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Title: Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch : Tales from a Bad Neighborhood by Hollis Gillespie ISBN: 0-06-056198-X Publisher: Regan Books Pub. Date: 02 March, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.41 (22 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: I want to fly on her plane
Comment: Unapologetic bleached-blond flight attendant (I can just imagine her sassy repartee as she holds the mic on a plane that's just come down to a bouncy landing in SFO - does she work for Southwest?) and NPR commentator Gillespie dishes up to readers much more than "coffee, tea, or milk." She delivers humor, one-liner after one-liner, cameos of an assortment of her outrageous friends of all possible sexual genders, and chronicles of her lifetime of hilarity.
Some refer to this book as a memoir, but I can't see how anyone could make that label stick. There's no through line, no sense of logical progression from beginning to end, no real character growth. Gillespie is Gillespie at the beginning, and she's the same Gillespie at the end of this 279-page ride - but still, it's a fun ride.
This is a perfect book to leave on the bathroom counter for a few days. The chapters are short, short, short, probably designed to be read aloud on a quickie NPR spot of 2-3 minutes duration. Each is complete within itself, so it's easy to put the book down at chapter's end. The next time you pick it up, you'll probably flip through and begin reading at a different section altogether.
This totally irreverent (the title might give you a clue that the author is not a disciple of the religion of Political Correctness), raunchy, bawdy, silly, over-the-top collection of essay-ettes provides lots of giggles and a few moments of honest epiphany.
Rating: 4
Summary: There goes the neighborhood!
Comment: I love this hilarious, engaging memoir. Hollis Gillespie (which in German means, "hellish gargoyle") writes with unflinching honesty and undeniable wit. The memoir is a collection of old journal entries in which Hollis wrote about her family woes, career developments and adventures with her eccentric friends. I sort of expected this book to be a witty take on life, but what I hadn't expected was the dark and quirky humor. I loved it! Her mother's job building bombs for the government, the constant moving around and her strange friends -- namely Lary, the one obsessed with death and suicide -- made me laugh from beginning to end. This is one hilarious memoir! Highly recommended...
Rating: 2
Summary: Needs editing
Comment: Wow, I really didn't enjoy this book, but I guess that's what I get for judging a book by its cover. I saw the bold title, interesting jacket art and sassy author photograph and thought, cool, this should be a good read. But it wasn't long before I was actually forcing myself to finish the book, that's how bad it was.
Hollis Gillespie has some good stories to tell, but they are not presented in any sort of order, and are referred to over and over. For example, before page 100, she's already repeated her friend Grant's "you gotta have vision" and "I'm the happiest man alive" speeches. She also has a handful of phrases that she overuses to an obnoxious degree, like "Jesus God!" or "crack house," as well as more tedious offerings like "a (...) the size of a sewage pipe," "wailing like a sick sea elephant," or "nothing like [etc.] to (...) up your day." She also has a bad habit of starting a chapter with a bold statement (like "I tried to poison my mother"), then slowly backpedaling to reveal a pretty innocuous event ("well, actually I just brought her a dead fish from a pond when I was 8").
The author writes in the introduction that the book is basically a collection of journal entries. A good editor could have pieced the stories together in a more chronological and meaningful manner, eliminated the repetitious storytelling, removed all the recurring phrases, and toned down the hyperbole. Hollis is a decent writer with ideas, but if she ever pitches a second book, her publisher should absolutely demand better editing. There is no shame in refinement.
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Title: The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse (Gollancz SF S.) by Robert Rankin ISBN: 0575074019 Publisher: Gollancz Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris ISBN: 0316143464 Publisher: Little, Brown Pub. Date: 01 June, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Little Children by Tom Perrotta ISBN: 0312315716 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Mind at Night: The New Science of How and Why We Dream by Andrea Rock ISBN: 0738207551 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 02 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: I Dream of Microwaves: Stories by Imad Rahman ISBN: 0374174016 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 01 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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