Red

Incredibly boring

Revisado: 01-01-24

If you write an autobiography, you should either 1) have an interesting life story to tell, 2) tell the story well, or 3) both

This book had none of the above. Spent about two hours trying to like it before I gave up.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Disappointing

Revisado: 06-13-23

This book will undoubtedly get high praise. And on the surface, it should. Page's decision to come out as trans in the middle of a a very public career is courageous and his willingness to share admirable.

And I really wanted to like this book. It's one of perhaps two on Audible that I actually pre-ordered before its publication date.

It was a disappointment.

The most jarring problem is the choice to tell what is really by definition a linear story -- that of a transition -- in a curiously non-chronological way, jumping from a description of a childhood event to something that happened as an adult in Hollywood, and back again. There is so little context that it's impossible to follow the actual path of Page's life. If the individual scenes were compelling enough by themselves or if details of Page's history were so well known that his life path is common knowledge, this wouldn't be a problem. But neither are true.

And what are undoubtedly key elements of Page's story are often buried. For example, early on in the book -- perhaps in Chapter 4 -- he casually mentions coming out as gay at an event in 2014, but this is delivered with no context of the event or the immediate aftermath and the story quickly jumps back to childhood events and forward to adult relationships. And somewhere around Chapter 25 he alludes to getting married, but we hear almost nothing about his spouse or anything about the marriage (was there a wedding? did Page's parents attend? how did the media respond?). And, wait, Page was a star youth soccer player? How'd that come about? And how did he go from being an anonymous kid in Nova Scotia to starring in Hollywood movies? Are we supposed to know all this already?

Much of the book consists of mundane stories of serial romantic relationships, with the usual trauma and angst these bring, dating back to when Page was a young teen, and of his sometimes rocky relationships with his parents. These were of course significant in his life, but there's nothing in the telling that informs us why should we care. For a book presumably about Page's transition, there's also little that ties his experiences in a middle school romance or with step siblings that won't share their toys to his later coming out as gay and then trans.

Finally, Page isn't a great writer. I'll cut him some slack because it's an autobiography, not ghost-written. But parts sound more like a middle-schooler's diary and the sing-song delivery style doesn't help.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 16 personas

The book that led me to cancel Audible membership

Revisado: 03-10-23

This book is so bad, it caused me to cancel my Audible membership for nearly a year. Would have returned it, but Audible wouldn't let me.

it's not that the topic isn't rich for storytelling. it certainly is. But the story reads like some kind of sophomore year project that was rushed together at the last hour, with a series of apparently unedited first-person accounts of life in the Broadway theater business. The biggest problems are 1) Because the stories are unedited, we hear the same thing over and over from different characters. How many times are we told that the Richard Rogers theater used to be called the 46the Street Theater? i lost count at about ten, and that's with only making it about a quarter of the way through the book before giving up. 2) Because the book employs different narrators, it seems, for each of the stories, and the book is mostly stories, it's hard to keep track of who's talking.

The writer would have been better served by actually writing a narrative that included relevant short quotes from the primary sources, not just including pages/hours of unedited verbatim text from them.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

What's fact and what's fiction?

Revisado: 07-14-22

Billings, by her own admission, is a liar. And therein lies the problem with this book. It's not truthful or accurate enough for an autobiography and not a good enough story for fiction. The embellishments are most blatant when she describes historical events. For example, there were not widespread marches in the streets celebrating people dying of AIDS in the 1980s. There was mostly silence, and this was worse. But silence doesn't make for a good story. And if she's making up historical events, how can we know that anything she says about her personal experiences are accurate? Much of her prose reads like she's recreating scenes from classic movies, not retelling her own life story. This is all made worse by a disjointed chronology that might have been intended to group content into topical categories, but mostly just serves to confuse.

