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3.49 AVERAGE
3.49 AVERAGE
I am not a fan of Justin Bieber, but being a teenager I know more about him than I would like. But in a odd way, this book, which at some moments reads like a JB memoir, made me feel for him. Sure, he acts like a punk now, but I have no idea how his life was before the fame, or how it is now while he is famous.
Jonny, the eleven year old pop star and narrator, has a luxe life, but is continually micromanaged, doesn't know who his father is, and has been set up for a future eating disorder. Through this book, you get an inside look at a tween celebrity, and it is not all peachy keen. The only reason I read this was because of the fantastic description of the novel on the book jacket, but once I picked it up I was hooked. It is not a hard read, and not cerebral, but it is relatively insightful and provokes thought about celebrities and also real events, like having an absentee father and a micromanaging mother possibly living through her child, that happen to famous and 'regular' folk alike. There were some very unnecessary and very creepy sexual moments (creepy because he's eleven), but are easily skipped. I definitely recommend this book.
(The reason I created a bookshelf entitled 'How did the author get away with this' is because how close the plot is to what I've heard about Justin Bieber's life. Even if press shouldn't be censored (in my opinion) I am still amazed that money wasn't thrown into the mix and this book was published. But also a win for anti-censorship believers!)
Jonny, the eleven year old pop star and narrator, has a luxe life, but is continually micromanaged, doesn't know who his father is, and has been set up for a future eating disorder. Through this book, you get an inside look at a tween celebrity, and it is not all peachy keen. The only reason I read this was because of the fantastic description of the novel on the book jacket, but once I picked it up I was hooked. It is not a hard read, and not cerebral, but it is relatively insightful and provokes thought about celebrities and also real events, like having an absentee father and a micromanaging mother possibly living through her child, that happen to famous and 'regular' folk alike. There were some very unnecessary and very creepy sexual moments (creepy because he's eleven), but are easily skipped. I definitely recommend this book.
(The reason I created a bookshelf entitled 'How did the author get away with this' is because how close the plot is to what I've heard about Justin Bieber's life. Even if press shouldn't be censored (in my opinion) I am still amazed that money wasn't thrown into the mix and this book was published. But also a win for anti-censorship believers!)
I picked this up because:I heard it was good, sometime, from someone.
Synopsis: Jonny Valentine, a tween pop star a la Justin Bieber, is on tour. His sales are down and he occasionally finds himself hating the music business. Then he gets an email from someone claiming to be his father.
This wasn't bad. Some of Jonny's dissections of the music industry were pretty funny. Pretty sure I'll have forgotten this book exists in a few months.
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Recently I’ve been using Kindle a lot more. My grandmother gave me my first one in 2012, but I didn’t like it then. I still don’t like it that much. The only reason I’ve come around to it is that finding a book on Kindle is generally easier than finding some books in Brazil, and probably cheaper as well.
Does this bring us back to the whole “Will digital books replace paper”? That’s such a stupid, second-language class discussion. Or, even worse, an essay proposal: in your personal opinion, will digital books ever replace normal ones? Describe your thoughts on the matter, backing them up with reliable information sources as well as the texts above (in this case, there would be two texts and one image that in some way mention the problem, while each text has a different take on the matter- one would be an opinion article by an old journalist talking about the legacy of the paperback and how we shouldn’t let it disappear; the other would have been written by some millennial and would argue that it’s time to change the way we look at things- the image on the other hand could be a comic strip featuring worried parents talking about how their kid doesn’t read and instead spends the day on his iPad when, really, he is reading Dostoyevsky- Kindle Edition).
Then the teacher would say, “Please make a list of pros and cons and then draw out the structure”, only that would take fifty percent of the time and you’d end up doing none of it anyway. God, I hated that.
First of all, it is not a matter of pros and cons. Writing teachers always think that, but no one makes decisions based on pros and cons. Ultimately what I think doesn’t really matter, because if too many people start using Kindle then physical bookstores will suffer losses, which will lead to more people switching to Kindle.
I may love the smell in old yellowed out books, and the ridiculous notes, and flipping through a paperback and getting a beautiful edition of your favourite book for Christmas. Hell, I even love the broken books, the ones with the cracked spines or just coverless altogether. Now new books don’t smell as good as old books, but there’s some kind of traction in them, too, and shelfing it knowing that you read it kind of brings on this easy happiness. Like, I’m not that shabby after all.
But if I wrote all this subjective nonsense on my two hundred word essay they would fail me hard. I’d have to start by talking about papyrus and then the burning of Alexandria and how we’re all still very much upset about that, and then talk about parchment and quill and the Gutenberg press and then other kinds of presses that weren’t so much about Gutenberg. Then you’d have to find someone quotable, like Luther who wanted people to read the Bible, and how the Gutenberg Bible was used to spread information and make people think for themselves. I used to think it’d be awesome to see a Gutenberg Bible someday, but they’re everywhere. Every third-class museum in any European county seems to have one. But don’t say that. You sound oblivious when you say things like “I’ve seen way too many Gutenberg Bibles in my life”. You sound like you’re oblivious to being spoiled and privileged, when I’m really not oblivious at all. Don't do me dirty like this, writing persona.
And then you quote someone more recent but not too recent, like Benjamin. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. He’s not a fan of it, by the way.
