Book Review: Talking as Fast as I Can

If you’re a Lauren Graham and/or Gilmore Girls fan then you know she released a book, Talking as Fast as I Can, right around the time the Netflix A Year in the Life came out. I knew I wanted to read it as I’m a fan of both the actress and the show (plus Parenthood) and I always like reading these memoir type books. Since it was released around Thanksgiving, I decided to put it on my Secret Santa wish list before buying it for myself since it seemed like an easy enough item to wish for. Well my wish came true and my friend got me the book and the Gilmore Girls cookbook! I haven’t made anything from the cookbook yet, but I did read Talking as Fast as I Can so I’ll be talking about that today.

In the book Lauren talks a little about her early life, upbringing, and early parts of her career. The main focus of the book is her starting Gilmore Girls, what that was like, then her time in-between the series finale of that and the filming of the Netflix series. This is why the subtitle of the book is “From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and everything in-between)”.

I found the book to be a really quick read and entertaining. Parts of it felt very stream of consciousness and reminded me so much of Lorelai. I could hear her voice in my head narrating what I was reading. It was a wonderful book of humor mixed with really wise advice. I know, not exactly the first thing you’d think coming from Lorelai Gilmore and Sarah Braverman’s mouth, but really!

I felt like I could relate to a lot of what she wrote. Like dreams not coming easily to her, but not wanting to compromise her own integrity to make those dreams happen. Or how she felt like one day she looked up and all her friends were married with kids. She writes a lot about how things happen the way they’re supposed to and you might not realize it at the time, but one day you’ll appreciate it. These aren’t novel ideas – people say things like this all the time to you and you might even be the one that says it to people. But it’s comforting to know that even a famous actress and you have things in common.

I really liked that even with her words of wisdom, she infuses some humor so as to not stray from her comedic persona too much. At one part of the book when she talks about how she always wanted to follow this plan she had for herself (I’m all too familiar with this) sometimes your plan doesn’t work out the way you want and the path you end up going down ends up being better.

“In blindly trying a different path, I accidentally found one that worked better. So don’t let your plan have the last laugh, but laugh last when your plan laughs, and when your plan has the last laugh, laugh back, laughing!”

Sometimes I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing in life and nothing’s going the way I’d imagine. It’s easy to think about what’s not going right and forget about what is. And maybe you have hopes and dreams that haven’t happened yet, but that doesn’t mean they won’t. As Lauren shares, she finds something Oliver Platt has said to her as a helpful reminder – “It’s coming, just not on your time frame.” 

“But life doesn’t often spell things out for you or give you what you want exactly when you want it, otherwise it wouldn’t be called life, it would be called vending machine.”

Possibly, my favorite part of the book was her story about working at a theater summer program. She had to sing to audition – not to get into the program, she was already in, but so that she could be given parts for the summer. She had to sing “Slap That Bass”. Her story is so unbelievably funny that I was literally laughing out loud when I read it. When I read this particular chapter I was sitting in bed with a Bioré nose strip on and it hurt to laugh but I couldn’t help it. That’s how funny it is! I won’t give away what made it so funny, you’ll have to read it yourself to see but trust me it’s hilarious. And if you’ve read the book before you know what I’m talking about!

At 205 pages, the book is a quick read especially because so much of it is anecdotal. I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it if you’re a Lauren Graham fan, a Gilmore fan, a Parenthood fan, or just like to read about peoples’ lives and experiences.