Angels, Vampires & Douche Bags by Carla Collins

Published March 1, 2010.

Author website.

In this candid confessional, comedian Carla Collins divides the world into the angels who guide us, inspire us, and save our butts; the sexy and trendy vampires who suck the life out of us; and the douche bags who constantly annoy, disgust and taunt us. With a fast wit, fake breasts and real heart, Collins shares her unconventional journey from a small steel town in Ontario, Canada to Tinseltown L.A. On this wild and revealing romp, she navigates her way through seventy-two imaginary friends, multiple fianc s, eight dogs, two marriages, and one topless grandmother. Her hard-earned life lessons will show you that by taking risks, embracing humiliation and tapping into the power of laughter, anything is possible--and everyone is manageable. Attract more angels into your life, control your vampires, and keep all the douche bags at bay.  (goodreads.com)

I laughed my ass off reading ANGELS, VAMPIRES & DOUCHE BAGS.  Seriously, Carla has a wit and timing about her that just can't be beat.  She's a petite little blonde that's packed full of snark but never even comes close to toeing the line of being a snatch.  Her comedy doesn't stem from any kind of nastiness.  There isn't a bitterness to it.  Sure, some of the things in her life weren't all that great but even the seedier moments are spun on their head and given a humorous light.  Carla is exceptionally self-deprecating, something I can wholly appreciate.  Trust, no one's going to find you funny unless you can laugh at yourself first.

While having a nominally unhealthy obsession with hookers, Carla tells like it it is, her life spread eagle on the pages for all to see.  She doesn't try to hide anything and she certainly doesn't sugarcoat any of it either.  Her stories are told with a poignant voice that really only sprinkles in the snark but the lines are so well-timed that they kind of sneak up on you and you find yourself laughing before you can even really process what you read.  Seriously, I need to see this woman live because she's a damn good storyteller.  I can imagine her sitting around a table just chatting and just the WAY she tells the stories sucks you right in.  The tone, the voice, it's funny without actually being funny simply because you know there's going to be a line there that'll crack you right the hell up.

If I quoted all of my favorite lines I'd pretty much be duplicating the entire book but here are some of note enough that I stopped reading to plug into my Goodreads status thingy -

"I hesitated, because to me, tantric sex sounds like a Kevin Costner movie - it goes on forever and nobody comes." 

"I was at the counter and figured I needed a back of Mentos,  a copy of People magazine and a bag of boobies." 

"That Jerry Maguire movie was bullshit.  You need to become complete yourself first; then ideally, find another complete human to compliment you."

Between the most excellent pearls of wisdom and the snap, it could hardly go wrong.

Except it did.  Not at the fault of Carla, though.  From page 75 to 104 it duplicates from page 17 on 32 pages.  I'm not kidding.  And I'm not talking some extra pages shoved into the greater book.  I'm talking about these 32 pages replaced the greater part of the VAMPIRES portion of this book.  I was filled with chagrin.  I mean talk about total buzz kill.  And it cut me off in the middle of an epic story and I still have no idea how it ended!  I'm missing 23% of the book and that makes me cranky.  Cranky to the point where I don't know how to rate this.  I loved everything I read.  Carla has an intriguing life and a kick ass voice that'll make me want to read anything she's ever written.  But an inbred one-eyed, one-handed clown bound the book and robbed me of a chunk of it.  Cranky.

I believe I shall rate it based on writing alone even though missing that part of the book put a huge damper on it for me.  Like I said, not Carla's fault so I can't discount her for it.  But I can grumble.

Ban Factor: High - Did you miss the part about Carla having a nominally unhealthy obsession with hookers?  Or boobies?  Or the tantric sex?  The banners are swooning.  Someone get some accordion fans.

Lady Gaga: Looking for Fame by Paul Lester + Giveaway!

Published September 1, 2010.

Author website.

Hers has been a triumph achieved with the help of wild image-making, infectious pop hits and a teasing strand of ambiguous sexuality that has turned her into a gay icon. At heart it's the story of a unique self-made phenomenon - a Madonna for today.

As an adoring fan of Freddie Mercury and David Bowie, Lady Gaga took the essence of 80s glam and reinvented it for the digital age. Commercially successful and critically accepted she shot from obscurity on Manhattan's Lower East Side club scene to worldwide fame in just a couple of years. This is the story of her high-speed rise in the fame game, told with a mix of admiration and sharp journalistic insight. (goodreads.com)

I'm a total Gaga convert. When I first heard 'Just Dance' I thought, 'Holy crap. Not another pop part. That's the last thing the world needs.' I never paid her any attention. Then I watched her performance at the VMA's, the one where she did 'Bad Romance' and hanged herself. Yeah. Hooked. That voice? Are you kidding me? That's not a tart voice. AND she's a classically trained pianist? Done. I've been a fan from that moment. And she's proved to not be your standard, run of the mill pop tart. She is an artist. All you have to do is watch her music videos to see that. Or look at what she wears. It's not about sex. It's about expression.

So when LOOKING FOR FAME came across my inbox I jumped at it. Just to know a little more about this woman who's younger than I am who become such an influence not just in music but in life. It is an unauthorized biography and it's formulated mostly through quotes Gaga made but most of it went along with information I'd gleaned since I started taking an interest in her.

