Whoa. I've read several of the Bunny Girl memoirs but this is the best one yet. The writing is so poignant and beautiful, and I was really impressed by the amount of introspection Crystal Hefner has about her life. I'll admit that I used to be really judgy. I figured anyone who was a Bunny was probably a bimbo (derogatory), and I'm not proud of that. Especially after reading this books and finding out just how smart some of these women were, and how they were forced to hide it to perpetuate the male fantasy of uncomplicated, fun-loving girls.
This memoir begins prior to her life at the Mansion, talking about the trauma of losing her father to brain cancer (which I really related to-- that's how I lost my dad), losing her first serious boyfriend, and being raped. Like a lot of the other girls, she met Hugh by chance at a club and he picked her because he liked the way she looked. Like a lot of the other girls, she talks about Hefner's narcissism and the way he used his money to control his girlfriends, and how the other girls would often fight or go behind each other's backs to stay in his favor.
Most of those memoirs were written while Hefner was still alive and I did get the impression that some of them were holding back because of that, which is maybe testament to the power he held over their lives. Crystal's memoir, on the other hand, is no holds barred. She repeatedly calls him a narcissist and talks about how he would body-shame the girls in an attempt to get them to lose weight or get cosmetic surgery. Two of Harris's procedures nearly killed her and one ended up causing an autoimmune disorder (which is ironic, because in Izabella St. James's memoir, she talks about how lucky they all were that nobody in the Mansion ever had any complications from their surgery).
It gets grosser. Apparently, Hefner was paid $400,000 per episode of The Girls Next Door and Crystal got nothing. After his proposal, when the show Marrying Hef was being produced, Hefner was getting $800,000 and Crystal got $2,500 for the whole season as a sort of appearances bonus. She claims that he had peep holes in his bedroom that he used to film himself having sex, and based on some discussions she claims to have had with him in this book, it doesn't sound like the people he filmed always knew about it. When he and the girls went out together, he would encourage them to remove clothes or flash the camera and he would take pictures with a disposable camera. Crystal talks about finding the pictures and destroying them, while going through her husband's things.
I think the saddest thing, though, was at the end, when she was going through his scrapbooks and looking at the letters he received from people who liked what he was about. There was one from an 11-year-old girl who loved The Girls Next Door and told him she wanted to be a Playmate when she grew up. She sent him a picture of herself, too (in a school outfit), which he KEPT. There were also letters, she said, from boys thanking him for teaching them how to treat women.
Crystal repeatedly says that she often felt like she didn't have any value beyond her looks, and living at the Mansion only made that worse, because she was living a lifestyle where she was forced to be a prop and was constantly judged by her looks and mocked or commented on as if she didn't have any feelings. So many reviews have questioned why these women didn't just leave, but the prevailing theme in so many of these books seems to be that they didn't feel like they could-- that the ugly side of pretty privilege meant that nobody really took them seriously, so they felt like the Playboy brand was a stepping stone to something achievable, and possibly validating.
This was honestly a pretty devastating read and I felt so sad for her and the other women by the end of the book. She spills even more tea than St. James did and it is scalding and I hope she's doing well in her post-Mansion life, because it honestly sounds like she went through five different kinds of hell.
This is a great memoir about Asian-Canadian actor, Simu Liu, and his upbringing in both China and Canada. He talks about how he got his big break (and some of the roadblocks leading up to it), as well as the struggles of being an immigrant in a new country, and the child of immigrant parents with sky high expectations whose means of punishment may seem unconventional or even cruel when perceived outside of their cultural contexts.
Simu comes across as very likable in this memoir and part of that, ironically, is that he doesn't slink from his less likable moments. One of my criticisms of the celebrity memoir is that they often feel too glossy, but he admits to coasting and then nearly failing in college, and quotes one of his ex-girlfriends' takedowns of him when he was behaving like a Nice Guy(TM) to give her seemingly callous treatment of him in their relationship the proper context it deserved.
