Molly Ringwald fancies herself an actress. Not "a former child actress," she fancies herself an actress. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that she's also deluded enough to fancy herself an author. At least HarperCollins had a smidgent more sense: They teamed her with Ruben Toledo ("as told to") for Getting the Pretty Back: Friendship, Family, and Finding the Perfect Lipstick.
Were Molly really able to 'Get the Pretty Back,' she wouldn't be hitting you up for 25 bucks to read this scrapbook in oversided type and bad illustrations (illustrations by Toledo). She can't get it back and she can't churn out a readable book. Page 197 finds Ringwald and Toledo sharing:
There was a long week when my daughter Mathilda's response to any question was "Liar lair pants on fire." This was a vast improvement upon the previously and often used "Nana Nana, butt butt."
And that passage is an improvement on much of the book. Such as when the spoiled whine that ended her brief ascent in films surfaces. She's on vacation, visiting Greece. "I finally," she (and Ruben) shares, "lost it one night as my husband and I were driving around a Greek beach town, looking for an Internet phone card. (The remote location still hasn't heard of WiFi). I dissolved into tears and screamed out my frustration and feelings at being steamrolled by the culture."
Poor Molly! Now ask the average American if they'd like to take an exotic vacation and many will offer some version of "I can't afford it" or "I'm afraid I'll be laid off next month, I can't spend money." But Molly's got problems, real problems. Where or where can she find an "Internet phone card"!
It's at that point that you really grasp how spoiled she is and then you start to wonder why she's writing a book about raising children to begin with?
We're sorry, did Molly's children just join Doctors Without Borders to assist those in need? Did they just win a Nobel Peace Prize?
No and no. In fact, they're not even grown up. So maybe before Molly considers herself an expert on raising children and markets said children to sale a bad book, readers might be entitled to see some proof that the 'author' does in fact know what she's doing?
Isn't her writing a book on how to raise your children a bit like someone planting their first seed and deciding they're not an expert on gardening as they rush off to write that first book?
Barack Erotica is now available in softcover: Richard Wolffe's Renegade: The Making Of A President [And The Unbreaking Of Wolffe's Heart]. Professional Progandist Dick Wolffe goes slack jawed for Barry O. Not since Monica Lewinsky fancied herself a writer has such purple prose decoarated an allegedly non-fiction book. (To Lewinsky's credit, she waited until the affair was over. Wolffe lacks even temporary perspective.)
Page after page reads as if Wolffe typed them with one hand while the other busied itself: "As I write, I can hear the president's helicopters readying to take him to Camp David for the first time.They swoop overhead as decoys or the real thing. All you can see are the dark green underbellies and the sun glancing off their bright white tops."
Little Dickie adds an afterword just for the softcover edition which largely serves to insist that he captured a moment and if Barack's polls are dipping, that's not because Dick Wolffe hyped or whored, no sir. Equally hilarious are the pull quotes pimping this mastabatory material such as Ken Burns "Marvelous." Obviously the filmmaker hasn't read a great many books. Even at $16.00 it's overpriced.
Whip Smart may pull you in if you spy it on the bookshelves and mistake it for a book by Liz Phair. Sadly, this is an S&M book or, as we like to think of it, Richard Wolffe's sequel to Renegade. St. Martin's Press used to be known for text books. These days they do text books and softcore porn. At $24.99, this may (or may not) be cheaper than a 1-900 sex line but we found Melissa Febo's attempts at erotically conveying her life as a whore to be as predicatble as her insistance that she's really smart. In an earlier time, Febo would have had a press agent to insist she had a genius IQ. Today, she pretty much has to do it all by herself (with a little help from Terry Gross who found this tired smut worth discussing on NPR).
If there's anything worse than taking money from someone for sex, we think it's then whining about them in print. Take Rick, one of Febo's regulars. Half of her sessions with Rick were great fun, she informs, but then he wanted her to play "Mean Mommy" and, goodness, his "high-pitched and nasal submissive voice did turn her off.
You know what? You took the money, quit you're whining. You sold yourself and you didn't like the customers. Sounds like a professional problem and we're not sure writing a dull book will address it.
Another Terry Gross fave is Roxana Saberi who self-presents as a 'reporter' but is really more of an international trouble maker. She sort-of tells her story -- for $25.99 -- in HarperCollins' Between Two Worlds. The busy body details (somewhat) her recent time in Iran and her arrest leading to her parents pleas and global tensions. It all ends when she claims another journalist (she names him) is a spy and she's allowed out of Iran. The whole book has an "As told to Eli Kazan" feel.
There are many books worth reading for various reasons. The above four have no redeeming qualities. Storytelling is beyond the 'authors,' style escapes them and, worst of all, no tree should have given its life for such drivel.