Rosie O'Donnell: Celebrity Detox - A Book Review

I think I need a detox from all these celebrity memoirs I've been reading this year: Michael Caine, Shania Twain, Nicholas Hope...

Tonight I finished reading Rosie O'Donnell's memoir Celebrity Detox. It was a quick read, even for my slow reading pace.

Celebrity Detox is an odd book. It's written in Rosie's annoying almost-haiku writing style and she jumps from topic to topic gratingly quickly. The book focuses mainly on her highly controversial year-long stint moderating The View in 2007. That's pretty much it. It really should be called: "My Three B's: Broadway, Barbra Streisand and Barbara Walters - In My View" by Rosie O'Donnell since those three B's are the book's recurring motifs.

I like Rosie O'Donnell fine. I like her a hell of lot better than Donald Trump. But I have to say that Celebrity Detox is one of the most self-indulgent, pointless memoirs I've read - and that includes Brushing on the Tip of Fame by Nicholas Hope. She keeps bringing up her fame and how much she's sick of it, how much she loves Barbra Streisand and all these other minute details of her life. It felt like reading an extended version of her blog. Which is entirely fine, I'm sure she has a legion of fans who would lap that up. But for me, I feel like I've gained nothing reading her autobiography. Which is what I want from reading one. I haven't learnt anything new about the person or their story and for the first time ever, I didn't find even just one sentence I wanted to highlight from the book because it spoke to me. I even found one in Brushing on the Tip of Fame so that's saying something.

Finishing it though, it did make me reflect on celebrity itself I guess. Everybody dreams of fame. Myself included. But you know what, I think I'm at a stage of my life right now where I'm detoxing those dreams out. For that I have all these celebrities, Rosie included, to thank.

So while I would not jump out of my way to recommend this book, I'm actually glad I bought Celebrity Detox for a dollar at Central Station and read it -- I read it at the right stage of my life.

And if this review does not make any sense. If you think that I at first criticised it badly then praised it by the end, then welcome to the writing style of Celebrity Detox.