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| B00YDK5QPM
| 4.26
| 6,833
| Nov 30, 1975
| unknown
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really liked it
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Great classic, hard to believe this is 50 years old. It helped to reread it again in 2025 to refresh memory on the fiasco that was the Nixon administr
Great classic, hard to believe this is 50 years old. It helped to reread it again in 2025 to refresh memory on the fiasco that was the Nixon administration, and that the Trump/Biden/Trump years haven't been the only problems in Washington, D.C. It's an inspiring tale of dramatic conversion. The only concern I had as I read was that Colson was trying too hard to put things in a positive light, even before he was converted, and gave many people the benefit of the doubt, especially Richard Nixon. He also made a couple of big mistakes in judgment after he committed his life to Christ, the main one being giving 60 Minutes an interview thinking Mike Wallace was sincere in wanting to highlight the White House staffer's faith. Wrong! What I don't understand is why Colson didn't take his plea deal (having to admit he knew things ahead of time when he didn't) but then voluntarily came forward admitting guilt in something minor that may not even be criminal. Thinking he'd possibly be allowed to go free, instead he was sentenced years in prison and that led to Nixon feeling the need to resign the presidency without giving anyone a presidential pardon! It doesn't make sense since Colson's plea harmed so many others (including family members) while clearing his conscience of something so minor. The book wraps up when he leaves custody, before he starts his official prison ministry, which ended up becoming his legacy. While the memoir reaffirms that D.C. is a horrible place filled with self-serving liars (even "Christians") that call themselves "public servants," Colson is one of the rare exceptions who proved that God can change a life when a person becomes born again. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Apr 14, 2025
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Apr 14, 2025
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Paperback
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| 1538741369
| 9781538741368
| 1538741369
| 4.29
| 142,703
| Oct 18, 2022
| Oct 18, 2022
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it was ok
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This is an odd one--what starts out as a pretty standard three-star career memoir with lots of stories about making the Harry Potter movies, suddenly
This is an odd one--what starts out as a pretty standard three-star career memoir with lots of stories about making the Harry Potter movies, suddenly goes into a tailspin about 40 pages before the end, like an out-of-control spell from one of those Potter books. It makes no sense and destroys what could have been an otherwise sufficient tome filled with movie memories. The first three-fourths is enough to make a Potter lover happy. The basics are included and the star comes across as a humble common-sense average teen who is a bit of a rebel. The youngest of four boys, he gets picked on by siblings but claims he was in an extremely loving family that was "the opposite" of all the troubled actors he encountered along the way. He makes that point a couple of times--that his life was just about perfect and he's nothing like other crazy Hollywood child actors. So imagine the surprise in the final pages when the movie series ends and young adult Felton starts writing about his love of doing dope and moves to Los Angeles with a girlfriend he met on set. He claims he becomes "a different person" by "believing what others told" him about himself, that he was someone special and a potential superstar. We're only a couple of chapters from the end of the 2022 book when he's writing about his total life change of over 12 years earlier. And before you know it, the guy is undergoing an intervention for drugs and alcohol. He runs away from a Malibu rehab facility, checks himself in to a simpler therapy-based place out of town, breaks the rules and is kicked out after three weeks. Then he does a quick couple of paragraphs on how depressed he has become before meeting a Venice Beach guru who helps him swim and feed the homeless. The end. HUH? How it's presented, in so little detail or narrative, is jarring. Then he excuses away his addictions with the now-standard societal excuse for not taking personal responsibility: "My family were not strangers to mental health issues...a predisposition to such problems was in my blood." Come on, buddy, you just spent over 200 pages telling us how great your upbringing had been and how normal your life was compared to the other "wankers" in the movie business, then when you show up in L.A. you get in trouble and claim mental illness? The solution seems simple--stop the drugs, slow down on the drinking (he claims he's not an alcoholic) and move back to England where you have a simpler life and family structure. But he's not quite done--in a quick Afterword he tosses in that 13 years after he finished the last Potter movie he now lives in London and is happily starring in a stage play on the West End. And that he wants kids (though he dumped the girlfriend long ago) No other details. The end, again. Bizarre. It's unclear if this was originated as a Harry Potter moneymaker and then someone told him he had to toss in a few personal pages that mention his adult life. Or if he wanted to make people feel sorry for him so he tried to spin his pretty basic use of marijuana and alcohol (that he spoke of in nothing but positive terms) suddenly into proof of having genetic mental illness so he could excuse away his bad behavior (why don't people see that the drugs & drinking may cause their mental issues instead of claiming the reverse?). It makes little sense. There are few details about his California life, no specifics about most of his projects in the past 15 years, few personal anecdotes (good or bad) about adulthood and what specific changes took place. It's just a misguided ending that's incomplete and incongruent. So while Potter fans may be happy to read about his time making the movies, Tom Felton includes very little that's truly beyond the wand. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Apr 13, 2025
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Apr 13, 2025
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1943988102
| 9781943988105
| 1943988102
| 4.24
| 25
| unknown
| 2018
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did not like it
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Unorganized, poorly written memoir that's filled with contradictions and misleading perspectives. I literally could go through almost every page and p
Unorganized, poorly written memoir that's filled with contradictions and misleading perspectives. I literally could go through almost every page and point out errors in thinking or propaganda that the author is pushing. This isn't just simply his life story of coming out of a conservative denomination and becoming an ultra-liberal activist, it's an attempt to stereotype those he disagrees with while ignoring some very basic truths that are a couple thousand years old. Don't you love it when a plain guy from Oklahoma thinks he knows more than 2000 years worth of writers and scholars simply because he likes to have sex with another man? The structural problem of the book is that in the early chapters the author doesn't know how to write a cohesive narrative, so he initially skips around to different time periods (sometimes 3 or 4 time periods within a dozen pages), interrupting stories to go off on tangents or go back into history. It's not easy to read at first, though it settles down eventually, and despite his bragging that he went to Yale memoir writing workshops where professors told him he was good, my guess is they didn't really read it all (college teachers do that sometimes, you know!). We could argue theology or his newfound approach to viewing scripture through modernism, but he doesn't even get some of the basics right about the religion he was raised in. At one point he writes, "I reasoned myself out of believing in a literal Adam and Eve." That's ironic since the Bible states that the sin of Adam is basically mentally reasoning away from the God of creation by choosing your own mental constructs first. The writer spends some time focusing negatively on anyone who doesn't agree with his liberal views of interpreting scripture (particularly his grandpa). He includes a few minimal threats of potential harm to gay groups by conservatives, but of course fails to include the threats that are made by liberals and gays to others. He brushes aside the suggestion that the Bible has any verses that deal with homosexuality, rationalizing them all away, but ignores any mention of Matthew 19:4-6, where the words of Jesus pretty clearly state God made people male and female, and that "becoming one flesh" is when a man and woman come together. Even if you try to spin the Greek (and ignore that we don't have any original New Testament manuscripts), it's kind of hard to get past the actual words of Jesus (though modernists find ways to do it). That isn't to say true believers shouldn't be loving and kind to all humans, but any interpretation should be taken in balance with the totality of scripture, and Jones presents an imbalanced Biblical view that washes away any real application of verses by claiming it was written in "cultural context." That's about as wishy-washy as you can get. Once Jones becomes an ordained pastor he says he longs to "live authentically," namely to have public same-sex relationships despite it being against church teaching and the Bible. I'd love to question him on whether anyone can choose to live "authentically" based on their own selfish choices--Would it be okay for a 15-year-old girl to have sex with a 26 year-old man if they both say they're "living authentically?" How about a mid-20s pastor inappropriately introducing a 15-year-old boy to gay magazines and gay stores, is that any better? (Jones actually did that.) Or is it okay if a man wants to marry two or more other consenting adults if he feels that's being his authentic self? The point being, authenticity is what you choose based on objective moral and societal norms, not some supposedly DNA-created design that drives you to live however you want. One thing I did learn from this was his obnoxious way of forcing his gay choices on others. After a breakup with a boyfriend Jones begins suffering from depression and feels the need to come out to everyone and be accepted by them. Sometimes that's in a group setting instead of one-on-one. And in some cases he lies to people to set up the meeting where he forces his sexuality revelation on them. Classy, right, especially for a minister? It's really a sign of his own insecurity that he didn't just live his life or talk humbly and honestly one-on-one instead making a big deal out of it. Some turned their backs on him or ignored the subject when around him, but he just returned to trying to force them into dealing with it. Did he ever think that it wasn't the message that they objected to but his method? There are ways to communicate that won't intimidate or harm, that will make the message more palatable, but this guy didn't seem to know how to do that. Even his own first boyfriend, who Jones comes back to over and over anxiously pressuring the guy, breaks it off a second time saying, "You're so controlling." Jones response? "I'm just sharing my joy with you." It's delusional and a lack of self-awareness mixed with a bit of mental illness. It's also strange, since the gay community gets upset about never pressuring anyone to come out, that the same people often feel the need to pressure others to accept them when they do reveal their sexuality. What is the compulsion within a person with same-sex desires that makes them want to ram their beliefs down the throats of others (pun intended) while refusing to respect how others act or believe? Why should a gay guy be allowed to control others (or object loudly when they don't react how he likes) but then reject any attempt of others controlling him? If tolerance and acceptance are the goal, then that has to go both ways, and people like E. Scott Jones are hypocrites that break a simple Bible verse that says to treat others the way you want to be treated. There's so much else to comment on, but his story isn't that unique or inspiring. He gets into sex and all sorts of fun long after he has been in the ministry at more liberal churches. It's kind of an "anything goes" message for someone in the LGBTQ community, attempting to give them a form of spirituality without a real moral foundation of objective truth beyond "love," which we know can be interpreted many ways. Jones isn't as "open" as he claims to be, disregarding or misrepresenting those that oppose his social views and Biblical interpretations, and so ultimately you should keep this book closed. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Apr 10, 2025
