Suck it, Wonder Woman!: The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek is actress/tv hostess Olivia Munn’s first book (with Mac Montandon).  In it she takes us through various stories she’s lived through along with some asides like a chapter that consists of photos of her dressed as “Important Women”.

I honestly didn’t expect much from this book and I’m still a little mixed on my feelings.  I’ve never been a huge Olivia Munn fan.  I knew nothing about her more than the fact that she was sexy and was one of the hosts of Attack of the Show!, which I don’t watch.  I’d seen plenty of pictures of her and knew that some people went crazy over her.  But I found myself with some downtime and with some reading time and this book nearby and quickly found myself immersed in it.

This is Olivia Munn.

I found the tone to be more that of a blog than a book as well.  It’s mostly very lighthearted.  But there are a few times where the book gets truly touching such as the story of her grandmother’s death.  These little infusions of heart elevated the book beyond total fluff.  But the fluff was still plenty entertaining.  I especially enjoyed the stories about jumping into a pie and a disastrous Playboy shoot.  There’s a couple of funny/disgusting stories about unnamed big famous directors and their misogyny, and a couple of totally random short little pieces thrown in there for laughs like one about a boyfriend randomly telling her he’d like to suck a dick.  Oh there’s also a chapter featuring Olivia’s first lesbian experience.

So overall it was a pretty enjoyable read, but here’s the thing that bothered me about it.  Basically Munn addresses the book towards what is probably her core fanbase, geeky males and their penises.  Now as a geeky male with a penis this isn’t completely offensive to me, but it seems that she got a little lost in that and missed some opportunities to connect with a female demographic.  I do give her credit that she does talk about the work it takes to look like her, how photos are manipulated and camera angles can change things, and the things she doesn’t like about herself, etc.  She does do some good addressing negative body image issues but as someone who is pretty successful (she has a starring role on a new NBC sitcom, continues to host AotS, has several movie guest star appearances, and a Chuck guest starring role, not to mention this very book is a bona-fide bestseller) and also at many points in the book talks about where she did not want to flaunt her sexuality and instead wanted to be liked for her personality and brain she could potentially be a good female role model.  But instead she spends more time putting things like lesbian experiences and a chapter of just photos of her dressing up instead of talking to girls about how to be more comfortable with who they are, and in fact actually goes far enough to say she “is not a feminist”.  Maybe I’m just making too much of it.  She does do some good in this book for the women who might be reading it and maybe that’s enough.

Anyway I do recommend this as some light reading.  Like I said each chapter stands alone so you can read it broken up as an easy put down and pick up type thing.  It’s mostly fun but does contain heart and you could tell there’s some care behind this.  So check it out.  It’s available in hardcover over on Amazon:

and also in Kindle form:


And also available in audiobook from Audible where you can also get the first chapter for free.