Book Review: Keith Moon Stole My Lipstick

With a title such as Keith Moon Stole My Lipstick, I thought there was no way that a book such as this could lose. ...I thought wrong.

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of The Who. Nor that my favorite member of the band is Keith Moon. (I'm even posting this on what would have been his birthday.) When I found out a book by this title even existed, naturally I was intrigued. Given the sort of antics that Keith was so famously notorious for, I began brainstorming what sort of a story this could possibly be. I came up with all sorts of possibilities of what Keith could have done with this lipstick....if, in fact, he did truly steal anyone's lipstick. Or perhaps it was just an attention-grabbing title? Who knew...

The book is rather convoluted. First off, it's pretty bad when I initially couldn't tell whether this book was actually an autobiography, or rather, just a very realistic work of fiction involving real-life celebrity names as the main players. It took me several chapters before I started fact-checking names -- the author's name, the name of the publication she worked for, etc -- to see if they existed in real life or not. ...Unbelievably, they did. Alright, at least we've established one thing here. Now knowing that this was in fact a true story, I began to digest it as an autobiography...which are normally my favorite genre of book. This one, however....

It's strange. It had all the elements going for it that under normal circumstances, would automatically be enough to make me love it. It's an autobiography. It's by a british author. It's about classic rock music. There's mentions of the Beatles, the Who, the Monkees, even Lorna Luft, for god's sake (about as close to Liza Minnelli as we get in this book, unfortunately), as well as some classic film stars such as Bette Davis. There's even a fairly good story about Andy Williams in here. And yet.... I still have to say, this book was about the dryest thing I have ever read.

Even the anecdote for which this book was titled after was amazingly lackluster. Yes, Keith stole the author's lipstick. All he did with it was draw on his chest, and remove his shirt to show off his artwork in the middle of a show. ...Honestly, I was expecting a much larger, grander-scale story about Moonie here.

 Another gripe I have is how the author is just so unimpressed with just about everyone in this book, and feels the need to nitpick everyone -- usually on their appearance, mostly. Good god, woman, if you were so miserable in your work, why didn't you leave a lot sooner and do something else if you didn't even like any of these people? (Seriously, when we're even at the point of nitpicking Paul McCartney's appearance and failing to understand why the world thinks he's cute....Houston, we have a problem.)

Lastly, and my biggest problem with this book indeed, is the fact that -- okay, this book is written by someone who wrote for music publications FOR YEARS. Not only that, but has since gone on to write 25+ books... AND YET, spelling errors, grammatical errors, YOU NAME IT, they all run absolutely rampantly through the book. I could've excused a few here and there, but honestly, they were all over the place to the point where I was getting beyond annoyed even just trying to read the book and kept having to put it down every few pages to calm myself.

I wanted to enjoy this book; I really did, but I just didn't. And I admit, that left me feeling very sad and quite empty, given what all the book was about, but it was just written in such a way to where I highly doubt it ever grabbed anybody. I'm going to rate this book 2 out of 5 stars, and even at that, I feel like I'm being generous.

Book Review: "The A-List: Hollywood Royalty"

Like many a best-selling teen book series, Zoey Dean's The A-List has its own new spin-off: The A-List: Hollywood Royalty. Out with the old, in with the new as far as the cast of characters goes. There's very, *very* subtle references to old characters such as Sam Sharpe, but they are mentioned only in passing and as if you must know who they're speaking of.

The new cast of characters is almost befitting of any given group of Disney channel teen stars in the past decade. And almost all of them, you can practically tell what real celebrity they're based loosely off of. (The most obvious of these is Myla - the name practically heralding to Miley, and the family beckoning the the Brangelina pack.) Unlike the last cast of characters, who at least were a sophisticated sort of Hollywood overpampered teen jet-set, the new ones are just spoiled rotten brats with entitlement issues and nothing but teen dating angst problems.

The entire tone of the book is vastly different from that of the original series as well. (If I didn't know better, I would swear that this were ghost-written by somebody else.) I'm sure that the author was trying to go for something hip, fresh, and new, but it just comes off as typical run of the mill teen novel fodder. Where the original A-List books seemed to be a notch above the rest, bordering on being considered acceptable adult reading material, these are most definitely targeted towards a younger demographic. I'm not sure that I like that. Regardless, there only seems to be two more books in this series so far, and doesn't look like there will be more as far as I can tell as of yet. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.) I think I can see why. I'm only rating this book a 3 out of 5 stars - not utterly unreadable, but far from a pleasurable read, I must admit.

Book Review: "Secrets Of My Hollywood Life: There's No Place Like Home"

Well folks, we've officially hit the end of the line in this series. Secrets Of My Hollywood Life: There's No Place Like Home is the sixth, and final, book of the hit series by Jen Calonita. And parts of it are definitely heart-wrenching.

Kaitlin has come a long way since the first book of the series as far as both her life and her career are concerned. But with that also comes the ever-looming realization that she's not in control of her own life, and that if she doesn't make some changes, she never will be. (There's a lot to be learned from this lesson.) Everything around her is changing as well, which makes things that much harder to digest. She's starring on a hit tv series; her mother is pushing her to film not one but TWO films with huge big-name producers; Sky has stolen her personal assistant right out from under her as her new manager; and there's college looming ever-closer as the clock ticks onward. A collapse is imminent. But nobody could ever predict just how, exactly, it would happen.

Much as one can surmise by the cover and the title of the book, there's a heavy influence by The Wizard of Oz. Following a car crash, Kaitlin is thrust into an alternate dimensional version of her life - one where she's not famous and hasn't had the sort of Hollywood upbringing she's always known. Her friends, co-workers, and family are also all vastly different from their real world selves. It takes a realization of self and personal values to help Kaitlin find her way back home.

I have to admit, this isn't how I expected the series to end, but I liked it! (Well, that's to be expected, as I'm a huge Judy Garland fan.) I think it was much-needed to help bring a sense of closure to things, and I can't think of a better way it could have been handle. Major kudos to Jen Calonita for writing such a fabulously entertaining and intriguing series! As always, another huge 5 star review for this book. :)