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Apr 10, 2025
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Paperback
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| 030681966X
| 9780306819667
| 030681966X
| 3.58
| 600
| Feb 03, 2011
| Mar 01, 2011
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did not like it
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A big waste of time from an egotistical neurotic blowhard who avoids revealing much about himself by deflecting to fake spiritual/philosophical talk a
A big waste of time from an egotistical neurotic blowhard who avoids revealing much about himself by deflecting to fake spiritual/philosophical talk about his career. It is eye-rollingly bad, with Arkin trying to defend his image as being difficult to work with but making himself look much worse. Instead of giving stories about his projects or the things we know him for, he tells us what he supposedly is feeling inside as he makes a metaphysical journey through life. He also spends a whole lot of time blame-shifting. His defense of refusing to stick to scripts or stage blocking should infuriate any real actor, while his claim in sensing he had previous lives is laughable since he can barely function in this life. There is some self-awareness where he admits that he blows up too easily, but then the blaming happens where he tries to justify his misdeeds. Never a good look. Everything is very vague. He often refuses to name names, not just of people but of projects! The few stories contained within would have been much more interesting if he would have given specifics, instead it's just another smoke screen with him blowing hot air. You have to read between the lines to see who this guy really is. He condemns an Academy Award-winning actor as "not being genuine" despite the accolades, and you quickly figure out that Arkin is simply jealous that he is unable to do what the screen star did. He slams the lead actress of a stage production for doing scenes the same way night after night, leading to his paranoia that the audience will perceive him as not fresh--so he throws a fit in front of the audience each evening and makes unprofessional changes without telling others. He denounces a movie script involving the death of a bird as being "barbarian" by acting like a barbarian to everyone else on the set. Not a class act and a total hypocrite. While Alan Arkin badly wants to be taken seriously, and probably wrote this hoping it could become a classic guide to future actors, the reality is that the book, and the actor, are each a big flop. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Apr 08, 2025
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Apr 08, 2025
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Paperback
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| 1627782141
| 9781627782142
| 1627782141
| 3.75
| 213
| unknown
| Apr 11, 2017
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it was amazing
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Quite simply one of the best memoirs ever written. It's packed with so many different aspects of life, and insights about all of them, that it should
Quite simply one of the best memoirs ever written. It's packed with so many different aspects of life, and insights about all of them, that it should satisfy just about any reader. If there's anything to fault it for, it's that it's too short and makes you long for more (the author stops in 2009 but the book was published in 2017). But I suspect that the words have been so carefully selected and paragraphs crafted with the help of pre-publication "readers" like Carl Bernstein, Edna O'Brien and Christopher Kennedy Lawford that it almost becomes a textbook for how to put together a taut compelling autobiography. It's hard to know where to start--what other life has this kind of story? It's movie-like in how hard to believe all that James Hart experienced. It really should be optioned for a Netflix mini-series or something Ryan Murphy adds to his collection oddities based on truth. It contains a childhood where he started in seminary at age 14, lost his closest school friend in a horrific drowning, gave up any belief in God, fathers a son with a major mental and physical handicap that's beyond a parent's imagination, and gets hooked on alcohol before finally turning to AA. All of that would be enough to write a book about, but it makes up only a few chapters here. Somehow this average Jim from Long Island, New York, gets introduced to Carly Simon and she falls for him. This introduces him to wealth, famous politicians, authors, singers, celebrities--and all seem to become his best friend! This is the first book where I feel Jackie Kennedy (yes, his friend) is shown in her most human form. But your jaw doesn't stop there as he namedrops all sorts of people he becomes close to, from Mike Nichols (who I still can't figure out why everyone overpraises) to Bill Clinton (ditto). All of Hart's celebrity references contain insights that are beyond what others have revealed. Heck, this guy even helped Carly Simon write her Oscar-winning song! It was the first to ever win a Grammy, Golden Globe and Oscar, and he gave her the words that were the foundation for a song. Pretty good for someone with no writing or musical background. (Though Hart doesn't address why she didn't give him co-writer's credit nor a portion of the song's profits!) Then just when you think he has it all, he feels like he can't live up to his wife's success and starts acting on his desires for other men while secretly getting addicted to crack and other drugs. So the final fourth of the book is a wild ride, almost unbelievable that such a transformation could take place as he gives up on his cheating wife while still proclaiming his love for her. He goes through rehab (including at Betty Ford Clinic, which he slams for its dictatorial methods) and at one point is institutionalized in a mental health facility for being suicidal. While there he receives calls from pals like Alec Baldwin and Michael J. Fox. You know Hart's life must have been bad if Michael J. Fox feels sorry for him! But the oddest part is that Fox says to him, "You helped save my f-ing life," which doesn't get explained beyond Jim adding "we spent time working on our recovery together a few years before." This is where it makes the reader even more fascinated by the author's life but also long for more detail. There is so much profound in the book: --that having Carly Simon fall for him "changed my sense of self...I could barely stand being me. I felt a surge of new male power. Every man should experience this at least once, to possess a woman everyone else desires." --after his son was born his first wife announced that she'd fallen in love with a younger guy and divorced Hart, which made him binge at local bars, concluding, "I am sure alcohol saved my life...the exquisite pain of helplessly watching my son in his daily struggle was nothing compared to the loss of my wife. I had bet my entire emotional life on her love." --he commits to AA and as part of the healing process is supposed to forgive his horribly abusive alcoholic father, who himself was part of AA and became a shining light in the lives of others. Yet Jim still had trouble forgiving the childhood abuse. When confronting his dad, the father responded, "It's worse than you think....I stole from you with my abuse. I was the person who was supposed to give you the ability to forgive and I stole it with my violence....To forgive me, you're going to have to learn it from strangers, but I know you can and will. You have to forgive me, not for me but for you." --around the same time Jim and Carly were partying with all sorts of famous people, including Walter Cronkite, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer. But his only barb is given to Washington Post elitist Kay Graham, one of the richest women in America, who he said had "a poor-little-rich-girl quality that her stuttering, dragon-lady veneer never hid very well...She seemed adrift in the heights of unseemly (male) power and yet completely addicted to it. She could have used a constant BS monitor, but no one would ever have the balls to suggest it to her." --his portrait of Bill Clinton, who Hart likes, is not flattering and shows the politician to be a smarmy celebrity skirt chaser. Jim calls Clinton "the kid in high school who does the same (crap) as me and never gets caught." And reveals that the future president "strong-armed" him to support the campaign, which made him "suspicious." There is a fascinating section where Hart (easily the least famous person in the room) "interviews" President Clinton in front of all the famous journalists assembled at a party. Bill says the world leader he is most impressed with is Russia's Boris Yeltsin because he told his people things would get worse before they get better. Hart comments, "No American politician would be able to do that...(voters) would never support you or elect you!" It's interesting that Donald Trump has praised the current Russian leader and been torn apart by the same Democrats that thought Clinton was the brilliant savior. Hart was even staying with the Clintons at Camp David the weekend the president was impeached! Jim writes, "They actually translated the impeachment as a final victory." Wow. As for Carly Simon, whose own first memoir I also gave a rare five stars to, Hart tries his best to make her look angelic but truly she's a devil in disguise. I see why her little-girl qualities mixed with her sensuality charm every man she encounters, and her rich cultured upbringing make her a magnet for all those NYC elitists, but underneath she's just a quivering shell containing hyperactive nerves, using everyone around her to calm them. I felt sorry for Jim Hart, not only for how she emotionally abused him but that he was so taken by her that he couldn't see how she destroyed the marriage and sent him into the tailspin that led him to embrace serious drug abuse while swearing off ever bedding a woman again. The only flaw in his thinking seems to be that he's Job-like in what he calls all the "impenetrable woes" that were inflicted upon him "especially the one concerning boys and men." To be honest, much of his problems were in how he reacted to some tough situations. And I'm not sure too many in the gay community will appreciate his calling same-sex attraction a "woe," but in his case he gave up one of the most sexually attractive women in the world to be comforted in the bed of a strange male that turned into a boyfriend (who, by the way, ended up being a drug counselor!). Hart writes that when Carly finally confesses her affairs, "The most powerful sexual feelings of my life had been formed with her, and I had found one of the only imaginable paths to extinguish it. It vanished in a cloud of smoke, and it felt as though the effects of this drug had forever switched my wiring. Women would never turn me on again, something had rerouted the pleasure centers in my brain and permanently altered me." Then the final reality check. "I had jumped into an almost completely gay world, and it lacked so much of the allure and texture of the life I was leaving." This is raw honesty that rarely confronts the simplistic common thinking of the LGBT community. When severe trauma occurs, your body can be permanently altered and change what gives you pleasure. And choosing to find your affection needs met with someone of the same sex may lack what you used to have. Those are tough truths for most to swallow since they want to claim that were "born this way" and try to categorize all in the LGBTQ community into stereotypes. It's more complex than that. This book is evidence that there is a whole different way of looking at a multifaceted life. And in the end, despite his giving up on God, it's a testimony to his childhood spirit and seminary training that Jim considers himself lucky. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Apr 07, 2025