This was just a really honest, really endearing memoir and I liked it a lot. I like the actor a lot and this made me like him more.
I thrifted this and was pretty excited to see it because I loved the title and I'm kind of a sucker for celebrity memoirs. I saw someone call this "a memoir that isn't a memoir" and now that I've read it, I can see what they were talking about. I WANT TO BE WHERE THE NORMAL PEOPLE ARE has some great elements-- like her dealing with bullying, her crush on a mean boy who ditched her when people thought they were "together," and her anxiety whilst doing Famous Person Things(TM). But then there was also a lot of really strange and not-so-interesting things, like her adolescent poetry and old fanfiction.
I would probably only recommend this to die-hard fans of Rachel Bloom. It was a little too out there and self-indulgent for me.
BIGGER IS BETTER is a fascinating read written by the late Big Ang, of Mob Wives fame. I've never actually watched the show, but it was basically a reality TV show about a group of women who were famous for being related to the Genovese crime family. So basically, "The Real Housewives of the Mob." Apparently a lot of them have memoirs out, and several of them are on KU. This was one of them.
I wasn't sure what to expect with this one and it was much odder than I expected. It actually, bizarrely, has a fairly similar format to THE RULES ACCORDING TO JWOWW, in that it's like a combination of recipes, life advice, memoir, and random observations. Kind of like an R-rated version of Seventeen magazine.
She was a very interesting woman and if you get this book for one reason, get it for the anecdote about the bat that flew into her 36JJ boobs and immediately died on impact.
This a memoir written by the ex-girlfriend of ex-District Attorney, Eric Schneiderman, who was later accused of abuse by several of his exes, including the author of this book, Tanya Selvaratnam. In this memoir, she writes about how they met, and how his abuse escalated, and what her experiences of living with intimate partner violence were like. Apparently this made pretty big news. Trevor Noah even included a joke about it on his show, because it was considered pretty scandalous that a high-up political official forced his brown girlfriend to participate in master/slave play. She obviously found the joke very distasteful and wrote in to complain, for which she received an apology.
I loved this book a lot. I think she did a great job showing how you can enter a relationship with wide eyes and not realize that your partner is an abusive person until it's too late, because of course we want to forgive the people we love when they hurt us in the hopes that they won't do it again. It was wonderful to hear about the people in her life who worked hard to validate and support her, and get her story out there when she needed it. I also loved that she made the effort to point out that some of the behaviors that happen in abusive relationships can be totally fine in a consensual kinky relationship, but the difference is consent, respect of boundaries, and mutual enthusiasm. That's a distinction that not all memoirs like these bother to make.
Some people complained about her privilege but I think it just goes to show how even with a huge support network, money to spare, and an established career, you can still get suckered in by master manipulators and they can still make it very hard to get away. The racial component is also a valid one, too, and she does point out that brown and Black women have good reason to be leery of law enforcement officials when it comes to making reports of abuse.
I bought this impulsively because it was on sale. MOSHI MOSHI is absolutely adorable. Winnie Liu is an illustrator who was lucky enough to have the chance to study abroad in Japan when she was in college. In this heavily illustrated travelogue and memoir(?) she details some of her adventures, gives recommendations, and spotlights a few of the many cultural differences between Japan and other parts of the world.
I was lucky enough to go to Japan a few years ago and I've been to several of the places she talked about here. It made me incredibly nostalgic for my trip. Would definitely recommend this to anyone who is looking for vacation ideas. Especially if they love cute art.
If you loved the Barbie movie, then you need to read this book. Carol Spencer was one of the head designers of some of Barbie's most iconic outfits, having worked at the company from the 60s all the way through the 90s. Part memoir, part Barbie fashion catalogue, this book follows Spencer through her childhood and college years, into her work for Mattel. She talks about working in Asia for two years, where she partnered with people in Malaysia, Japan, and China, and also how the oil embargo of the 70s impacted the production of Barbie clothes.
