Celebrity Book Club


Here are six books written recently by celebrities. My last book post was coincidently on books written by supermodels. 



Has anyone seen my pants? Colonna, Sarah, 2015, 288 pages
Sarah is best known from Chelsea Lately and also does standup comedy. In fact, after reading this book I took a couple of my girlfriends to see her show when she came to town and she didn't disappoint. The book is a look at Sarah's single life as a woman in her late thirties. Although financially secure, having great friends, and a great job, Sarah seems to have a problem when it comes to male companions. This is a book that looks at the funny side of relationships and the search for the one true companion. The book is super funny, witty and enjoyable to read, hence I finished it in a weekend. I could relate to the part where she constantly has to remind restaurant servers that she's single, you know because it's so imperative that they remove the other place setting if no one else is joining you. Spoiler:
She's getting married to a Seahawk!







My fight : your fight Rousey, Ronda, 2015, 302 pages


As the UFC's charismatic first female woman fighter, Ronda Rousey has rocketed to MMA stardom, but make no mistake about it the road to success was paved with blood, sweat, and tears. Lots and lots of tears. Ronda is also an Olympic medalist in judo and a Hollywood star as she was in Sylvester Stallon's movie The Expendables 3. 
Each chapter is short and easy to read, and begins with a little bit of that wisdom and knowledge gained over years.

Her story starts out with the painful loss of her father when she was eight years old and details the intensity of her judo training. She talks about struggling with an eating disorder, a depressingly natural consequence of spending her life trying to attain an unnaturally low weight. She talks about her rotten ex-boyfriends who treated her like crap while giving them amusing nicknames as a creative way to avoid a slander lawsuit by avoiding their real names.
She was someone that was living in her car working three jobs to get by while breaking boundaries for women for when she finally landed a Strikeforce fight that paid a lot more than what she'd been making.  I had to cringe at the descriptions of fights in this book. Since I had never seen a fight of hers I looked them up up on youtube and you can't tell by watching that she dislocates elbows with that arm bar. At the end of the day she's a badass and there were places I found it surprisingly easy to relate to Rousey's life. She had an undefeatable fight record until her fight with Holly Holm, here's a video on her reaction to that on the Ellen show.


LA Reid - Sing to Me: My Story of Making Music, Finding Magic, and Searching for Who's Next, 2016, 400 pages

LA Reid, was the co-founder of LaFace Record Company, President of Arista Records, and then President Def Jam Records where he partnered with Jay-Z as an Executive where everyone dressed up for Halloween at work, and then later President Epic Records. He explains that his influence to be a judge on The X Factor is that he wanted to be wanted to be well known as he had only worked behind the scenes and on the first show the audience only clapped politely for him even though they went wild for Paula Abdul, another artist he worked with in the past. He has written hit songs for many artists. And worked with many of the top stars in the industry including Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez and Kanye and shares stories of each experience. He also discovered artists such as Usher, TLC, Toni Braxton, Justin Bieber, Pink, Ne-Yo, Outkast, Ciara and Avril Lavigne. My favorite quote was what he said about Jay-Z, "he is never late for anything, ever. He is a man who respects himself, others, and time. He is a man of integrity."  If you're a fan of 80s and 90s R&B music and have an interest in how the music business industry works you have to read this book. I haven't read many memoirs from men, but he is so open and raw with his feelings that I absolutely loved this book and couldn't put it down. I read it every night on my kindle and finished in a week. 



Kris Jenner..Kris Jenner and All Things Kardashian, 2011, 320 pages, 


It was so juicy I read in one week and couldn't put it down.
Kris admits to cheating on Robert Kardashian in a scandalous affair with some loser. Then a huge chunk of this book was about the Nicole Brown Simpson murder as they were close friends and frequently vacationed together as families.  Kris is from San Diego and her family owned a candle store growing up which is what led to her opening a clothing store as an adult that her daughters ended up working in with her when their TV show started. This book is an interesting look at Kris, a business-savvy woman who uses what she has to become incredibly rich.  She resurrected Bruce Jenner’s career as a public speaker by creating media kits for him. She's manager to her kids and has to find a way to keep their TV show relevant on the air for so many seasons. Her work ethic seems to have been picked up by some of her children.  She does not write about Kim's tape, Khloe's arrest or serious car accident that left her injured for a year. 