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Apr 07, 2025
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| B0CPQMQWVX
| 4.44
| 61
| unknown
| Dec 06, 2023
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it was ok
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I really wanted to love this book from the supposedly "overlooked" Cameron sister, but let's be honest--it's only around 80 small pages of narrative t
I really wanted to love this book from the supposedly "overlooked" Cameron sister, but let's be honest--it's only around 80 small pages of narrative text (the rest are photos, blank space and a space filler "book discussion" section). If you printed this out as a school term paper it's less than 20 two-side full pages of content. She skips dozens of years of her life and there are only two stories from her post-TV adulthood! So despite the good reasons for wanting to share her story, Bridgette Cameron Ridenour really needed to add another 150 pages to make this a true memoir worth buying or reading. The basics of her childhood are here but you've read it before...not just once but in three other books by her siblings Kirk and Cameron, and her mother Barbara's own tome! Bridgette rehashes all the kids auditioning for their agent, Kirk becoming famous, and Bridgette losing out on anything beyond being a stand-in job on hit television sitcoms and movies. She also again tells how the family came to become Christians, and it is surprising to see how much their mass conversions have gone on to impact many people. But that's not a normal life so why wouldn't she fill the pages with her six years of work behind-the-scenes on Full House or her being Jonathan Taylor Thomas's double on Home Improvement? Or all sorts of family tales, parenting advice, and how these famous people have all come out with the same strong faith? She's on two of the biggest shows of the 1980s-1990s yet has nothing to say about them beyond a quick mention of a few famous people she met? She alludes to other media work with no specifics. And while she doesn't paint her family as perfect, beyond her mother's abruptness there's no sense of how this household really operated. Frustrating! Then before you know it she's married and tells the only two significant stories about her past two decades--a car accident and the amazing tale of the birth of one of her twins (the other miscarried months earlier). Then suddenly she inserts a few prayers and a very short section that preaches the Gospel before it suddenly stops. Nothing about anything else since 2000, no update on her family, zero comments on her famous siblings as adults, ghosting her other (unknown) sister, or questions that are raised by some of the numerous pictures stuck in the middle of the book without explanation. The main problem beyond how brief this booklet is can be summarized in the title --she overlooks the theme of being overlooked! There is no narrative that builds from her childhood to middle age adulthood that dramatizes her feeling that she was left out of the spotlight. The concept is just tacked on near the end to let you know that she got over feeling left behind (pun intended for you Kirk Cameron movie fans). How can you be overlooked when you're working on the stages of hit sitcoms for years? When you have one of the supposed super Christian families in America and have everything you need? It's too bad that this wasn't three times the size, packed with great family and show business stories, and lots of details about her adult life. Instead, by her own choice, her whole story is truly overlooked. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Apr 04, 2025
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Apr 04, 2025
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Kindle Edition
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| 1250284481
| 9781250284488
| B0C1X8213B
| 4.19
| 5,299
| Mar 19, 2024
| Mar 19, 2024
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did not like it
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Simplistic, poorly written summary of what evangelicalism stands for and why a large number have left in recent decades. While the trite oversimplific
Simplistic, poorly written summary of what evangelicalism stands for and why a large number have left in recent decades. While the trite oversimplifications will make some non-thinking readers happy (as witnessed by the number of positive ratings on this site), to anyone that understands the depth of the issues involved it will come across as an incomplete high school term paper that might not even get a passing grade. It's a very biased, anti-Trump, anti-Republican, pro-gay book that has its foundation in two things: McCammon's homosexual grandfather, for whom she seems to be carrying on a battle for equal rights that have now been awarded, and her own anger about being taught to delay sex until marriage, which ended up being unsatisfying and ended in divorce. So this appears to be written as a personal way to get back at her upbringing as well as her now liberal (and non-Biblical) belief system. It's not objective in any way despite her claims of being a "journalist." After all, she works for NPR, which is one of the most liberal "news" sources in America (if not the most). And I should know--I used to work news for an NPR affiliate. Let's just say that I wouldn't trust anything an NPR reporter said on air because the organization pushes limited facts that spin a story in a way that promotes progressive political agendas. Is NPR propaganda? Well, it certainly borders on it, just like this book. To address the very limited number of "facts" she uses to distort this book: yes, there has been a dramatic drop in evangelicals in America, but the author fails to address what the two major reasons are because she doesn't seem to understand history. The first is deeply tied to politics being influenced by evangelical leaders. McCammon starts at the Reagan era, slamming it as being "the moment the Christian Right came into its own." Wrong. That happened in the Jimmy Carter era, where the Georgia presidential candidate was a proud born-again Southern Baptist evangelical who had the radical support of Christian leaders. The fact that Carter ended up being the worst president of the last half of the 20th century and destroyed the economy while promoting bloated liberal social causes, led many believers to abandon him for a divorced former Hollywood star that better reflected their moral values. Jimmy Carter isn't even mentioned in this book. Huh? You have a book that's foundation is the recent history of evangelicals in America and politics, but fail to mention the one who used his White House for Bible studies and attempted to bring peace to Israel due to his Biblical beliefs? It wasn't the Reagan presidency that started the downfall of evangelicalism, but it was something that happened during those Reagan years. The Jim Bakker PTL scandal and the "holy war" that occurred among evangelical preachers was the start of the change within evangelicalism. Bakker is mentioned once in the book, for the accusations of his raping Jessica Hahn. This writer doesn't seem to grasp that what happened with the televangelist infighting during the end of Reagan's second term in office was what started the dramatic trajectory downward for born-again numbers in America. She failed to even address it beyond "televangelists sometimes left something to be desired." How naive. Then there's the second reason for the exodus from evangelicalism--sexuality, particularly the rising gay rights movement of the 1990s (including media reporting of Pride marches, Ellen Degeneres coming out, and "Will and Grace") and the sexual revolution within the church where women began taking over male leadership roles. Many denominations began setting themselves apart from evangelicals by welcoming the LGBTQ community, couples that were living together, female and gay pastors, and laws that would allow sexual freedom in America. Meanwhile, many major evangelical denominations held to the "old fashioned" ways by continuing to preach against homosexuality or sex before marriage and lost large numbers of those that to support sexual freedom. So that's a shorthand way of looking at the new movements to arise that are called "exvangelical" or "liberal evangelical" or other terms. Jim Bakker's son Jamie was one of the early leaders of the movement while his father was in jail, holding church in bars and using profanity and making himself look radical with tattoos. For McCammon to try to claim the changes in evangelicalism started in the first decade of the 21st century is absurd--all the seeds were planted in the late 1980s with the PTL scandal and started to come to fruition in the 1990s with the sexual freedom movement. The problem is that wasn't when it happened to Sarah McCammon, so she "reports" this as being something fairly recent. It's not. She really only focuses on the past two decades of the movement because that's when it happened to her. Oh, and did I forget to mention that her second husband is a liberal Jew and they were married in a Jewish ceremony? Hmmm. That certainly wouldn't impact her writing or fairness, would it? I'm not saying she is wrong about much of what's included in the book, she's just out of touch with what really happened and fails to put it in proper context, as well as leaving out whole chunks of relevant information. The sexual issue is a big one, probably the major reason most have left evangelicalism, but there's just a quick aside to scripture instead of showing how these people are clinging to a form of spirituality but denying the historical truth. Even her personal story ends up being about how not having sex before her first marriage led to her becoming disillusioned with the Biblical faith in which she was raised. The irony is that the author condemns her upbringing for failing to give her a full picture of the world--yet she does the very same thing in this book by neglecting to provide readers with a truly fair and full view of evangelicalism. Instead it's the standard stuff that has hit the news (church scandals, homosexual Bible verses, anti-abortion protesters) while trying to make the leftist/liberal/atheistic views seem totally normal. Typical NPR way of looking at things instead of either providing a broader perspective on Christians and all the good that comes from their morality or holding the anti-Christian liberals to the same standards, because they've got nothing to brag about in terms of how they've lived as well. Again, I'm not saying she doesn't have some legit concerns mentioned in the book. She rehashes a lot of the negative history of recent Christianity, such as defending slavery or killing abortion doctors or the Bill Gothard movement, and she never loses an opportunity to include the hypocritical sexual sins of Christian leaders. But there have been plenty of liberal church scandals, progressive leaders caught doing wrong or defending what is now considered evil, huge amounts of violence from BLM supporters or even recent Democrat presidents taking anti-gay marriage stances. It's this lack of perspective and an attempt to pigeonhole evangelicals that makes it a truly unfair picture of the faith. There's even a short chapter on black evangelicals (incorrectly capitalizing black of course to be woke), but she takes it from the angle that whites haven't welcomed blacks, so African Americans left white evangelical churches. Not sure if she has been to church lately--I have--and evangelical churches are very racially mixed. Yet she ignores the fact that there have continued to be segregated black evangelical