A lot of these Barbies predate me, but the late 80s, early 90s ones brought back so many fond memories! I also loved how feminist and inspiring this book was. I guess Spencer was engaged to this dude who was under the impression that she would work to pay for his med school, and when she got accepted into the college of her dreams and told him that she was planning to pay for her own schooling and that he should do the same, he DUMPED her. #TakeThatManOutToTheCurb
I just loved this book so much and there's tons of amazing photographs of Barbies, some of them quite rare, most of them from the author's private collection. My eyes welled up a little when I found out that she got a Barbie of herself for her retirement, holding a little bouquet of flowers. I want a Nenia Barbie. :( It just goes to show that for all the criticism Barbie gets, she has been inspiring to so many girls and women. She certainly was for me.
I think this is the fourth book of Gay's I've read and as always, she doesn't disappoint. Her books always feel so raw and emotional, but they're written as if you're looking at her words through the other side of a clear glass wall: removed, but with a full view of whatever terrible or beautiful thing she decides she wants to show you.
This book removes that barrier.
HUNGER is probably her hardest book to read, although it's a close call with UNTAMED STATE. This is a memoir about the body: what it means to take up space (especially as a tall, "super plus-size" Black woman), what it means to hunger-- for food as well as acceptance, and how in our desire to fill up the emptiness inside us we sometimes turn to darkness. In this book she also discloses her rape, and the lasting effect it had on both her mind and her body, and how it shaped her sexual relationships in an irreversible way.
She says at several points that she doesn't want to be defined by what happened to her and I fully understand that. When I think of Gay, I think of an honest book reviewer and a phenomenal writer. But sometimes, with celebrity figures, we forget that there's a man (or person) behind the curtain with very real flaws and insecurities. I admire Gay for her bravery in sharing what it means to be a human who has gone through terrible things, and hearing her thoughts on how society contributes to structures that continue to facilitate these inequalities and injustices.
I hope this memoir brings other people comfort and makes them feel less alone.
Oh man, I remember American Apparel. I never shopped there, though. At my high school, it was what the "slutty hipsters" wore and I did not listen to nearly enough Arcade Fire to be able to shop there. I do remember seeing the ads for the shops, though, and being like, "Huh. Awk." There's actually an opinion piece from some reputable magazine that compared their ads to softcore porn.
In STRIP TEES, Kate Flannery, an ex-spokesmodel for the company, talks about living in LA in her late teens and early twenties, working for the infamous teen clothing brand. She compares it to a cult, and I think she may be on to something, because the complicit silences and closing of ranks that happen in a toxic workplace environment really can appear similar to the mass-brainwashing of a pseudo religion.
I LOVED this book. If you told me one of my favorite memoirs of the year was going to be about a clothing brand from my childhood that I never wore, I would have lol'd. But here I am, spitting facts: this is a snapshot of a bygone era and a #MeToo story, as well as a voyeuristic insight into the rise and fall of a once-powerful company.
Here's the thing: I am super nosy. I don't know if any of you young people still read fashion magazines, but when I was in my TigerBeat, CosmoGirl, Seventeen, Elle phase, I lived for the sections in these magazines where Real Teen Girls Would Tell Their Real Teen Stories™. Sometimes it would be written out like a Medium article, and sometimes you'd get a section in the back with girls (or maybe guys/nonbinary people, idk, it was anonymous), confessing their totally most cringiest moments, Dear Abby style. I still remember some of my favorites, like this one about a girl who popped out of her tube top like a champagne cork out of a fizzy bottle. Or the girl who decided to let it go in the pool, only for the pool chemicals to turn her urine purple.
This book is basically that, in book form. I don't actually know who the LadyGang is, but I guess they're podcast hosts, and in this collection they have confessed some of their own sins, in addition to crowdsourcing more from their listening audience. I got hooked into this book through the introductory essay, Poopnique, about how Jac apparently sits on her toilet like a gargoyle with her feet on the seat to poop. That set the stage rather nicely for what was to come.
