“The process of engaging your celebrity is not unlike being a photographer at the Sears portrait studio. You just need a different version of a squeaky toy so their eyes follow you and they smile occasionally.” Jancee Dunn grew up in suburban Jersey, with two little sisters, a former Southern beauty queen for a mother and a JC Penney exec for a father. She somehow stumbled into a job writing for Rolling Stone, and ended up traveling around the world as she interviewed celebrity after celebrity. […]
Badkittyuno’s Review #8: Heartburn by Nora Ephron
“Vera said: ‘Why do you feel you have to turn everything into a story?’ So I told her why. Because if I tell the story, I control the version. Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story, it doesn’t hurt as much. Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.” Presumably based upon her own life experiences, Nora […]
Badkittyuno’s Review #7: Fear Nothing by Dean Koontz
“Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life–and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next.” I love this book. I really do. I’m not certain why, really. Dean Koontz is a schmaltzy writer. He overuses analogies and some of them are rather bizarre. Many of his books have similar details — bad ass chicks, unlikely heroes, a golden retriever or two. They start to blur together after […]
Badkittyuno’s Review #6: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
“Rule number one: Always stick around for one more drink. That’s when things happen. That’s when you find out everything you want to know.” Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is probably the best of the (six) books I’ve read so far this year. I’m hardly surprised, since I loved The City of Falling Angels by Berendt as well. He has a great writing style that makes his stories easy to read, and hard to remember that they’re not fiction. The events of Midnight in […]
Badkittyuno’s Review #5
Annie Choi is a funny lady. This is her second collection of essays, Shut Up, You’re Welcome, and was even funnier than the first (Happy Birthday or Whatever). Annie capitalizes on her humorous family and gently pokes fun at them as well as at herself in a way that is never nasty, but full of love. Annie’s loony mother stands front and center in most of Annie’s stories — criticizing her underwear, her dating life and her career choices. Her foul-mouthed brother vacillates from being on […]
Badkittyuno’s Review #4: The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp
My sister and I have very similar taste in books, and we share quite a bit — especially memoirs by funny chicks and YA. In fact, she’s on CBR this year, so you’ll probably notice that we review many of the same books. We are going to have to agree to disagree on this one, however, because she loved it, and I couldn’t get past my desire to throw the narrator through a plate-glass window. Sutter Keely is a high school student in Oklahoma who […]