churches that have few or no white members, yet no one accuses them of failing to welcome whites, Hispanics and Asians. The hypocrisy is easy to spot, and as a supposed "journalist" her spin proves her bias. Then there appears to be the use of the book to repeatedly condemn Donald Trump and anyone who claims to be a Christian that would support him. It again shows how clueless McCammon didn't do enough research to understand what a few alluded to. Since Jimmy Carter's dramatic failure as leader, true born-again Christians don't just vote based on a man's personal moral (or immoral) stances, they vote for the policies he stands for. Southern Baptist Bill Clinton only had the support of 28% of the 1992 evangelical voters. Look it up. Evangelicals vote Republican because they can't trust Democrats to support traditional moral values, even when the liberal candidates try to use the Bible (like Barack Obama laughingly did long before Trump made it even more comical). Evangelical support for Trump is no surprise--he spoke loudly and strongly saying he'd implement changes in key evangelical moral issues. Born-again voters held their noses and disapproved of Trump's lifestyle as well as his rhetorical method, but what was the better option? Feminist progressive Hillary Clinton, married to a Southern Baptist who had the most public sin in the history of the White House? Sadly, in this book, the writer seems to brush aside Bill's affair as just being a private indiscretion that had nothing to do with the public, failing to see the significance of his lying under oath and that the blowjobs occurred in the public taxpayer-funded White House! To come to her conclusions she takes a number of things out of context, repeats anti-conservative tropes, and uses the very intolerant stereotypes on others that she condemns conservative believers for using. There's so much about the book that's illogical and incomplete, if she would have turned this in for a grade I would have turned it back saying she didn't do her homework. Yet her woke classmates would tell her what a great job she did pushing the leftist party line and agenda. Just as she did with the evangelical church, I'm leaving this book behind, never to return. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Apr 02, 2025
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Apr 02, 2025
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Kindle Edition
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| 1586423800
| 9781586423803
| 1586423800
| 3.20
| 131
| unknown
| Feb 06, 2024
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it was ok
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Serviceable and dry telling of how a movie location supervisor does his job but lacking in depth or even well-rounded stories. The author claims to ha
Serviceable and dry telling of how a movie location supervisor does his job but lacking in depth or even well-rounded stories. The author claims to have been an English teacher before going into show business but this reads more like a movie or TV "treatment" than a full screenplay (to use industry terminology). A treatment is a summary that communicates the essentials but fails to include the entire plot. While his content is abbreviated, his writing style is not--there are many paragraphs are a page-and-a-half long. Fifteen sentences or more in many paragraphs? This English teacher may want to go back to school, he would have never allowed his students to get away with this. In this case Kamine is focused on a couple of his major productions, including The Sopranos, but skips past many other shows or films he was involved with. There are certainly some fascinating facts about how he went about bribing local officials to use public spaces, paying private owners for use of property, and even himself admitting to stealing from the cash box to support his low pay. I'm not sure why anyone would hire this guy after seeing the secrets he reveals or his admission to stealing money from production budgets, but Kamine makes it sound like everyone does it. No wonder movies and television shows are so expensive to make! This should have been a lot better. At less than 200 thin pages with a lot of white space, some chapters seem like padding (especially when writing about his family). Many are filled with diversions and digressions, going off on tangents in the middle of a story. There's a dramatic lack of outside research, which he excuses away by saying that "the purpose of this account is personal...memories that...lodged in my mind." Well then they were not sufficient enough to give a full view of how movies or TV shows are made. He should have put the work in to add outside examples and expand his own stories with input from coworkers. There are also a lot of horrible people exposed, starting with the Sopranos creator and including a number of performers, the worst being the star of the series. For some reason the author feels the need to overpraise the show's star despite the man being a disgusting addict who wastes millions of dollars by delaying production. If you admire James Gandolfini's work on the drama then what's revealed in this book should make you think twice--the guy didn't know lines, wasn't there many times when others are shown in a scene with him and had reckless disregard for professionalism. And for that he got a major raise? That's how the business works, and this writer seems to be okay with it, even praising the actor and those who wasted their lives on drugs and alcohol. It's odd that Kamine names some shows and staff members but refuses to name others. One production with two corrupt producers he gives enough facts to quickly figure out it's "New York Undercover" on Fox. You can do a quick Google search and find out what crook or criminal he worked with. Why didn't he just name them, since he has no problems revealing names of Mafia ties and crooked politicians that he handed cash to?! One concern is that many of the criminals in these New Jersey and New York City tales (or those with criminal behavior) are Democrats (or liberal Republicans) and union members--yet instead of pointing that out the author takes a shot at Republicans when a corrections officer who was a 9/11 hero goes to jail for tax fraud. Kamine notes the man "emerging after serving his term into the far-right afterlife favored by many formerly powerful ex-cons." Far right? Buddy, you just named dozens of far-left thugs (politicians, union leaders, and TV heads) who abused women and stole from bosses, many whose "afterlife" was working for Democrat politicians or liberal creative ventures. Where is the balance and truth about the industry? He uses another section to verify that taxpayers lose money when local or state governments give tax breaks to film productions, then adds, "not that this negates all the good it does." What good is that, Mark Kamine? Your production company stealing taxpayer money to pay for bloated budgets that fund under-the-table drug deals and bribes is good? It's just more Democrat ideology where without conscience the rich take from the middle class to pay for bad habits. Add to that a simplistic lecture about how 9/11 happened because of "the worldwide but dominantly Western and overarchingly American pursuit of an enduringly cheap and ready supply of oil." Huh? While ignoring the disaster's true genesis, deeply embedded in the hate-filled followers of radical Islamic leaders, the author tries to act concerned about the environment and "rising temperatures and seas." He stuffs all this into an ill-advised paragraph where he feels somewhat sorry for contributing to the earth's problems due to his participation in the filmmaking industry. What he fails to say is that the movie and TV businesses are the largest abusers of the environment, with regular unnecessary wastefulness for productions that have zero importance in modern society. These Hollywood people aren't producing any consumers goods that are necessities but instead are abusing material goods and energy to create a fantasy world. Why are show business types always the loudest in complaining about environmental abuse when in truth they are the ones harming it the most? This book's production details prove the wasted fuel, transportation, and travel costs that truly harm America for the simple purpose of pleasing obnoxious directors and overpaid stars. Limos, private jets, food flown in for stars that hold up productions for hours, wasted energy used for no reason other than to please egotistical jerks. These are the liberal elitists that lecture the rest of us about how our everyday energy usage is harming the planet. They're a bunch of frauds and hypocrites, yet Mark Kamine takes all of this as being acceptable while he claims to be concerned about the environment. If you're scouting for great depth about how television or movies or the Sopranos is produced, you won't find enough here and will have to go on different locations. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 30, 2025
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Mar 30, 2025
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0914091921
| 9780914091929
| 0914091921
| 3.72
| 129
| unknown
| Mar 04, 2025
|
did not like it
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Probably the worst book ever written by a professional television/movie writer. Bruce Vilanch has no idea how to put together a book or tell a simple
Probably the worst book ever written by a professional television/movie writer. Bruce Vilanch has no idea how to put together a book or tell a simple story. If you are expecting a well-told history of his career, you will be extremely disappointed--instead it's a jumbled bloated mess (much like the author) that looks back only at the bombs that he was involved with. While that may sound intriguing, he admits up front that he barely recalls any details from any of the shows and there are no historical notes, so we're left with him giving incoherent pilot plot summaries he must have gleaned from watching the videos, spread out over a dozen pages, interrupted by dozens of asides that have nothing to do with the production and are not humorous. It's not worth spending any of my energy on writing a full review. This guy, in one paragraph, can cover four different topics, none of which have anything to do with the show that the chapter is about. He gives completely unnecessary Wikipedia-like summaries of performers and then feels the need to call a stop to many pages with a tangential footnote for those youngsters that he thinks may be reading this crap. Sorry, Bruce, no one younger than 65 will care about this nor have any idea what you're talking about, with worthless references to Esther Williams, Mommie Dearest, and even Rudolph Valentino. He packs the pages with inappropriate pop culture mentions that are 50 to 100 years old; for those of us that care we don't need his lengthy explanations that feel like filler and often have errors. One of my favorite mistakes is his claim that when the Star Wars Holiday Special was made in 1978, "cable television had appeared only a few years before and basically begun to put the variety show format out of business." He then references the rise of HBO forcing networks to come up with more quality shows that had less censorship. Um, Bruce, cable actually started by 1950. In 1978 only 7.5% of American homes had it because it simply carried broadcast TV to rural areas, and HBO (which had only gone national in 1975) was only in about one million homes. There were no original cable entertainment networks yet and pay channel HBO had almost no original shows while R-rated movies forced to air later at night. Cable television's impact on the business was a few years away and none of this aside has anything to do with the eventual downfall of the variety show (nor anything to do with the Star Wars variety special), but he tries to make it look that way. I counted four things I learned from the book that were original, including the fiasco at the 1989 Oscars (strange that it's the only well-told story since he had nothing to do with the actual bad ideas mentioned like the infamous Snow White dance). But that's only a few thin pages worth reading out of 200. What a waste. I'd say a waste of talent, but I think it has been firmly established that Vilanch may not have much of that. If he would have done a true memoir filled with taut well-edited stories about his successful works we might have been able to discern if he was decent at his job. Instead, this book didn't just seem like a bad idea at the time, it truly was. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 27, 2025