I do agree with the arguments that the podcast hosts were the least interesting in terms of stories. Jac's were usually great and Becca had some good ones, but a lot of Keltie's were just Hollywood humblebrags masked as "oh my god, so embarrassing." Which I wasn't mad about, but it wasn't exactly cringe as, say, the lady who took a laxative pill to unblock herself and ended up on a multi-day poopscapade that ruined $4000 of underwear and linens. Or the crime writer who sent a business card of herself with a photo to a serial killer she wanted to write about in prison, only to find out that he'd, I guess, traded her photos for candy with other inmates who were only too happy to write to her.
There's something very voyeuristic about this collection in a way that kind of reminds me of the PostSecret era of found content. I do agree that women should be able to talk about a lot of the "taboo" subjects in this book and that it isn't fair that so many things are acceptable for men to talk about (pooping, farting) that everyone will shame women for. So I think in that sense, this exercise is rather progressive, and also contains stories that will make people think either "wow, there really are no unique experiences" or "now I don't feel so alone." It was a brisk and interesting read but I didn't get much out of it beyond that.
I thrifted this book recently, which was really exciting for me because I remember really wanting this book when I was in my edgelord hipster phase and none of the stores around me carried it and then I basically forgot about it for years and years and years until I picked it up this weekend, saw the VICE publishing imprint on the back, and was like, "Oh, hey, it's you."
Here's the thing. Normally I don't like reading people's diaries. People are rarely as interesting or as clever as they think they are, and packaging something that was written for your private introspection and selling it to the public usually results in broken hearts all around. I know some people don't feel comfortable rating memoirs because it's someone's life... but at the same time, as soon as you slap a price tag on that little piece that you're selling, it becomes a consumable good, in a sense. At least in that framing.
DEAR DIARY is actually pretty decent for what it is and what it's trying to do. I think what makes it better is that Arfin posts her diaries as excerpts and then follows up with commentary from her now, often interviewing the people she was writing about and asking them why they did what they did when they were kids, and what they're doing now, and asking for their perspective, etc. It reminds me of this video I saw on YouTube where this person tracked down people who unfriended them on Facebook and then asked why they unfriended them? And I was like THANKS I HATE IT, but I cringe-watched it anyway.
What I liked best about this book though is the portrayal of the '90s and '00s alt culture, and what it felt like to be a grungy, edgy kid who didn't quite fit in. The pop-culture references were so much fun and even though I couldn't relate to the drug stuff at all, I loved how this felt like a period piece. It's like a weird and fucked-up time capsule and I think I might quasi-stan.
Did I buy this book just because of the gel pens on the cover? Yes.
EVERYBODY'S FAVORITE is a fun, nostalgia-laced memoir of growing up in the Ozarks in the early 00s. Crammed in with all the boy band fangirling and glittery jelly shoes, however, is a lot of serious stuff: overcoming religious trauma, dealing with health problems, misogyny: both external and internal, and a lot of pretty intense oversharing (e.g. streaking, uncomfortably horny dogs).
I thought most of these essays were great but some of them felt a little like afterthoughts, especially the ones that felt like skits and the more blatant attempts at forced humor. However, I can't give anything a bad rating that made me soooo nostalgic, and honestly, if you want a real aughts-stamped slice of life, this is for you, especially if you're a fan of essayists like Mia Mercado or Sloane Crosley.
A moment of appreciation for this queen: she knew people were going to be swarming this memoir for tea about the porn and the hush money and used it as a platform to talk about how much she loves horses and heavy metal bands.
No, but seriously.