I've long admired Billings work on and off the stage and screen, and was hoping for more from this book. It mostly proved a disappointment.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Shouldn't Have Gone There

Revisado: 11-16-21

Katy Couric wants to be taken seriously as a real journalist, rather than only remembered for being a perpetually cheerful morning show host. This book only confirms how far away she is from any kind of serious journalism. It's 15 hours of petty vindictiveness in which she criticizes everyone from former colleagues to politicians to even her own mother and late first husband, blames everyone else for her serial career stumbles after leaving Today and shows shockingly little self-awareness.

Does she not realize how cringey it is to namedrop every celebrity who hosted her at their weekend house on Martha's Vineyard? Does she think there's value in reporting that she saw Rosie O'Donnell cry at her husbands funeral, held at the "funeral home to the stars" as she puts it? And what did former Ohio Gov. John Kasich ever do to her except ask if it was a change to go from the CBS News to Yahoo?

If she hoped to solidify any kind of legacy as a serious journalist, she failed, hanging her laurels only on asking Sarah Palin what magazines she read and touching the arm of a grieving relative from the Columbine school shooting. This is far from enough and her insecurity is painful.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Why, Carly?

Revisado: 03-29-21

This is so bad it's embarrassing. Simon is a talented singer-songwriter but, at least through the second chapter, which was as much as I could take, this book is nothing more than name-dropping and shallow gossip about her fellow wealthy celebrities and Simon's obsession with her own insecurities.

Elizabeth McGovern's voice is also totally wrong for this author.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Grew tedious

Revisado: 08-22-19

In the author's note at the start of this book, Reichl says, "if you are reading this, I assume Gourmet touched your life."

Maybe that was the problem.

I never read an issue of Gourmet magazine. It never touched my life. I only know it from newsstands, where I didn't buy it, and from its reputation as a top foodie publication.

So maybe this book wasn't for me.

But even if I had read Gourment, I think I'd find her endless stories of interactions with dozens of her colleagues and competitors tedious and hard to follow. Reichl may have been a great restaurant reviewer but she does a terrible job of painting descriptions of all these editors, writers, art directors, and ad people. They blur into a generic mass and we simply don't care about any of them or understand the significance of their roles in Reichl's life. Without that, there's not much left.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Relationship drama is not interesting.

Revisado: 07-18-19

Essentially every memoir from a staffer about their years in the Obama White House becomes a best seller, so this book was destined for success merely because of its subject.

But, the book isn't great. Dorey-Stein spends far too much time retelling details of her various boyfriends and the ensuing relationship drama. This is simply boring. We don't really get a sense of who the men (Sam, Jason, Noah, Charlie, etc.) are and there is nothing unique or special about that aspect of her life.

The book should have been more about what her job was like. Surprisingly, she doesn't ever really tell us much about what her job entailed. How do the microphones work? How big are the recorders? What are the challenges or placing the recorders? How much time did she spend transcribing recordings? Where did she do the transcription? We get almost no information on that. Instead we get pages and pages about how boy #1 is mad because she's dating boy #2 but she's secretly dating boy #3 on the side. Or something.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Laughably bad

Revisado: 06-06-19

This is a joke of a book.

It appears that author has never been to Venice. It's full of laughable statements like, "The streets [of Venice] can be a little hilly, so brace yourself..." What? Venice is one of the flattest cities on planet Earth. What is he talking about? The only thing that could be construed as "hills" are the bridges over the many canals.

Mostly the book is full of general lists of places to see that anyone could find from a Wikipedia article about Venice. The lengthy lists of restaurants and stores to go to is useless because it's just a list of names with no addresses and it's unclear how current the info is.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Good except for the ridiculous accents

Revisado: 05-09-18

Robert Lacey's accompaniment to "The Crown" is a good read for anyone interested in understanding the real facts and history behind the Netflix series "The Crown." This might be especially useful for Americans who are not terribly familiar with the history of the British royal family.

The audio book book is brought down only by narrator Alex Jennings' use of silly accents when speaking dialogue from everyone ranging from Winston Churchill to Lyndon Johnson to the Queen. Most Americans sound like an impersonation of an old movie cowboy.. And most Brits like parodies from a Monty Python skit.

Five stars overall. Two stars for the performance.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 5 personas