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Mar 27, 2025
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1400248949
| 9781400248940
| 1400248949
| 3.73
| 2,644
| Feb 04, 2025
| Feb 04, 2025
|
it was ok
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Horrifying on multiple levels in the inept hands of a widow who reveals shocking secrets about her popular late husband while failing to take full acc
Horrifying on multiple levels in the inept hands of a widow who reveals shocking secrets about her popular late husband while failing to take full accountability for her own past, she hides all this behind a "reading from a medium" for the reason it was released. It's all so badly thought through that it answers the questions of why his family members were so publicly upset at Holker for revealing way too much about the end of tWitch's life. They are justified to be enraged at this former Mormon girl who claims to try to be perfect but ends up showing just how terrible she can be. Where to begin in this mess? Let's start with the fact that she claims to have published the deep dark secrets of her husband's fake-happy public life, with hidden shoeboxes of illegal drugs and his childhood rape by an adult male, because she visited a "medium" after his death where he supposedly told his wife that he was "giving his permission to share his other side because he believes it's important that he is seen." So Allison Holker takes words from a psychic stranger that supposedly come directly from her dead husband as her justification to make him look like a horrible hypocrite? She then adds to this mess by adding her thoughts that tWitch may have committed suicide to avoid sexually abusing their son the way the dancer had been abused as a child?! She literally writes, "Did he worry that he was somehow fated to do to his son the same monstrous things that had been done to him?" Why would she even think that with zero evidence of it? There is no logic to this conclusion nor to include it in a book! I found it equally disturbing that on the day the man died she didn't tell two of his three children in the house! The oldest (who wasn't his biological child) was given the sad news with this sentence: "I'm sorry, Weslie. Stephen unalived himself." Unalived? You read that right. Then she "waited a couple of days, unsure how to convey" to the six- and three-year-olds that their father was gone. Seriously? With media outside the door, friends stopping by, the phone ringing like crazy, and the older sibling in the know? I'm dumbfounded how wrong-headed this was, showing that Holker has little common sense and lacks some of the guts she claims. The author admits that the overwhelming post-death praise of tWitch would get her upset. What kind of wife is this? The guy had only been gone two years and she was so sick of hearing every conversation mention how great her partner was that she felt the need to devote a book to getting people to see how he led a secret bad life? She uses words like "rage" when she describes how mad she is at him for "doing this to our family." While she is justifiably disappointed in him taking his own life while hiding his addiction to drugs, why process all of this publicly, especially so soon after he is gone? It's wrong-headed, ill-timed, and ultimately points to her being mentally ill. The book is a failed attempt at warning people about those who want to take their lives and instead glorifies the act by printing that the medium she used said that "he's at peace," which Allison adds "is confusing because I don't want anyone to think his choice was okay." Well, honey, you putting what the fake clairvoyant said in print is doing just that and it appears to be a passive-aggressive attempt to make tWitch look bad in order to keep yourself to accepting any blame. Next there is the fact that she uses the pages to cover up her own private hidden life. To start with is her rebellion against her Latter-Day Saints upbringing. She refuses to name the Mormon religion in her book or in public, but you'd have to be dumb to not see that her Utah-based family of origin belonged to it. Why leave out the name when describing the details of how her leaving the church at 16 impacted her relationships? Then there is the "traumatizing experience" at age 17, where she writes, "I won't share specifics, but the fallout touched every part of my life." She refuses to name the horrifying experience, but it sounds like sexual assault by someone close to her, and she concluded at the time that "it was my punishment from God for having turned my back on my religion." So her mental illness was established when she was a teen and she has spent the rest of her short life hiding it. Namely, Allison Holker lives a double life and is as two-faced as the late husband she exposes in this book. Why does she think she has the right to share details about tWitch's major issues but deflect from her own? In terms of writing style it's smooth but almost diary-like in its constant anxious cogitation in defense of her actions and intent. My main complaint is her insisting on capitalizing the word black when referring to skin color, and in one bizarre sentence about tWitch's first fiancé she wrote, "He fell madly in love with a white girl who was not allowed to date Black men." It's the perfect example of what's wrong with the anti-grammar wokeism that most publishers and journalists have supported. Finally, there is the money part--where this all looks like a cash grab, an attempt to generate income off her husband's passing. The woman lived an entitled life despite claiming to have been poor when young. As LDS members her parents could take advantage of the Mormon social services that provided food and clothing to those in need. When unmarried and very single Holker gets pregnant at 19, she and the baby daddy mooch off of taxpayer government assistance despite the dancer traveling the country earning a great income (which she admits is more than her high school teachers were earning in a year). She and tWitch grew their income to where they owned 3 or 4 homes at the time of his death, then she wants us to feel sorry for her over the revelations that he mishandled his money and her income plummets. She starts begging for help again. This is not the self-sufficient, independent woman who claims to have possibly facilitated her man's death due to her being "too strong" (as she alleges at one point). Allison is really a needy people pleaser who never wants to be alone and uses her supposed concern over the problems of others to distract people from her own inner demons. In the end Allison Holker comes across as a naive pretentious bratty entitled cheerleader who fails to see the real damage her Mormon upbringing did emotionally and mentally. While she is a survivor who uses her dance skills to keep moving in life, her misuse of this book to hypocritically make her late husband look bad in order to gain sympathy for herself proves that she has failed to learn true lessons from her life this far. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 27, 2025
|
Mar 27, 2025
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1455621501
| 9781455621507
| 1455621501
| 2.82
| 11
| Feb 01, 2016
| Feb 12, 2016
|
it was ok
|
Mediocre memoir that should have been so much better, considering the author worked on some of the greatest sitcoms of the 1980s and 1990s. It's extre
Mediocre memoir that should have been so much better, considering the author worked on some of the greatest sitcoms of the 1980s and 1990s. It's extremely short--although there are 230 small pages, that number includes at least 50 pages of photos or blank space. Chapters and stories are too short, and there are sections about shows that reveal nothing about what goes on behind the scenes. His Wikipedia-like plot summaries are simplistic, and we certainly didn't need the dull chapters devoted to him doing three Candid Camera-style shows (two of which we've never heard of). It's frustrating to think of all the major stars he worked with yet he has pretty much no stories about them. Just giving facts of about a show with a large photo gives us nothing new. He spent YEARS on some shows and all we get is a single original short anecdote. Then he tosses in longer sections on boring things like the Let Bob Do It pilot he did for Nick at Nite with Jason Alexander, even falsely claiming it was "one of the first hybrid reality/scripted shows." (Um, Bob, the pilot never aired nor was never ordered as a series, so how can you claim it to hold any historical record as a show?) He not only works for Jay Leno's Tonight Show for 13 years, but he and Jay started out together in Boston and the two were roommates! Want to hear the juicy stories about them? (Black space follow.) Most disappointing was his incredibly short sections on Growing Pains and Full House, especially when he knew the stars and producers so well. He prints little beyond common knowledge. Oh, he does use the Growing Pains chapter to talk about playing tennis and going to the Playboy mansion with Alan Thicke, and includes some light slams of Kirk Cameron, but nothing new about the actual show. Why did the author think we were more interested in his scoring (in more ways than one) than in the series he spent years working on? He even wrote and acted in Full House but fails to tell readers anything about it! That being said, there are five or six really good stories in the book (including his sneaking on stage during a huge rock and roll jam session) and in a couple of cases he reveals things on the record that have only been rumored. In the case of Full House he confirms that the reason the original series ended was that John Stamos didn't want to continue it. The sitcom had been cancelled by ABC, but those involved had an offer to take it to the WB network and Stamos refused. "Stamos did not want to continue the show on an upstart network, feeling like it would be too much of a step down." (I suspect the star's eventual regret over shutting it down is why he agreed years later to be part of the Fuller House reboot, though he still claimed he was sad when the original was cancelled despite the reason for it being him.) Perlow also has no problem throwing some major names under the bus as being horrible to work with--Tim Allen, we're looking at you. Add Jenna Elfman, Jerry Van Dyke, the great Madeline Kahn, Shannon Doherty, and THE ENTIRE CAST OF FRIENDS! Yes, you read that right. He so hated the eight hours it took them to record one episode that once he quit he never watched the sitcom again. So while he says a few interesting things, there's not enough here to make it worth sitting through his routine. This warmup guy is really only lukewarm. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 26, 2025
|
Mar 26, 2025
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0307408493
| 9780307408495
| 0307408493
| 3.67
| 1,316
| Oct 01, 2008
| Oct 14, 2008
|
it was ok
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Bitterness and anger mixed with Curtis's self-elevation to American royalty status, this memoir is mostly the actor going film-by-film through his car