FULL DISCLOSURE is one book in a sea of books written by people who thought to themselves "Fuck Trump" whilst riding the Cash-In Train, but unlike some of those books, she comes across as funny, sympathetic, and likable. I'm actually shocked that this book has such low ratings-- but on the other hand, no I'm not. ...more
I just read and LOVED Paris Hilton's tongue-in-cheek aughts-era memoir, CONFESSIONS OF AN HEIRESS, so obviously I'm dying to read this follow up whereI just read and LOVED Paris Hilton's tongue-in-cheek aughts-era memoir, CONFESSIONS OF AN HEIRESS, so obviously I'm dying to read this follow up where she's dropped the party girl facade and is just YOLO-ing her way through business venture after successful business venture
P.S. Not to sound like a shill but her cookware and home goods products are surprisingly good???!...more
AN ITALIAN AFFAIR reminded me a lot of that episode of Sex and the City where Charlotte has to explain to Carrie why sleeping with a married man doesn't make her a girl's girl. In this memoir, Laura Fraser details her two-year-long affair with a married man, a professor of aesthetics from Paris, who she meets on vacation while in Italy after a disastrous end to her own marriage. Hashtag gatekeep, gaslight, go for another girl's man.
I remember reading this in my early twenties and enjoying it then, although I was a little more judgmental of the author's choices, I think. Now, closer to the author's own age at the time she wrote this book, some of her choices make more sense. Actually, AN ITALIAN AFFAIR is a lot like how I expected EAT, PRAY, LOVE to be like (but wasn't); it's a little smutty, it's introspective, and it's also a fun travel memoir about food, culture, and romance. But there's none of the precious pseudo-spiritualism of EPL, thank god. The author knows that she is being selfish and self-indulgent. She just doesn't care. Which, paradoxically, makes it easier to tolerate.
The nameless Bob Dylan-looking Professor is not very PC and is very clearly a product of his times. He and his wife, according to him, both have an open relationship with lots of affairs, but who the hell knows if he's lying. He definitely gives off strong daddy vibes, and the whole memoir kind of feels like a Lana Del Rey song, but, like, in real life. She definitely manages to show why he's charming and also why he feels safely emotionally unavailable, too. And as someone who reads romance novels with heroes who have this sort of coding, it's kind of a rude wake-up call as to why sometimes fantasy should stay fantasy. I mean, I knew that, but still. Rude.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with the author's personal choices, she tells a fascinating story, beautifully. I'm definitely interested in reading more of her travel writing now.
BOOKS V. CIGARETTES is a very funny essay by George Orwell in which he maps out his book buying habits and then compares it to what he spends on booze and cigarettes. Be forewarned, if you are buying this on Amazon, that the 99-cent essay only contains the ten-page-ish essay about Books v. Cigarettes. It's a bit of a rip-off, but I just love George Orwell's nonfiction so much that I decided I was okay with being scammed just this once. Seriously, though, if you-- like me-- were kind of put off by his fiction, I really recommend his essays and memoirs. DOWN AND OUT IN LONDON AND PARIS is lovely and so evocative of the times. Similarly, in this essay, Orwell demonstrates how so many of the characteristics of the bookworm endure over time. He sounds like one of those TikTok girlies struggling to validate their ebook purchases with his, "Well, most of them were secondhand" and "I probably spend just as much if not more on ciggies" rhetoric.
For Black History Month, I'm reading all of the books by Black authors that I had on my Kindle that I wasn't able to get to throughout the rest of the year. NOTES FROM A YOUNG BLACK CHEF was a book that I was very excited to read, because one of my favorite types of memoirs is the foodie memoir. I love food of all kinds, and I really admire the people who are good at making it, and how they translate culture and science into exquisite-- and edible-- creations.
Kwame Onwuachi was apparently on Top Chef, which I did not know because I do not watch that show, but it seems like he was a crowd fave for the season he was on. After reading this book, I can see why. He's a fascinating guy. His memoir starts with him doing a fancy museum dinner for an African Studies tie-in, but then launches back to his upbringing and the various experiences that put him on the track to culinary stardom. We learn about the time his mom sent him to his grandfather in Nigeria to teach him discipline, his brushes with gang life in the Bronx, what it was like cooking on a ship, and how he scrimped and saved to get money learning how to cook at the CIA (which I stupidly assumed was the Central Intelligence Agency, to which I thought, "Oh, is that where they teach their spies how to cook?)
