Over break, I was fortunate enough to get two amazing celebrity memoirs as pleasure reading for the three weeks we were off. While both of them (Amy Schumer’s “The Girl With The Lower Back Tattoo” and Lauren Graham’s “Talking As Fast As I Can”) are highly recommended, Graham’s book was perfect for any fan of hers, whether you just know her as Lorelai Gilmore, Sarah Braverman, a combination of both or even know her from her movie roles.
“Talking As Fast As I Can” is Graham’s second foray into book writing, as her first book, “Someday, Someday Maybe,” was published in 2013. And, even though some say that the second of anything is nowhere near as good as the first, I think Graham’s second book is much better than her first. Mainly because she’s able to be herself, as it’s her memoir.
Being as much of a fan of Graham as I am (I love her as both Lorelai Gilmore on “Gilmore Girls” and Sarah Braverman on “Parenthood” and cannot decide which character is better), I went into this book with high hopes that were mostly met.
Graham doesn’t hold back much in her memoir, whether it’s about her very first starring role in high school, her times as an apprentice at a theater camp to try and become a member of the Actors Equity union or her two most well-known roles, they’re all there, told in a way that only Graham can pull off. She’s also able to incorporate humor into some of the chapters, especially when she talks about Hollywood diets and how a food is considered “in” one day and “out” the next day and when she jokes about celebrities using ghost writers when they write a memoir or autobiography.
Her season-by-season recaps of the original run of “Gilmore Girls” were the perfect brush-up for anyone who needed a reminder of the show before diving in to watch the revival series on Netflix. It was also refreshing to know that Graham totally forgot that her character was married to Christopher, which was a plot point in the seventh season that fans hated. But, let’s be real, it was nice to get Graham’s opinions on anything related to the show.
Graham also included a shooting diary of sorts that recounted her days of returning to “Gilmore Girls,” complete with cast reunions (like Melissa McCarthy returning as Sookie) and her thoughts on the final four words (which shall not be revealed here) and how they’re kind of cliffhanger-y and how there should be more “Gilmore Girls.”
But what’s seemingly lacking is her recounting her time on “Parenthood.” For a show that ran for six seasons and 103 episodes, I expected more from the chapter. It’s the shortest chapter of the book at less than 10 pages and doesn’t include a thought diary or a shooting diary like some of her other chapters of the book do. At least she did include her time with Peter Krause, her on-screen brother and her off-screen boyfriend, into the book, and talked about her relationship with Miles Heizer and Mae Whitman, who played her two kids on “Parenthood.” As a fan of the show, it’s nice to know that the three of them, and the entire cast, in general, were as close as they were on the show.
However, despite the lacking chapter on one of Graham’s best acting on a TV show, the book as a whole will leave you smiling, laughing and, if you’re like me, crying because Graham is perfection.