Bitterness and anger mixed with Curtis's self-elevation to American royalty status, this memoir is mostly the actor going film-by-film through his career (though most movies only get a paragraph) and woman-by-woman through his marriages and proud affairs. Yes, he repeatedly says how proud his is of himself when he cheats, lies, meets with mobsters, and ignores his six kids. Kind of disgusting. Curtis was a tough, poor New York City pretty Jewish boy who escaped his bad parents but never got rid of his inner thug. The book is filled with his antisemitic paranoia, combined with his impulsive need to bed every pretty woman he comes in contact with. He wants to feel attractive and loved but never fills the whole in his heart beyond sex, drinking, and eventually cocaine addiction. Many of the men he encounters he calls "good friend" or "best friend." He has hundreds of them and likes feeling part of a male gang. The author goes on and on overpraising the horrible Frank Sinatra but then goes further to tell us what great guys mob leaders are. There are rare times he slams a man, usually a director who clashes with Curtis's ego that thinks an actor knows better than anyone else on a movie set. Or someone that snubs him (like former friend Blake Edwards), which Curtis filters as being because he is Jewish. And for some reason the book is filled with denials about being gay--he details many guys hitting on him, calling him homosexual slurs, offering him blowjobs, etc. He sure hangs around with a lot of gay guys, bragging about being at Rock Hudson's parties and mentioning agent Henry Willson (though misspelling his name!). This American Prince "doth protest too much, me thinks." Then there are the women. Lots of them, some named and others grouped together in periods where he bedded just about everyone he met. Part of the reason for his writing the book appears to be to slander his first wife in order to prove to his oldest daughters how terrible their mother was. It doesn't work, simply making the star appear to be the bad guy--especially when admitting to multiple affairs. He cheats on all of his wives, sometimes while a newlywed, finding justifications then getting enraged when he suspects his women are cheating on him. He admits to being a two-faced hypocrite but then claims to take the moral high road by saying "at least I did it discreetly." While it's nice to see an actor address all of his roles (half of which I'd never heard of, where are all these old movies?), he almost never tells stories about working on films. To just stick a paragraph (or less) in about each job that tells a bit about the plot or co-stars is worthless. There are a few movies he gives specifics about, but those are usually to complain about him not getting paid enough, not being given a bigger role, not being allowed to do what he wants with a role, etc. By the time no one will hire him anymore Curtis seems baffled but it's easy for the reader to figure out that the guy is a "royal" jerk who acts off screen like the prince he thinks he is, even a couple of times claiming that he "deserved" an Oscar or at least a nomination. The real problem is that he's not a prince but a pauper pretending to be above the rest of us yet proving he has no class. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 23, 2025
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Mar 23, 2025
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0595842887
| 9780595842889
| 0595842887
| 3.10
| 10
| 2006
| Apr 27, 2006
|
did not like it
|
What a bizarre and ultimately disappointing book from one of my favorite TV stars. It's a strange mixture of humor and self-help with a few bits of me
What a bizarre and ultimately disappointing book from one of my favorite TV stars. It's a strange mixture of humor and self-help with a few bits of memoir thrown in but none of it lands beyond simply being a way to get Alan Thicke to make money off of his fame. It's obvious the guy didn't want to write a straight autobiography where he had to share his true self, so instead he jokes his way through parenting advice with a few minor personal anecdotes thrown in. All of it was surely whipped together by a ghost writer who recorded thoughts from the TV dad and tried to make some logic of it on paper. The book is super small--of the 200 pages, over 30 are photos and the chapters are made up of short asides with lots of subheadings about mixed-up topics. Thicke's actual life stories probably take up a total of less than 20 pages. Each chapter starts with his attempts at joking around, then in the middle has no more than a few sentences regarding personal history before it moves on to something unrelated, and I couldn't figure out if any of it was real. That leaves a whole lot of stuff you don't care about since Thicke isn't an expert on parenting beyond him being raised a rich son of a doctor before Alan's own three marriages with three spoiled sons that probably spent more time with the nanny than dad. I certainly hope this isn't meant to be real. His endorsing childhood alcohol usage, lying to parents, not finishing education, and open drug usage are not qualities in a role model. His story of his six- and four-year-old sons showing up for preschool high on pot baked goods should stop you in your tracks, wondering how he finds this funny by titling his advice being "No Pot Until First Grade." No wonder Robin turned out the way he did. Alan also reveals that he was studying to become a minister, all the while getting drunk and lying and doing all sorts of potential jailbait activities. But don't worry that he's going to preach at you--he advises parents to expose children to all religions, saying, "(Son) Carter learned about Kwanzaa in the first grade, and I will encourage him to learn about Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam--beyond the superficial and often inflammatory portrayals we get on the six o'clock news." Seriously? Not only is made up skin-color celebration Kwanzaa not a religion but this very superficial book decides to toss in some serious commentary on the news media? Nothing works--the humor isn't big enough, the studies quoted are simplistic, the outlines are grossly incomplete, the conclusions he draws seem fake, and even his own life stories appear exaggerated. Talk about growing pains--this book should have been titled "How to Raise Money by Selling a Fake Book to Fans Who Won't Hate You." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 16, 2025
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Mar 16, 2025
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1250323517
| 9781250323514
| 1250323517
| 3.63
| 2,219
| Mar 07, 2024
| Mar 12, 2024
|
it was ok
|
Grossly incomplete and suspiciously overquoting things the author is recalling from decades earlier, this is a somewhat interesting book about her clo
Grossly incomplete and suspiciously overquoting things the author is recalling from decades earlier, this is a somewhat interesting book about her cloistered life that lack credibility and a real ending. She has in the press recently said that she now considers being cloistered like being in a cult, and the revelations here reinforce that, but the book fails to properly document all that occurred. Instead of evidence and facts it's mostly filled with her recollections and impressions, none of which can be trusted when the book essentially is written over twenty years after they occurred. There are long sections of quotes that are impossible for her to have recalled in detail, yet they're on the page. Most frustrating is there are minute details of inconsequential things dragged out over many paragraphs, then the author breezes past some of the most important events, failing to give readers enough description to even understand what happened. At a key point near the end she is abused by the head nun but the story lacks so many specifics that it's almost dreamlike. Coldstream then suddenly leaves the cloister, again with few details explaining how, and after a couple weeks returns to the abuse. No explanation of how or why. Then next it's a couple of years later and she rejects her vows for good. The past twenty years are summarized in a few pages. It's a very frustrating avoidance of key moments in her story that she pretends aren't important but she appears to be locking up a lot of details and emotions behind those cloistered walls. One of her conclusions is, "It's remarkable how programmable we all are as human beings. In that lies our ability to learn, but also our propensity to be controlled." But we all have choices, and she choose to give herself over to a certain type of programming that led to cultlike obedience. Even in the end she is longing for her jail-like cloistered existence. She never truly leaves, even becoming a theology teacher in the church! The problem is not others, it's within herself. It is not a great memoir and more likely creative non-fiction. It may be only good for those that want insight into how the cloistered process works, the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church's leadership, the idiocy of swearing allegiance to supposedly spiritual leadership acting as representatives of God, and how very quickly women can tear each other apart. One thing I took from it--men aren't the issue. As a matter of fact, the rare male presence through priestly visits are the only things that keep these women sane or stable; otherwise their anxiety, paranoia, and mental illness only grows when being surrounded by demeaning (and supposedly spiritual) females. And while their cloister is filled with real cats, it is the nuns that display feline qualities, remain emotionally distant, and tear each other apart. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 16, 2025
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Mar 16, 2025
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0306832933
| 9780306832932
| 0306832933
| 4.02
| 597
| unknown
| Nov 12, 2024
|
liked it
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A man with a roller coaster acting career presents a similar up-and-down ride for readers, from some fantastic stories regarding the productions of hi
A man with a roller coaster acting career presents a similar up-and-down ride for readers, from some fantastic stories regarding the productions of his biggest hits to incredibly boring sections about his family, private life, and active sex life (which he brags about without many specifics). It's a mixed-up mess that has no sense of order, with constant back-and-forth, and it doesn't appear to have an editor that's willing to cut the unnecessary verbiage or back-and-forth. The author needed to be reined in and make better decisions, but those problems reflect his personality. Throughout the book he seems to overdo everything, including have birthday sex four times in 24 hours with four different women (including his then wife and Kirstie Alley!), but the guy also makes terrible choices when it comes to jobs he turned down. It makes no sense because when he had no money and no work he repeatedly turned down TV series or movies he doesn't like. Then complains. His failure to stick to a chronological narrative includes mistakes--for instance he has his mother moving the family to the Los Angeles area to work for a future Disneyland property developer but it's actually five years after the theme park had opened! This is around the same time (1960-61) that he says at around 13 he bought a color TV--five years before most of America had even heard of it and there were almost no color shows. Really? My rich grandparents were one of the first to buy the super expensive large color sets later in the 1960s, but he spent a huge amount of money on one instead of giving the money to his poor single mother working two jobs to feed the three kids? Seems odd. There are entire sections of his early career that he glosses over without any specifics. How can the guy work with Robert Young, Fred MacMurray, and Hugh Beaumont--on classics like My Three Sons and Leave it to Beaver--without more than a sentence mentioning it. There's no IMDb list included, and he should have told us much more about his appearances with Lucy, Bob Hope, Henry Fonda and many other greats. He also insists on including asides in the book that are advice for those that want to get into the business. These make the book even choppier, typically inserted in the middle of other stories, and should have all been saved for a single chapter at the end. The author also sticks his unasked-for-opinions about greatest movies, best directors to work with, and even the "few performers who can go big and still feel natural" with his examples being Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Jim Carrey, and Chris Farley? They feel natural? Also on that list is Kate McKinnon, who is always a caricature and not natural, and...Ryan Gosling? (What is he doing on a list of obnoxious overloud blowhards?). Matheson also lies. A lot. He admits to it throughout the book. Some of the lies are simply shocking