Uganda Be Kidding Me

March 17, 2014
The outspoken star of the television show Chelsea Lately and author of several bestsellers (Are You There Vodka? It's Me Chelsea) muses on her travels to Africa, Switzerland, the Bahamas and more. Handler takes her raunchy personality along with as she travels the globe, relaying to readers a variety of adventures laced with alcohol, over-the-top behavior, kooky friends and relatives, and a fair share of scatological humor. The most entertaining trips involve multiple locations in Africa such as her experience at a safari in South Africa which she describes as both "majestic" and "like being on the set of Jurassic Park but with room service." In general Handler's humor is centered less on the destination and more toward the nature of travel. She reminisces about the time she mistook shampoo for sunblock, and the problem of vacation weight gain. Along the way, Handler gets injured skiing, lost on a rendezvous with a boyfriend, thrown out of a famous restaurant, and does a riff on training a demon puppy. She's never dull.

February 1, 2014
Further globe-trotting adventures of the scandalous talk show host. TV host and author Handler (Lies that Chelsea Handler Told Me, 2011, etc.) returns with another chronicle of bad behavior, this time focusing on her various fabulous vacations to such exotic destinations as Africa and Switzerland. Her shtick remains intact: an unapologetic stream of calculated outrageousness, including casual near-racism, abuse heaped on friends and family, overindulgence in various intoxicating substances, sexual frankness and scatological misadventure ("Mixing Metamucil with vodka will be successful in helping you go to the bathroom, but your timing should be strategic if staying with a friend. Once you clog someone's toilet, they have a hard time remembering anything about you other than you clogging their toilet"). The results are fitfully funny, though the author's grotesque sense of privilege and entitlement begins to grate; though this tone is certainly also part of Handler's highly polished comic persona, readers not blessed with the TV star's wealth and coterie of pampering enablers may begin to resent her petty complaints and blithe disregard for consequences. The bulk of the narrative concerns Handler's safari expedition in Africa, and the author's observations, when not actively offensive, are amusing. Handler is particularly adept at realizing her characters: Her traveling companions, safari guides and resort staffers emerge vividly drawn, and her ear for distinctive and telling dialogue is well-honed. She is less successful maintaining interest when going on about her dogs, a common pitfall of overly involved pet owners. The highlights of the book are a riotously funny set piece in which our heroine evacuates into her bathing suit while perilously far from appropriate restroom facilities and a reproduced email exchange between Handler and a pathetically delusional suitor. This material is by turns gross, mean and compulsively funny, which sums up the appeal of the book when Handler is on her game. Fans of Handler's outrageous persona will find much to enjoy; the unconverted will remain so.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from March 1, 2014
Here's all you really need to know about Chelsea Handler, straight from the girl herself: It is not lost on me that my life has become ridiculous. Handler, star of her own late-night TV show, Chelsea Lately, and best-selling author of three previous titles, including Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea (2008), takes readers on her travels; each adventure can only be described as a total shit show. Absurdity reigns, from a safari in Africa, where the only ones getting penetrated (her favorite word) are the hundreds of baboons at the lodge, to the Bahamas, where after eight days in Africa without a bowel movement, Handler finally lets loose into an innocent kayak. The U.S. is not left unscathed, either. At most times, Handler is surrounded by her friendslet's face it, she wouldn't survive on her ownand Chunk, a half-German, half-Asian dog that she believes to be the reincarnation of her dead mother. As long as someone can make a decent margarita, and there's Xanax on hand, Handler is just finealthough the same can't be said for the people she encounters. The final chapters really have nothing to do with travel and feel less connected to the rest of the book; in Handler's defense, she was probably drunk by this point in the writing process. But if you're one of the millions who enjoy Handler's sarcastic, self-deprecating humor (and her tendency to be pantless), then you may just pee yourself laughing as she humiliates herself from Montenegro to Telluride. Unfortunatelyreally unfortunatelyphotos weren't available at the time of review, but based on the shenanigans described, they have a ton of potential. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Who's not watching Chelsea Lately at 11/10c?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

October 15, 2013

E! network star Handler's Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea has sold over 1.2 million in hardcover and trade paperback combined and the recent Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang 800,000 copies. Here's her take on the travails of travel. With an 800,000-copy first printing; pushed back from October 2013.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2014

Television personality and best-selling author (Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang) recounts her globe-trotting misadventures from a South African safari (Handler and company enjoy wild animal sightings and girls-just-want-to-have-fun "bush happy hours" replete with champagne and vodka) to a wipeout on Geneva's ski slopes (a guide informs Handler that she's torn her ACL and "a helicopter of Nazis is on [its] way to medevac [her] to the nearest burn unit"). Over-the-top irreverent, the author delivers comic tales of sexual tension that are packed with adolescent toilet humor and unsolicited travel advice.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.