There were some things I loved about this memoir but fell just short of me loving it. First though, I want to address some of the reviews slamming him for being young and arrogant. I am not sure where this assumption comes that people who are under forty don't have anything worthwhile to say about their lives. I think a lot of young people these days are accomplishing great things and I want to read about them. Memoirs are only as interesting as the life someone has lived and trust me, I've read plenty of memoirs from older individuals who thought they were fascinating and clever, but were not. Second, while I agree that Onwuachi comes off as abrasive in his memoir, I do feel it's justified. He works hard and dealt with some pretty awful stuff when he was younger. He even says something in this memoir to the affect that being meek and mild within the oppressive structure of society when you yourself are a member of the oppressed isn't going to get you very far. Maybe some of his persona is defensive, and maybe some of that is who is, but I think it's totally valid. You don't become successful by being a pushover. Not in his industry, anyway. Being a professional chef is brutal. It's probably one hundred times harder as a man of color, with so many people just gleefully hoping you'll fail.
That said, I do wish that this had been more food-focused. He does talk a lot about cooking but a lot of it got too technical for me. I actually think people like my mom, who aren't professional chefs but have some culinary training, would appreciate this more than I did. My favorite portions of the book were actually about the parts of his life when he was in Nigeria and the Bronx, and how some of what he ate there shaped his cooking. For example, I had no idea that gumbo comes from a Twi word (I think that's what they speak in Ghana?), and that the Creole dish has African and German influences. I also LOVED that he included so many recipes that tied into his life's story. That was really neat.
So overall, not a bad book. It wasn't quite what I expected but I ended up liking it anyway and I think it's a great addition to the culinary canon of those such as Anthony Bourdain and Padma Lakshmi.
So apparently Sanyika Shakur actually has a Wikipedia page, something I did not know prior to reading this book. (He was also friends with Tupac!) I found this book totally randomly in a Little Free Library and thought it would make a great addition to the list of books by Black authors that I am reading for Black History Month, as I know very little about Black Nationalism or L.A. gang violence, and before Shakur converted to Islam and Black Nationalism and started trying to devote his time to turn people away from gangs, he was a pretty major player in his local syndicate.
MONSTER, which was his nickname he got for beating up a guy, is Shakur's story of how he got into the gang, how he eventually got caught, what prison was like, and what he did after. It's an interesting memoir and I can appreciate his motives for writing it and coming clean about his past, even if a lot of what happened in it disturbed me. I also think that he brings up a pretty important issue, which is similarly touched upon in Patricia Williams's memoir RABBIT, which is that infrastructural racism contributes to crime because it makes it possible for Black people and people of color in low-income areas to make money and make community networks, which they might not otherwise have the privilege of getting. This does not make gang violence or, in the case of RABBIT, drug-dealing, morally ethical, but it does make it understandable-- at least from a logic perspective. If the doors to legitimate ways of making money and earning a living are closed to you and your family, why wouldn't you turn to other channels instead?
My favorite parts of the book were his interactions with his mom and girlfriend(s), and what his upbringing was like, and his interactions with his family. I also really liked the descriptions of 1980s L.A. and how well he knew his neighborhood. There was a description of him and his mom in an Asian-owned grocery store and another of one of his associates and a boombox that just felt very 1980s. His interest in Black Nationalism and his African cultural roots was also interesting and I wish there was more about that, and what he talked to the younger men in his community about after prison. Most of the memoir is a recount of his crimes, which started to feel repetitive and impersonal-- probably by necessity, but it could make the writing feel cold. Although I will admit that I smiled when he was reading The Godfather and using it for inspo on how he wanted to run his own gang. It was both disturbing and quirky, and felt like something a character in a movie might do. I don't know-- I thought it was funny. Honestly, for a subject I feel so uncomfortable with, he made it fairly easy to read. So take from that what you will. Honestly, if you're at all curious about L.A. history or what happens in a gang (hopefully for research purposes only), it's worth the read.
I admire Ms. Nyamayaro's humanitarian work and thought the portions set in Zimbabwe were interesting, but the constant time jumps and made this a tough read.
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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