About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Jane Kamensky
Positive The New York Times Book Review Kamensky’s ambitious project... is a challenging one; she is at pains to avoid ascribing pat reasons for Royalle’s choices, while still providing ample context. At times the shifting focus can be disorienting ... Though the language remains playful and clear even when saturated with information, the resulting density can nonetheless turn the experience into homework. But that is likely the author’s point: Her rigor and thoroughness demand that the reader take seriously an underdog who made her name in a stigmatized industry.
Jesse David Fox
Rave The New York Times Book Review Keen insight...energetic and wise ... His own life experiences and tastes are integral to his reporting ... His faith is contagious.
Kliph Nesteroff
Positive The New York Times Book Review Fact-packed ... In no-frills prose, Nesteroff races through some two centuries of expression and backlash.
Emma Cline
Rave Jezebel Enthralling ... Cline’s protagonist is so self-assured, she will seduce readers into believing her brilliance. Her manipulation seems based on a deep understanding of human psychology ... It would be inaccurate to say The Guest is entirely bleak. It’s comedic at times and very invested in social psychology, however caustic and faulty Alex’s logic ... Cline doesn’t involve herself much in the tangles of an unreliable narrator. Instead, her approach offers the perfect view into the mindset of a professional liar, achieving what Chozick’s writing openly failed at. Cline also strikes an incredible balance between refraining to forgive or condemn her anti-hero ... The descriptions here are top-notch.
Billie Eilish
Mixed The Los Angeles Times [A]n actual memoir of sorts, simply titled Billie Eilish, a book of photographs with sporadic, pithy captions. If any teenager could pull off telling the story of her life thus far, surely it is Eilish, whose youth is at once a huge asset to her art (she speaks the language of now intuitively) and immaterial to it ... It’s jarring to see someone so invested in complexity release a book this basic. Imagine if the glossy insert of relevant pictures tucked into most celebrity memoirs were the whole book and you have a good idea of this one ... Eilish’s narration is unpretentious, sometimes to a fault ... More frustrating than a lack of insight is a repeated inability to put her thoughts into words.
Sharon Stone
Mixed Jezebel As an icon of Hollywood glamour and clear subversion of the dumb-blonde myth as soon as she opens her mouth, Stone’s existence is baldfaced in its rarefaction. But even without the fame that is her memoir’s primary selling point, enough has happened to Stone to fill a book much longer than the 246-pager that she turned in ... While Stone’s writing frequently suggests that she is aware and in complete mastery of her eccentricities, her book is nonetheless something of a disappointment. As an unconventional persona, she has arranged her memoir to have an unconventional structure that prioritizes theme over linearity ... But sometimes Beauty seems to hew a little too close to the experience of losing one’s mind as literally as Stone did during her neurological health crisis. Narrative chaos abounds. Stone betrays her no-bullshit persona repeatedly with circuitous storytelling, leaving glaring holes in her recounting. Reading the book at times has the effect of experiencing a migraine with aura ... Beauty is best appreciated as a string of anecdotes and humorous observations from someone who already has our attention ... Stone’s prose can be vivid ... Very few anecdotes about her movies are included (I would have especially loved to hear what it’s like to flop, or why on earth she thought Basic Instinct 2 was a good idea).
Mariah Carey, with Michaela Angela Davis
Rave The Los Angeles Times The previously tight-lipped pop star connects dots from her life to her music as she never has before, weaving her lyrics in and out of relevant scenes, and sheds light on the real-life origins of eccentricities that practically ooze out of her pores under glaring studio lights ... If she is over the top, here’s a book-long theory of how she got there ... A discriminating reader may question whether this book is laying Carey definitively bare or merely reinforcing a painstakingly crafted public image. But what Carey and her co-writer have assembled is such a terrifically readable yarn that the warts-and-some treatment feels impressive either way. It is, above all else, an exceptional entry in the genre ... What sounds tough to live through is riveting to read about ... She is frequently funny ... [Carey] casts herself as, above all things, a survivor of hardship. Much of the focus is not on what she has done but what was done to her ... This book sets in type pop music’s ethos of good packaging. To love pop is to appreciate its gloss, and in that narrow but all-important sense, wow does The Meaning of Mariah Carey shine.
Robyn Crawford
Positive Jezebel Many Whitney Houston fans never thought this day would come. Robyn Crawford, the singer’s friend, assistant, and long-rumored lover has broken her silence. As if that silence were a dam, the words pour out with a palpable fervor in Crawford’s new memoir ... This is a generous, loving book that has more insight on Houston’s career—the ride, the fall—than any other single source that I’ve encountered (it wipes the floor with the 2017 documentary Can I Be Me? and the 2018 one Whitney). Some 40 years in the making, A Song for You is unequivocally worth the wait ... It is undeniably juicy ... Beyond the dish people expect from such a tell-all is an exquisite portrait of the fiercely private woman beyond the public commodity that was frequently referred to as The Voice ... Crawford humanely shares insight while paying tribute to a lost life ... Houston’s artistry is also examined closely ... Crawford pulls no punches when describing the way Houston’s family members treated her and the singer ... As A Song for You surges to its tragic climax, it becomes harder to endure ... In helping us make sense of it with compassion and clarity, Crawford has provided a crucial public service in her lovely, loving book. We almost had it all—here’s a little bit more.