writer, who combines funny and uninhibited raunchiness better than any woman. And it's not just the sheer ridiculous circumstances she encounters. She reflects about her mindless journeys and the meaning of life in such an amusing, self-deprecating and cynical manner.

Filled with funny anecdotes, she has that trashy comedienne's gift of saying everything we think about but are afraid to say. And she manages to share absolutely horrifying events and somehow make them hysterical!

There are some hilarious and uncomfortable family situations. Her father was quite the provider of wisdom, selling used junkyard cars out of their front yard, while making inappropriate sexual innuendos towards his daughters.

There's some really funny and humiliating youth debacles and misadventures. My favorites; her embarrassing and preposterous fake celebrity elementary school tale, a LOL birthday party for a friendless girl full of re-gifting, pretending to be honeymooning with her father in order to upgrade to first class. The Mini-Me and Prison Break chapters are just classics. Frankly if she wasn't successful, she may have ended up a basket case.

At some points in a story, I laughed so hard, my husband kept trying to steal the book from me. I didn't want the book to end. Everyone can find something to relate to in one of these stories.

If you are sensitive or quick to take offense, I would pass on this one. If you have a repressed wild side, you'll dive in headfirst and relish her antics and live vicariously through them. Also, if you like reading funny out of control drinking and sex stories, I'm half-way through Chelsea's other book My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands and it's great.

And although I can't admit it to my husband, I secretly loved the book that is the male version of the same theme. Steamy sex, hilarious, and very Bondish, as in 007.

High Heels and Dirty Deals - Globetrotting Tales of Debauchery from a Binge-drinking Nymphomaniac

This is a laugh-out-loud book, great for the beach, not so good for a plane where your laughing will wake babies and make the other passengers jealous they don't have a copy. I got mine for my Kindle and I read it in one sitting. Seriously, pretty freaking funny.

All I can say is buy this book!!! I was reading it on my flight home yesterday and was laughing SO hard that people were staring at me...but I couldn't help it. Chelsea is just that funny! Her writing about her parents is the best. And as a redheaded woman, I agree with her about reheaded men from my own experience. I try to avoid them too. Plus, she's way funnier than that crazy Manc, Karl Pilkington.

When is the next one coming out, Chelsea?

Let me first be clear that I love Chelsea Handler. I DVR her show every night, I've even been to a taping in her studio and I even have tickets to her upcoming standup appearance.

Her first book was hilarious, but this one just misses the mark. Yes, there were a handful of times that I burst out laughing - she is a brilliant comedian. But the book is extremely disjointed and it was a struggle to see it through to the end. Was she just trying to fill up space? And why is Chuey all over the cover (my guess - to sell books) he's not mentioned once in the book (except for in the Acknowledgements).

I really can't figure out if she tried too hard, or didn't try hard enough.

Blah...I recommend saving your money. Sorry Chels...

This book was recommended to me by a friend who adores Chelsea. My friend and I have a similar (sick) sense of humor - but I disagreed with her on this book. The comedy felt forced, contrived and predictable - she was trying too hard. I forced myself to keep reading with hopes that it would get better - I only made it through half the book - I had to give up. This one was a misfire... sorry Chelsea fans. Personally, I just don't find her funny. In concept, Chelsea has all the right components for "funny", but again, she seems plastic to me - not genuinely funny.

Chelsea is touted as one of the top comedy writers in the industry. This book is touted as "hilarious."

HOW can that BE?

At best, I may have smiled a time or two in the first few chapters (and honestly, that's as far as I got). What bothered me the most? She'd reference certain periods of time and consistently got facts wrong.

The book opens in 1984 with her lying to a boy about being a movie actress, in which she claims to have read everything about the making of the Breakfast Club. Odd, since that movie wasn't released until 1985. She finds herself in prison at the age of 21 (1996), wondering if they have Internet there. Odd, since, in 1996 most people had only a slight grasp of the internet (via AOL) and since it wasn't the easiest thing to navigate back then, the only ones addicted to it were geeks. During the strip search, she claims no one laughed at her "junk in the trunk" reference. Well that's most likely because no one USED that phrase back then. She goes on to say that after her release from prison, she'd (sarcastically) planned on researching the name of the woman for whom the jail was named, by googling it. Um. Come ON. There WAS no Google in 1996.

So is the entire book just a poorly written, poorly researched lie? How did this end up on ANY bestseller list? I couldn't take any more and stopped reading. I'll donate it. Maybe someone somewhere needs a good door stop.

If you are going to joke about spending time in jail for drunk driving or being aroused by a dog, you'd better make it wicked funny. This just wasn't. Were prior 5-star reviewers just rabid fans or were they as drunk as she got the publisher who agreed to print this?

This is the worst book I have read in at least two years -- and I read lots of books. Get this one free from the library. At least then you will have wasted only your time.

I can hardly be considered a prude. At 72 years old, and after a lifetime of oilfields and firefighting, I've heard and uttered my share of potty talk. But something about Chelsea Handler's extremely personal collection of memoirs, ARE YOU THERE, VODKA? IT'S ME, CHELSEA didn't sit well with me. I know. If you're going to be offended, don't read it.

But read it I did because I love funny stuff, especially humorous writing. Ms. Handler is very funny and some of her prose had me hiccupping from laughing so hard. I got uncomfortable, however, with some of the more graphic language, descriptions of sweaty sex, and references to anatomy that came from a public restroom wall instead of a medical book. I thought that a more subtle way of handling these subjects, perhaps through cleverly veiled and risqué double entendres, would be more easily endured than through whacks with a meat axe.

I think back to one of my favorite humorists, Dave Barry. He can paint the same word picture as Handler without using the coarse language so prevalent in this book. His ability to dodge around the use of obscenities makes his work even funnier when the reader associates what he wrote with what he meant.

I appreciate the fact that Handler makes her living through the shock factor. I'm sure her fans are used to the candor of her presentations. That's why I don't trash the book with a poor rating. My faint heartedness does not make the book a bad one - it only makes it hard for me to read. It doesn't mean that I don't recognize a talented individual and Handler is that in spades.