I think because of her age her rise seems a little too good to be true but to say she didn't work for what she has would just be a downright lie. If LOOKING FOR FAME is to be believed, she went so low as to be a stripper, not necessarily for money but as a means of performance, and became heavy into cocaine so she could recreate the artistic expressions of her idols, like Warhol. She kicked both habits quickly and learned from them. I guess it's just shocking to see someone with such a mind to learn that quickly and move on from it. For most that can take years. But Gaga was so driven to make her life the way she envisioned it that she knew she couldn't let that stuff get in her way. And it didn't.

I'm not one to idolize celebrities. I just don't think they're worthy. They act, the sing, in many cases they do nothing but whore themselves out. They're not curing cancer or ending world hunger. But I can't help but admire Gaga's drive, her will power, her sheer force to make her world her own. She's empowering and I can't help but be lifted up when I hear some of the things she says. Lester does a great job of amplifying that in his book. It's all about Gaga's rise. He doesn't sugarcoat anything but you can feel the admiration in the reading.

LOOKING FOR FAME is a good peek into the life of Gaga before she was Gaga. You get to see her young, before her craziness took her over. You get to see what it took for her to get where she is. And, for the most part, she's really sedate. There's no mention of backstabbing or throat slashing. Gaga didn't step on faces to rise. She may have been unmoving in some of her requests but people didn't get crunched under her boots as she stepped up. That I find pretty cool. And I think you will too if you're even a nominal Gaga fan.

And then you'll want to go crank at least one of her songs.

Ban Factor: High - Just because it's Lady Gaga and so many people think she's corrupting the world's youth with her indecency.

Giveaway time!!!

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Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff

Published November 1, 2010.

Her palace shimmered with onyx and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world.

She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, two of the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a son with Caesar and - after his murder - three more with his protege. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since.

Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way the supple personality has been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order a generation before the birth of Christ. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff's is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life. (book flap blurb)

First and foremost this is a history book. The plot is taken from real time 2,000 years ago. It hasn't been bloated with fantastical elements or intense drama. In fact, if you were reading this book as you would a work of fiction, you'll find yourself sadly lacking that same kind of connection to Cleopatra as you would to a main character in a novel. Why? Because Cleopatra is nearly unknowable. And she's not a fictional character. She's spoken of from a distance, seen more through the eyes of men around her than through her own lenses. If you're not interested in Caesarian Roman or Ptolemaic Egyptian history, you might not get much out of this book. But if you are, and you want to know more about the elusive Cleopatra, not the Elizabeth Taylor or Shakespeare version but the real person garnered from first hand accounts and a few words out of her own mouth, you'll guzzle this book up as if it were your life force.

The person of Cleopatra is the center of this book's universe with which all other events orbit. Unfortunately, the only way we can truly get to know Cleopatra now is by analyzing the events happening around her through the eyes of the people she's come in contact with. As I said above, this creates a sort of distance from her but it allows for a more objective look into her life. With these elements Schiff allows you to dissect her life and get a better hint of who Cleopatra was as a person, what her personality really was like and whether something of those scandalizing rumors really were true. Augustus Caesar did a good job of striking her from the history books. But not good enough. Here she remains to this day and Schiff did an excellent job of digging up the truth behind this woman we know next to nothing about. We barely even know what she looks like save for some sanctioned Ptolemaic coinage with her bust stamped onto it.

Despite the rampant incest (holy god, we're talking about a family stump here, ew) and homicidal tendencies, Cleopatra's ability to rule a kingdom was astonishing compared to any ruler, let alone a woman living, quite literally, in a man's world. That's not to say her reign was full of smooth sailing, but she knew how to talk, walk and act in order to get what she needed for her country. She put her country first above all else (except maybe her children). Just like the accounts of this book orbit around Cleopatra, every piece of minutiae of Cleopatra's life orbited around the success of her kingdom. It's hard to determine if she did something genuinely out of love or if it was show, but it was all for Egypt, ultimately. Even when she tried negotiating with the immovable Augustus after she swindled Antony into his own suicide, it was all political. It was Antony's only way to die on his terms and Cleopatra's last hope of saving her country.

Despite the distance I say this book creates between the reader and Cleopatra, it does an excellent job of forming a more accurate image of her in your mind's eye. That Elizabeth Taylor hussy image gets pushed aside as all of these missing pieces replace it, forming this real live person that feels more a part of history itself than just Hollywood. While the puzzle isn't complete, and probably never will be, Schiff does an fantastic job of digging up absolutely everything she can on this amazing woman and giving it to us as straight as can be. She doesn't hide what Cleopatra is, or what she potentially was. No secret is safe, nor even skewed. I felt like I was back during her reign, sitting on a cloud with the gods and watching all of these events unfold. Some of the images were blurry but they were clear enough to determine just what was going on.

While it took a little while for me to get through, this book is an excellent historical read. A must read for anyone interested in the life and times of Cleopatra without the fabrications of storytelling and millennia of innuendo. It's raw, it's unforgiving and you will come away from it being more knowledgeable about such a shadowy figure in history. And then you'll want to read it again to be sure you picked up all of the historical tidbits you may have missed.

If you want a good piece of fiction to follow this book with, you should pick up Cleopatra's Daughter by Michelle Moran. It picks up almost right where Cleopatra ends and Moran sticks pretty closely to the facts Schiff writes about. Honestly, I don't think you'll be able to stop at the end of Cleopatra. She's just far too interesting of a person.