Tagged: books

Review of Chasing Harry Winston

Author Lauren Weisberger gets back on track with her third and newest novel, Chasing Harry Winston (2008). As with her first book, The Devil Wears Prada (2006), we are in the heart of New York City with a couple of gals definitely into brand identity.

Weisberger is a master at the product push. New York City is her canvas of images, interweaving the hip hotspots, cool designers and brunch spots of ill repute into her narrative. She wised up and dropped another big name designer in her title. The product placement is slick, even Project Runway has nothing on her.

The story’s best appeal is as a primer for the girls trapped in the flyover states. We miss out on the hottest things if it is not featured on Oprah’s Favorite Things or in Sex and the City. Because of Winston, I now know things like Sky Studios, Kérastase Products and Dwell Magazine exist. Lucky me.

As for the writing, Winston is better crafted than Prada with more character development than monster recall. This is a definite improvement over her second novel, Everyone Worth Knowing, a hard-to-believe take of boutique public relations and party girls.

The bottom line is Chasing Harry Winston is like Lucky Magazine in paragraph form.

Review of Audition by Barbara Walters

Audition: A Memoir (2008), Barbara Walters’ autobiography, made me think of the word tome. Clocking in at 612 pages, Audition is no small snack of a book, but a dense-as-cheesecake read.

If you’re a celebrity, no doubt you received a shout out as Walters probably opened her Rolodex as she was writing, saying, “Oh, I forgot about him.” And the second half is more like a Barbara Walters’ Special retrospective in print…Anwar, Monica, Fidel, Rosie, Oprah and on and on.

But it was the first half that I enjoyed most. As the daughter of famed nightclub owner, Walters grew up in New York and Miami around the entertainers of the 1930s and 40s. She learned not to trust the dreamers, as least financially, because her father made and lost many fortunes through his work. She says she had to work to support herself and her family (nightclubs were a losing business once televisions became the family entertainment). So ironic.

Her first TV job was in the publicity department of an NBC affiliate and soon became a producer, thus on her way to “becoming Barbara Walters.” She was a woman in a man’s world, and she seemed to not let them bother her. Sure, there were lecherous men, condescending executives, and Walter Cronkite on the next plane trying to scoop her exclusive. But a girl can’t let them get her down.

Between relating her life story, Walters throws in some good interviewing tips. One is to ask someone about his or her first job. “Trust me, everyone, from presidents and movie stars to policeman and moving men, remembers his or her first job and will relate it in minute detail,” she writes.

The bottom line is Audition is a must for those interested in television news and media. Just be prepared to spend many, many hours with Barbara. She is persistent.