Year of Yes - Shonda Rhimes, 2015, 336 pages but it's a really small book sizewise and lots of rambling

The mega-talented creator of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal and executive producer of How to Get Away With Murder. She feels she's is normalizing TV by telling stories involving women, people of color and LGBT characters.

The book chronicles how saying YES for one year changed her life. Shonda describes herself as "I am awkward, introverted and visibly uncomfortable when meeting new people. I never ever wanted to do any publicity. I never ever spoke in public without two glasses of wine in my system." Then she took on a challenge in 2014 to say yes to every speaking opportunity that came her way. She called it "Badassery" - the practice of knowing one's own accomplishments and gifts. And practice of living life with swagger, which is the state of loving oneself. 

She tells one story of how when she got a man everyone was so incredibly happy for her. The praise she received for having a man "eclipsed any and all praise or congratulations or excitement that accompanied the births of her 3 adopted children and of her many career accomplishments." She says, "it was stunning that the presence of a man could make people so joyful" for her as she did not want to be celebrated for his presence. I loved that bit because isn't that the truth. If you run into someone you haven't seen in a long time, they almost immediately ask you who you're dating because that's a woman's only significance in life. 

I also love how Shonda expresses gratitude for her glam team "who bring out the better her after working on her for 2.5 hours because she did not wake up like this."



You're never weird on the Internet - Felicia Day, 2015, 260 pages
Felicia's quirky memoir is about her unusual upbringing being home-schooled for hippie reasons, her rise to Internet-stardom, producing her own web series, owning her own production company, and becoming an Internet star.


She built her whole brand online by making a web series for Youtube. She is the creator of The Guild and producer of the web series network Geek and Sundry.  The Guild is a comedy about nerds obsessed with World of Warcraft. She also leads a popular Goodreads book club. She’s also appeared in several mainstream shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Felicia used to be a gamer and there's a chapter on how she let World of Warcraft dominate her life to the point where it caused her anxiety. And was an addiction that was hampering what she wanted to do with her career. She's also not afraid to write about how awful the internet can be, from #GamerGate to stalkers showing up INSIDE HER HOUSE. Back to her childhood she tells stories of her mom driving her to meet her online gaming friends acorss state lines. While I may have nothing in common with her, it was an interesting read.




8 comments

  1. I seriously admire people who read so much, I really think I need to set some kind of goal for myself, maybe losing a day of blog-time a week just to read. I haven't read anything besides kids books for too long.
    I think the Kris Jenner and Shonda Rimes ones interest me the most... mostly because gossip is fun and I adore Greys Anatomy lol

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  2. I feel I haven't been reading that much lately, but the hardest part is starting a book, once you start, if it's good, you can't put it down. Memoirs are such juicy stuff they're easy to read.

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  3. I feel like celebrity books can be really hit or miss. I was really excited to read Not That Kind of Girl and was greatly disappointed. Yet both of Mindy Kaling's books were great. I often wonder how much it is them writing it versus a ghost writer.

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    1. Oh yeah Lena Dunham's book was a total disappointment, it was one of the rare books I couldn't even finish. I loved Mindy's books!

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  4. Has Anyone Seen My Pants? sounds like it would be a fun read! I don't know about Kris Kardashian's though - they annoy me LOL

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  5. I adore Felicia Day! Her book was absolutely fantastic <3

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  6. This is awesome, I didn't know about most of these books! I would love to read the Kris Kardashian one. I also think the Ronda Rousey and Shonda Rimes ones would be interesting. I used to watch LA Reid on the X Factor, I think it was.

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  7. I loved Year of Yes! It was so so good. I'll have to check out some of these other ones!

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