Radakovich gives men the lowdown about women's secret desires and conversations, as exemplified by the Wild Girls Club, consisting of her and her ``supervixen'' friends. The pieces collected here, which have appeared in Details magazine, were written for a male audience, but, filled with anecdotes about the search for sex and love, they will also appeal to women. Obsessed with sex and male sex organs, Radakovich relates her experiences with exuberant candor. After sampling the offerings from a couple of male escort (read ``prostitute'') services, Radakovich concludes that ``having someone to worship you is one of life's better turn-ons.'' In another experiment, she tests several aphrodisiacs, with varied results (after taking one called Montezuma's Secret, ``even the knockwurst in the refrigerator started to look good''). Tired of the single life, she joins several dating services (``getting laid was not the problem; finding someone who didn't irritate us in the morning after was'') only to meet a nerd, a likable slob, and a man who embarrasses her by performing card tricks at an outdoor cafe. When a neighbor finds love on a cruise ship, Radakovich takes a cruise. Although at first the trip is a ``single's nightmare,'' it turns around with a huge alcoholic fest and flirtation confessions near the end of the cruise. Radakovich's raffish sense of humor litters her book, especially her tongue-in-cheek answers to ``probing questions from the male room'' as ``the Determinator'' at Details. Although right on target with much of her advice and narration, she also receives mail from irate customers (``Come to Seattle,'' one man writes, ``Ted Bundy was from here''). Battled-scarred survivors of stressful dating and miscommunication will want to read this book, if only for laughs.
Pub Date: May 4, 1994
ISBN: 0-517-59631-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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