and you can discover them yourself. But why does he seem proud to lie to anyone important, including a dying parent? He seems to think it funny to tell women he is in relationships with, who fell in love with him and he loves them, that he is (falsely) in love with someone else just to avoid commitment. To do it once makes him a bum, to do it multiple times is disgusting. So how can we trust he's telling us the truth here? Then there's the drug and alcohol problems--Matheson acts like it's nothing abnormal to spend his whole adult life on some type of illegal substance and he refuses to admit he has a problem. He claims to have quit cocaine cold turkey due to his kids but he says little about his continued other drug usage. It's disappointing that this seems to endorse decades of use of illegal drugs. As the book goes on it gets more boring. Who cares about the long chapters involving his parents' deaths, especially when they were such horrible people, demeaning the actor and abusing alcohol and cigarettes. He also spends way too much time on his directing jobs--there are few actual stories attached to his directing other than his anger with producers. The book is filled with anger and his attempt to get back at (and expose) those in Hollywood that were mean to him. Near the end he rushes through the past 20 years with little content and even though he uses 370 bloated pages it seems incomplete. It's not all bad because there are some great stories, he puts some actors and producers in their place that need it, he rightly calls therapists "charlatans and BS-ers," and he even has the guts to say something nice about playing Ronald Reagan! The real problem, however, lies within Matheson. He claims to be a "nice guy," the "peacemaker" at home when his parents' marriage was falling apart. But the word that came to mind for him was "wimpy." He went through life always backing off, never really standing up for himself, allowing coworkers and spouses/girlfriends to misuse him or walk all over him. It ends up being his chance to finally get back at all of them, griping a whole lot and throwing some of his closest friends under the bus. This may feel good for his ego, but he ends up being the kind of guy that we're not glad to meet. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 14, 2025
|
Mar 14, 2025
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0060751029
| 9780060751029
| 0060751029
| 3.68
| 3,641
| 2004
| Sep 15, 2005
|
it was ok
|
One of the most depressing books you'll ever read. While it's refreshing to see a celebrity be so open about her own addictions and the horrible abuse
One of the most depressing books you'll ever read. While it's refreshing to see a celebrity be so open about her own addictions and the horrible abuse she suffered at the hands of famous parents and an even more famous husband, there's nothing satisfying about this book. From childhood, her movie star dad spewed hatred and hit her well into adulthood, her actress mother ignored her or used her, and both of her parents role modeled their terrible drug addictions. Then she married one of the worst humans on the planet, tennis star John McEnroe, who in turn does more harm to than her parents. There's nothing inspirational about any of this. She never truly gets over her deep addictions and even though she tries to have a happy ending, after many trips to rehab she never totally comes clean. Her life in the 20 years since the book was published actually gets worse! There is so much that's sad about her story. Her father Ryan sleeps around, invites her (as a child) to bed with his lady friends, goes into rages whenever she has success, beats her often, and the only thing he offers her that could be considered kindness is drugs (again, starting as a child). Her mother is mentally ill and a moocher, stealing from Tatum to feed a drug habit and always demeaning the daughter to others. McEnroe hilariously comes from a supposedly "religious" Catholic family, rich elitists that are the most bigoted, mean, litigious hypocrites ever, treating her abusively with the excuse that she doesn't go to church as she promised she would! And all these people blame-shift about her drug addictions while never seeing themselves as feeding her the hatred that triggers her hunger for escape through her addictions. The problem is that Tatum has non-stop willingness to allow herself to be abused, then self-abuses through drugs, and always returns to her abusers looking for the love that none of them will ever give her. She claims in the end that AA helped her believe in a "Higher Power", but it never sticks--she needed to cut herself off completely from her parents decades earlier, live for her kids instead of the abusive men she kept wanting to fill her void, and find serious faith in spiritual deliverance. She could have transformed into a type of Drew Barrymore, who as a teen legally emancipated from her parents and now seems to have turned her life around, but O'Neal never truly gave up on the fantasy that someday the abusive haters would change and love her. While I understand the feeling, at some point she needed to grow up, have nothing to do with those hurting her, and acquire a living transformative faith. As the title says, Tatum O'Neal truly had a life that was like paper--thin, easily stained or crumpled, and eventually thrown away. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 11, 2025
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Mar 11, 2025
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Paperback
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| 0806543329
| 9780806543321
| 0806543329
| 4.10
| 184
| unknown
| Feb 25, 2025
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did not like it
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This is a confusing mess of a book that seems to be an attempt to use the "true crime" podcast or documentary format to get readers interested in the
This is a confusing mess of a book that seems to be an attempt to use the "true crime" podcast or documentary format to get readers interested in the story of abuse in scouting. But it's a total failure, from a man who is a drug-addicted, mentally ill, suicidal alcohol abuser that was jailed at least twice (convicted of a felony), has a "team" of three that help him survive life (therapist, psychologist, and psychiatrist), and has written other crime books (though you'd never know it from his inability to put together a cohesive narrative). From the start the text is poorly organized with back-and-forth "then" and "now" chapters throughout the book, keeping the stories from having any emotion or impact. Essentially this is two different books--one being the author's own story, which ends up being pretty minimal and not that interesting, and the other being that of his Boy Scout camp where a number of children were abused. It's tied together by a supposed "mystery" of how a male camp leader died after being exposed, but that's a red herring--there's nothing mysterious about it. The guy was caught, fired, and then killed himself. Renner's attempt to make it a question of whether the man was murdered or not is a laughable misdirect in an attempt to sell this--more proof that most amateurs doing "true crime" podcasts are morbid (and talentless) crazy people. There is so much wrong with this book that it's difficult to know how to pick it apart. The author jumps all over the place, inserting canards or gossip, admitting to his own failed memories, going off on tangents like whether he was having gay feelings or how he suddenly discovers in his 40s that he was "abused" by his parents. For all the conspiracy theories about the camp sexual abuse, the leader's death, and the author's own upbringing, Renner foolishly ends up failing to take responsibility for his own actions and comes up with some horribly uninspiring conclusions. Based on how he plays it up early in the book, I assumed he had a huge tragic story of his time at camp--but he didn't. At age 11 he had one extremely minor incident of another boy his age fondling him under the covers in a bed they shared--that's it. Renner as an adult questions if this shouldn't be considered abuse even though they were both young and exploring. Meanwhile, other boys at camp are victims of sexual intercourse by adult leaders, which should be made a big distinction in the author's mind but the guy seems to be treating them the same. His alcohol and drug addictions? "I believe in harm reduction as opposed to abstinence." He says he needs his liquor "for the days I'm feeling especially anxious. As far as I'm concerned, that's basically bottled water." Right, you think that logic will keep you from doing harm to others and yourself? His hatred and claimed PTSD from parents and stepparents who abused him? He tries to spin it positive but considers whether "everything happens for a reason." The simple answer is that "no, it doesn't." Sometimes bad things just happen for no good reason (just as sometimes good things happen with no reason), period. But Americans feel the need to spin that folksy piece of advice to try to make themselves feel like something good will happen someday or that they have some value in life. "I have had no suicidal ideations for many months," he ends the book. Many months? That's it? "I believe the psychedelics did most of that." Right, drugs that chemically force you to avoid taking responsibility for yourself and totally alter your mind are the answer, correct? Well if this book is any evidence, they've turned you into an illogical robot spewing woke catch phrases. He even defends evil, inappropriate thoughts. "I don't believe anyone is in control of their imagination...we are not our thoughts, we are our actions." Gee, James, I think abusers also should be held accountable for their thoughts when they speak them out loud, shouldn't they? Lessons from his time in jail? Nope--instead he makes a bizarre claim that he may have seen there an angel/vision male figure with the same name of the camp abuser who died. Not just once but both times he was incarcerated--and then a third time when he was in a mental institution! It's hard to believe he's serious, but understandable coming from a drugged-up guy that sees himself as having to turn everything positive. Renner even goes out of his way to give the Boy Scout organization affirmation for the good things they do, such as early in the book warning readers not to misjudge the inclusion of his childhood camp chaplain. "I don't want you to read further expecting him to do something bad...he was the best of the bunch." This is the guy who he hasn't seen for decades and refused to return Renner's calls in the preparation for the book, so the adult "reporter" really has no idea whether the man is hiding something or not. The same with the recent Boy Scout head who he heaps praise upon despite some very questionable ways of handling the lawsuits. Like I said, it's a mess. Some will praise it simply because of the topic, but unorganized and partial "facts" along with poorly stated personal stories that shift blame without supporting details make for a sloppy and incomplete look at the scandals. Remember that the word "camp" can also mean "exaggerated theatrical style or stereotypes," which this former theater performer seems to have done with his own life and with scouting. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 08, 2025
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Mar 08, 2025
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1646222296
| 9781646222292
| 1646222296
| 3.94
| 101
| Jan 14, 2025
| Jan 14, 2025
|
did not like it
|
The young hot body gazing at you from the cover is not something to get excited about--he is merely in sleeping position, as this book will do to read
