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Book Pick: Say Everything

 Another audiobook in which the sound of the author's voice is everything.  


Ione Skye is a semi-interesting women who can definitely speak to a very memorable time of Hollywood and music in the late 80's to late 90's.  

However, I unfortunately didn't love this book.  The more I read, she seemed less like a survivor and more like a woman hanging on to every sad soggy crust thrown out by a man.  And I just can't help but feel that it's sad when a woman is most known by the men in her life: her worthless hippie dad, Donovan; let's call a spade a pedophile, Anthony Kiedis, probably the best man she ever met, Adam Horovitz; let me have a baby with a rich guy I barely know, David Netto; and then yeah this guy will do, Ben Lee.

I know, I know.  I shouldn't be so mean.  But listening to her story truly made me feel that there are about 867,000 other women out there with more interesting stories.  And luckily, I've read a ton of them.

As a big fan of celeb memoirs (mainly due to the brainlessness they require) I would encourage readers to seek out some women with a little more truth to share.  Hell, even Kathleen Hanna's bio is better than this one.  Or check out Random Family  or anything by Roxane Gay or Lindy West.  Or Possum Living.  Or Letters of a Woman Homesteader.  Or some fiction by Laura Ingalls-Wilder, Anne Tyler or Barbara Kingsolver.  Study up on Zelda Fitzgerald and see what her dipshit of a husband did to her.  

Read anything by a woman who survived something bigger than being raised without a dad!  

I know, I know.  I shouldn't be so hard on lil Ione.  I grew up with both parents.  And good ones too.  But the inspiration that has always given me the kick in the pants have been the women who struggled and fought against their adversity.....and not just when a cute guy was looking.  Women who pulled themselves up by education, hard work and tenacity.....not mascara and auditions.  

Give that some thought when you're choosing your next memoir....I know I will.

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