Book Review: Talking As Fast As I Can

Book: Talking As Fast As I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between) by Lauren Graham

Source: Library

Description:

In this collection of personal essays, the beloved star of Gilmore Girls and Parenthood reveals stories about life, love, and working as a woman in Hollywood—along with behind-the-scenes dispatches from the set of the new Gilmore Girls, where she plays the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore once again.

In Talking as Fast as I Can, Lauren Graham hits pause for a moment and looks back on her life, sharing laugh-out-loud stories about growing up, starting out as an actress, and, years later, sitting in her trailer on the Parenthood set and asking herself, “Did you, um, make it?” She opens up about the challenges of being single in Hollywood (“Strangers were worried about me; that’s how long I was single!”), the time she was asked to audition her butt for a role, and her experience being a judge on Project Runway (“It’s like I had a fashion-induced blackout”).

In “What It Was Like, Part One,” Graham sits down for an epic Gilmore Girls marathon and reflects on being cast as the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore. The essay “What It Was Like, Part Two” reveals how it felt to pick up the role again nine years later, and what doing so has meant to her.

Some more things you will learn about Lauren: She once tried to go vegan just to bond with Ellen DeGeneres, she’s aware that meeting guys at awards shows has its pitfalls (“If you’re meeting someone for the first time after three hours of hair, makeup, and styling, you’ve already set the bar too high”), and she’s a card-carrying REI shopper (“My bungee cords now earn points!”).

Including photos and excerpts from the diary Graham kept during the filming of the recent Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, this book is like a cozy night in, catching up with your best friend, laughing and swapping stories, and—of course—talking as fast as you can.



Rating: 5 stars

Review:

I wonder if being funny comes naturally to Lauren Graham because I actually laughed out loud while reading this. Talking As Fast As I Can is an interesting and funny read that features 13 essays with pictures included throughout that go over a range of topics including her life, being a judge on Project Runway, describing her time working on the fan favorite TV series Gilmore Girls and the revival Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life and more.

I found it interesting when she described all the hard work and time she put into pursuing her dream of being an actor. What I like is that she didn't put a time limit on her dream nor did she give up. It eventually worked out but at the time when she was a struggling actress working odd jobs there was no guarantee that it would.

Becoming a writer was not something she planned despite having a Bachelor's degree in English, it sort of just happened. One day, while she was sitting in her trailer after filming her scenes for her TV series Parenthood, she had an idea for a story. She had no plans to get anything she had written published. However, when she had mentioned it to her agent that she had been working on something just for fun that was the start to her eventually (with some hard work) getting her first book Someday, Someday, Maybe published.

I think what surprised her was the implication from some that she didn't really write her first book simply because she was an actress. It's no secret in the world of publishing that many celebrities use ghostwriters for their books which I find disappointing because generally the ghostwriter doesn't get any credit for all the hard work they do in writing the books. Anyway, Graham went over one terrible interview she had in promoting her book, the reporter was standoffish and asked questions as if to get her to admit she didn't write the book. She tried to make the interview cheerful but the reporter didn't seem to be in the mood for humor. Not much you can do in a situation like that.

In two Gilmore Girls essays titled What It Was Like, Part One and Part Two, she goes over details, pictures and behind the scenes information about the show and the revival. Based on what she wrote it's clear that playing Lorelai Gilmore and the Gilmore Girls series are very dear to her. She could have easily distanced herself from both but she loves the character and show just as much as fans do.

This was amusing to read. Graham is a lively person and it definitely comes across in her writing giving the reader the full effect of her funny and smart voice.