The young hot body gazing at you from the cover is not something to get excited about--he is merely in sleeping position, as this book will do to readers. It's a series of snooze-inducing ruminations on pop culture and intimacy with incredibly long and poorly written paragraphs from an outsider using films and other media to make inane points about gays cruising, meeting, hooking up, dating, marrying, etc. There's nothing profound to it beyond a guy who loves to see his own words on a page. Some of the paragraphs are one-page-and-a-half long. Many go a full page. That's ridiculous, especially when he jams different thoughts or subjects into those long paragraphs. The content of them range from movies you've never heard of to his attempts to impress by mentioning old literature or theater. This is a book of rambling essays with only a few minor private tidbits thrown in, such as his admitting to being shy and uncomfortable going to bathhouses or marrying at age 31 to get a green card and avoid being kicked out of America. I could not figure out why anyone would want to hear from this writer, who simply seems to be cranking out padded papers to meet the minimal requirements for a gender studies college course. Then this immoral intimacy writer, who appears to have few ethical standards nor any understand of objective truth, confesses cheating to his husband and blame-shifts. Betancourt's therapist talks him into believing "there's a way to tell this story so that the marriage was over before my utterance, before I even stepped out and outright became an adulterer." The author tries to pin it on his spouse "because there wasn't enough understanding on the part of my partner." Classy. The writer even starts questioning, "'Had I cheated?' for instance or 'Was I a Cheater'?" He uses semantics to try to wiggle out of admitting serious wrong, doing that modern thing saying just because you cheated doesn't make you a cheater. As most guys that sleep around say, "That's not who I am." Right. Most young adult men (especially in this community) do sleep around whether married, committed, partnered or just dating. He concludes his tale of splitting up with this brilliant thought: when monogamy takes work it's more of a fairy tale coupling than the workings of a happy relationship. That leads to him, post-divorce, to dating two guys and becoming a "throuple" with few boundaries. I understand his thinking this might be of interest to readers, but there just wasn't much special about any of it. In the end the author fails to share himself beyond the surface, to the point where the book feels like his defense of marital cheating in order to come to a place of peace with non-monogamy. "Openness does not come easily to me," he writes. "Even in a book that requires certain disclosures, I can feel my reticence toward revealing too much of myself and allowing others in." Potential readers, that's a red flag! It is a big problem when a gay man supposedly writing about "modern intimacies" uses his pages to remain a stranger. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 07, 2025
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Mar 07, 2025
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0593087461
| 9780593087466
| 0593087461
| 3.63
| 374
| unknown
| Jun 15, 2021
|
it was ok
|
More of a business self-help book than a memoir, Flamin' Hot spends only a couple dozen pages telling the story of how the author came up with the spi
More of a business self-help book than a memoir, Flamin' Hot spends only a couple dozen pages telling the story of how the author came up with the spicy style of Cheetohs but a couple hundred giving advice about being an entrepreneur and lowly forward-thinking corporate worker. Whether you like this will depend on why you're reading it--if you want to hear a great, detailed, fascinating story of the author's rebellious undereducated life and his rise to the top then you might be disappointed. There are many asides in which he claims to have been mistreated due to his Mexican background. While I don't doubt that, some of the examples he uses are pretty weak and could be simply taken as co-workers or executives giving him a hard time as they would give any janitor who thought he could bypass them to go directly to the CEO. Montanez filters things through racial eyes but with a positive attitude. There are plenty of examples of people at the company that supported him when they shouldn't have, and that also may have been because of his racial background. It was also disturbing to hear him say that he thought school unnecessary for his success (he never even got close to graduating, running away often and arrested twice). And that being reported to the cops for shoplifting at age eight was wrong because he considered it racist. Why does someone of color filter all experiences through racism when it's something that occurs to people of any color, including whites? And why does he justify doing wrong, trying to shift the blame to the cops for putting handcuffs on when he was breaking the law? He should just be grateful that his arrest record didn't show up when he applied for work at the Frito plant! If you are looking to light a fire under your entrepreneurial skills then this might be hot enough for you, but if you want to read a great memoir then this flames out. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
|
Feb 20, 2025
|
Feb 20, 2025
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1538163128
| 9781538163122
| 1538163128
| 4.26
| 321
| unknown
| Mar 15, 2022
|
did not like it
|
Packed with misinformation, propaganda, and bitterness, I had to stop reading this book because it was infuriating and seemed to be written with malic
Packed with misinformation, propaganda, and bitterness, I had to stop reading this book because it was infuriating and seemed to be written with malicious intent. It isn't simply an actor relating his life story; it's a weapon being used to paint a distorted picture of society's reaction to those with disabilities. While I respect the author and empathize with his situation, this booklet misuses "facts," warps science and uses anecdotes as unvarnished truth. Rowe wants to paint the world as being completely ignorant when it comes to the needs of those with disabilities and that all sorts of changes should be made by 90% of the population to adapt to a small percentage. He appears to believe taxpayers should shoulder the cost for parental choices instead of holding people to individual responsibilities or looking to the non-profit world to help with burdens. He groups all disabilities together--from the smallest minor problem to major mental and physical health issues. The problem is that isn't fair to the argument--having a slight limp is not comparable to severe autism, which itself is a wide spectrum. Yet the author makes sweeping statements that don't apply to many of those that are autistic. His specific experiences and circumstances cannot be automatically transferred to represent all that he claims are disabled. He cites a limited number of online information pieces, and I checked some of them out--they were often either unsupported by other scientific research or totally contradicted by others. He uses 22 pages of this tiny book to list what he claims are five years worth of people killed by family members "simply for being disabled." No proof, no evidence, just names and ages, grouping these complex deaths all together (though the book itself gives a couple of their stories). Like the government tried to do by claiming many 2020 deaths as being from Covid when in truth they were from other physical illnesses or injuries, so Rowe builds a case on half-baked "facts" that are incomplete science. I can't speak to his life story since we have to take his word for it, but the guy is very bitter. I was in charge of a number of autistic young adults and found a wide range of abilities, so for him to extrapolate his individual negative encounters with the greater disability community at large is unfair and dishonest stereotyping. While he complains about others putting disabled and autistic people into boxes, he does the same thing. We'll never know how much of his story is truth because he changes names and identifying features, and compressed chronology "to keep this book to a readable length." At 135 pages of narrative text with a lot of white space he didn't need to do that, so what we get is his impressions instead of actual people we could verify specifics with. Mickey Rowe may feel fearless but he's actually no different from any other propagandists that wants to dramatically sway an audience without giving them the full true story. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Feb 20, 2025
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Feb 20, 2025
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Hardcover
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 4.26
|
really liked it
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Apr 14, 2025
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Apr 14, 2025
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| 4.29
|
it was ok
|
Apr 13, 2025
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Apr 13, 2025
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| 4.24
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did not like it
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Apr 10, 2025
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Apr 10, 2025
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|
| 3.58
|
did not like it
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Apr 08, 2025
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Apr 08, 2025
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|||||
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| 3.75
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it was amazing
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Apr 07, 2025
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Apr 07, 2025
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| 4.44
|
it was ok
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Apr 04, 2025
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Apr 04, 2025
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| 4.19
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did not like it
|
Apr 02, 2025
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Apr 02, 2025
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| 3.20
|
it was ok
|
Mar 30, 2025
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Mar 30, 2025
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| 3.72
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did not like it
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Mar 27, 2025
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Mar 27, 2025
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| 3.73
|
it was ok
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Mar 27, 2025
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Mar 27, 2025
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|
| 2.82
|
it was ok
|
Mar 26, 2025
|
Mar 26, 2025
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|||||
|
| 3.67
|
it was ok
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Mar 23, 2025
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Mar 23, 2025
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|
| 3.10
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did not like it
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Mar 16, 2025
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Mar 16, 2025
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| 3.63
|
it was ok
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Mar 16, 2025
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Mar 16, 2025
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|||||
|
| 4.02
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liked it
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Mar 14, 2025
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Mar 14, 2025
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|||||
|
| 3.68
|
it was ok
|
Mar 11, 2025
|
Mar 11, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 4.10
|
did not like it
|
Mar 08, 2025
|
Mar 08, 2025
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|||||
|
| 3.94
|
did not like it
|
Mar 07, 2025
|
Mar 07, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 3.63
|
it was ok
|
Feb 20, 2025
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Feb 20, 2025
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|||||
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| 4.26
|
did not like it
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Feb 20, 2025
|
Feb 20, 2025
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