1 Followers
22 Following
sonjbean

sonjbean

Currently reading

Murder in Mississippi
John Safran
Cyndi Lauper: The Autobiography. Cyndi Lauper
Cyndi Lauper, Jancee Dunn
Thirty Scary Tales
Rayne Hall
Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Modelland

Modelland - Tyra Banks normally a book this badly written would receive one star, but i have to give tyra an extra star for ~*imagination*~. i mean, i have no idea what she was TRYING to write, but this is almost bizarro fiction. okay, it IS. tyra hasn't done anything this weird since LIFE SIZE!

first of all, i have to share this little snippet from the acknowledgements at the end of the book:

"It was a real treat for me to read a section of Modelland for half an hour to childen who didn't speak English. I thought that if I could hold their atention that long, maybe my book had a chance at success"

... i'm pretty sure the measure of success is not how long you can captivate non-english speaking people with your english language book!

the giant problem this book has is that it is wayyyyy tooooo loooong.
halfway through i was almost ready to give up. 500 something pages is really too much - apparently, her first draft was 1000 pages though, so we have to thank an editor somewhere for that. yes, this book did actually go through an editing process!

the story is quite slow and her overuse of adjectives makes it virtually impossible sometimes to visualise what's happening. i did kind of start to care about what was going to happen next but not in any emotionally-attached way.

i think my 'favourite' parts were actually the over-the-top physical descriptions of the characters. OH and the clothes! the school uniform is a green unitard with a yellow sash belt - this sash contains their future modelling powers, btw.

many reviewers have said it before, but it is completely true - EVERY CHARACTER IN THIS BOOK IS TYRA. SHE IS ALL OF THEM.

anyway, i will leave you with a little excerpt of the genius held within this book:

"It's going to be under a perfect sunset, near a garden of golden flowers spreading as far as the eye can see," Tookie said, making it up as she went along. "The lucky guy who will get to pucker with my suckers will be wearing a ... tuxedo. And ... and he's going to sing to me a song he wrote, and he'll ... dance to it. It needs to make me laugh and make me cry."
Bravo blinked. "Are you for real?"
"Hell yeah, I'm for real! Then he will open up his shirt like a superhero," she went on. "Oh his chest will be written Tookie you are the most amazing girl I have ever laid eyes on. And I can't decide which I love more, your green or your brown eye. Then he'll have to touch my face gently with both hands." Her eyes spilled newer, fresher tears. "And he'll kiss my forehead, both of my cheeks, and then my nose. Then he'll spray whipped cream straight into my mouth and then his. And then he'll part his mouth just a little and press his lips against mine. And for me, it will feel like the kiss will never end. Because it won't. It will go on forever. And it will be amazing!"

sararamirezok