BookSpin Review:

Scrappy Little Nobody
by Anna Kendrick
Touchstone Books
Hardcover

  At least the title of this book is 2/3 right.  I first heard of Anna Kendrick when I saw her in the really good movie Up in the Air, where she starred alongside George Clooney and Vera Farmiga.  Her performance in the role as Natalie Keener stole that movie in my opinion, then and now.

  If you follow her twitter account, which I recommend, you will find that this book is not too far from an extended twitter feed.  She manages to be endearing, funny, and adorable at the same time, all while telling how she rose from the "scrappy little nobody" to the talented little somebody she is now.  The book reads like I'd expect it to sound if she were telling the stories out loud.

  It's not fair that so much talent is jammed into one person.  This lady can act, sing, keep you in stiches, and now we find out she can even write very well.  She may be scrappy, she is definitely little, but the nobody part of her life is gone forever.

  I hope she doesn't mind me saying, as a writer, Anna Kendrick is a revelation!

  I recommend this book to any Anna Kendrick fan, to anyone interested in working as an actor, or to anyone who just likes to laugh...a lot.

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From the publisher's website:

A collection of humorous autobiographical essays by the Academy Award-nominated actress and star of Up in the Air and Pitch Perfect.

Even before she made a name for herself on the silver screen starring in films like Pitch Perfect, Up in the Air, Twilight, and Into the Woods, Anna Kendrick was unusually small, weird, and “10 percent defiant.”

At the ripe age of thirteen, she had already resolved to “keep the crazy inside my head where it belonged. Forever. But here’s the thing about crazy: It. Wants. Out.” In Scrappy Little Nobody, she invites readers inside her brain, sharing extraordinary and charmingly ordinary stories with candor and winningly wry observations.

With her razor-sharp wit, Anna recounts the absurdities she’s experienced on her way to and from the heart of pop culture as only she can—from her unusual path to the performing arts (Vanilla Ice and baggy neon pants may have played a role) to her double life as a middle-school student who also starred on Broadway to her initial “dating experiments” (including only liking boys who didn’t like her back) to reviewing a binder full of butt doubles to her struggle to live like an adult woman instead of a perpetual “man-child.”

Enter Anna’s world and follow her rise from “scrappy little nobody” to somebody who dazzles on the stage, the screen, and now the page—with an electric, singular voice, at once familiar and surprising, sharp and sweet, funny and serious (well, not that serious).