September 1, 2007 – 9:00 am
I don’t read many celebrity kiss-and-tell biographies. Frankly, as someone who doesn’t watch much TV, I’m often in the dark about who the big celebrities are, and so why would I be interested in reading about their bed-time adventures? But when it comes to big names…
For example, Elvis?
OK! I’ve heard of him. Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess opens with the young author of this memoir wrangling her way into Elvis’s hotel room in 1956. All the important details are there: “I wore a simple body-skimming black shantung dress (my most slenderizing) with white stitching along the neck […]
By Eloisa
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August 31, 2007 – 3:24 pm
I really like reading memoirs written by women; I particularly like it if their childhood had some of the same dismal features as mine. Some of my favorites? Susan Jane Gilman’s Hypocrite in a Poofy White Dress and Betsy Lerner’s Food and Loathing: a Life Measured Out in Calories.Free Gift With Purchase describes Jean Godfrey-June’s childhood in a family with remarkable similarities to mine. She writes “My mother is anti-glamour through and through: Physical appearances mean nothing to her.” My own mother is not quite as rigid as Jean’s mother, but the similarities are startling. My mother is a writer […]
By Eloisa
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I did a book blog on Squawk Radio about Nora Ephron’s book a short, breezy Saturday blog that talked about what a fantastically funny, wise book this is. And I still believe that. But in the months since I first read it, I have kept thinking about certain bits of advice. I tried to follow some, with disastrous results. And even more dangerously I started to observe my own body through Nora Ephron’s eyes, and hear her voice in my head. So this review is the entirely genteel argument I’d like to have with Nora Ephron.
Friends and Lies
I Feel Bad […]
January 1, 2007 – 11:47 am
This memoir opens up with a question from one of the author’s friends, Bill: “Do you think you’re a nymphomaniac?” he asks. In case you’re wondering, no one ever asks me that. In fact, I’m pretty sure that none of my friends have been asked that recently, and that goes double for my friends who are ten and twenty years old than I am.
Naturally, I was fascinated from the get-go. After all, as a romance author, I spend an awful lot of time thinking about women’s sexuality and, in particular, their desire. But I’m pretty much limited to women in […]
September 1, 2006 – 12:06 pm
I’ve read Money, A Memoir three times. Admittedly, I do tend to re-read. There are some favorite novels that I’ve literally read to pieces. But this is the first self-help non-fiction type of book I’ve ever read quite so religiously, and I decided to do a Pillow Talk on it because I honestly feel as if every one of us ought to read this book - and re-read it!
Money is partly a memoir about Liz Perle’s own relationship to money. It opens with a dramatic description of her husband handing her a roll of cash in the Singapore Airport and […]