After that, you bring up the texts, briefly. In T1, the author is worried that the so-called “internet generation” will have a shorter attention span. The author of T2, nonetheless, believes that multi-tasking enables one to read more, faster. The image seems to be in accordance with the stand taken in T2, but it does so by illustrating that the conflict between generations is a problem more serious than that of book formats.
And all is well again. You have completed a shallow essay about a stupid discussion by insinuating it is part of a larger discussion. Actually I’m not sure if it’s only about generational rivalries. No one really likes reading books on a screen- like my fictional conservative said on his text, it hurts one’s eyes. Owning a book in the cloud is somewhat like borrowing a book from a library- you read it, yes, but it doesn’t really belong to you. You just got it because you couldn’t find it anywhere else.
I bought “The Love Song of Jonny Valentine”, by What’s His Name, on a whim, because of an article of his for The New York Times on writing humour. Teddy Wayne, that’s his name. After some weighty namedropping, he concludes there is, in fact, a formula for writing humour. Somewhat both un and surprisingly, “The Love Song of Johny Valentine” is both formulaic and sort of depressing. And not like, depressing in a funny way, like Maugham or Salinger or even Nick Hornby.
First of all, Wayne has spent way too much time reading about Justin Bieber than it is acceptable for a dude his age. Except that Jonny Valentine sounds nothing like Justin Bieber, so all his reading was useless in the end. I’m just saying, if you are going to write about writing humour, you have to actually be funny. Or maybe it’s like everything else- those who can’t do, teach- and the world lives on.
I still think the funniest line in all of World Literature is that in Maugham’s “Ashenden”- the book he wrote on his time in the secret service- when Ashenden and “the Hairless Mexican”, an alopecia- suffering aristocrat, are tasked with killing a Greek man. After a night of stressful searching and covering up, Ashenden finds out that the Greek never actually left his country. “You bloody idiot, you killed the wrong man”, he says exasperatedly. This is top-notch comedy, with a basic premise; quid-pro-quod. It is also definitely something that could happen on “The Office” if Michael and Dwight were incompetent murderers for hire. Obviously, “does it sound like The Office” is the standard question one must ask when writing comedy.
Does this bring us back to the whole “Will digital books replace paper”? That’s such a stupid, second-language class discussion. Or, even worse, an essay proposal: in your personal opinion, will digital books ever replace normal ones? Describe your thoughts on the matter, backing them up with reliable information sources as well as the texts above (in this case, there would be two texts and one image that in some way mention the problem, while each text has a different take on the matter- one would be an opinion article by an old journalist talking about the legacy of the paperback and how we shouldn’t let it disappear; the other would have been written by some millennial and would argue that it’s time to change the way we look at things- the image on the other hand could be a comic strip featuring worried parents talking about how their kid doesn’t read and instead spends the day on his iPad when, really, he is reading Dostoyevsky- Kindle Edition).
Then the teacher would say, “Please make a list of pros and cons and then draw out the structure”, only that would take fifty percent of the time and you’d end up doing none of it anyway. God, I hated that.
First of all, it is not a matter of pros and cons. Writing teachers always think that, but no one makes decisions based on pros and cons. Ultimately what I think doesn’t really matter, because if too many people start using Kindle then physical bookstores will suffer losses, which will lead to more people switching to Kindle.
I may love the smell in old yellowed out books, and the ridiculous notes, and flipping through a paperback and getting a beautiful edition of your favourite book for Christmas. Hell, I even love the broken books, the ones with the cracked spines or just coverless altogether. Now new books don’t smell as good as old books, but there’s some kind of traction in them, too, and shelfing it knowing that you read it kind of brings on this easy happiness. Like, I’m not that shabby after all.
But if I wrote all this subjective nonsense on my two hundred word essay they would fail me hard. I’d have to start by talking about papyrus and then the burning of Alexandria and how we’re all still very much upset about that, and then talk about parchment and quill and the Gutenberg press and then other kinds of presses that weren’t so much about Gutenberg. Then you’d have to find someone quotable, like Luther who wanted people to read the Bible, and how the Gutenberg Bible was used to spread information and make people think for themselves. I used to think it’d be awesome to see a Gutenberg Bible someday, but they’re everywhere. Every third-class museum in any European county seems to have one. But don’t say that. You sound oblivious when you say things like “I’ve seen way too many Gutenberg Bibles in my life”. You sound like you’re oblivious to being spoiled and privileged, when I’m really not oblivious at all. Don't do me dirty like this, writing persona.
And then you quote someone more recent but not too recent, like Benjamin. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. He’s not a fan of it, by the way.
After that, you bring up the texts, briefly. In T1, the author is worried that the so-called “internet generation” will have a shorter attention span. The author of T2, nonetheless, believes that multi-tasking enables one to read more, faster. The image seems to be in accordance with the stand taken in T2, but it does so by illustrating that the conflict between generations is a problem more serious than that of book formats.
And all is well again. You have completed a shallow essay about a stupid discussion by insinuating it is part of a larger discussion. Actually I’m not sure if it’s only about generational rivalries. No one really likes reading books on a screen- like my fictional conservative said on his text, it hurts one’s eyes. Owning a book in the cloud is somewhat like borrowing a book from a library- you read it, yes, but it doesn’t really belong to you. You just got it because you couldn’t find it anywhere else.
I bought “The Love Song of Jonny Valentine”, by What’s His Name, on a whim, because of an article of his for The New York Times on writing humour. Teddy Wayne, that’s his name. After some weighty namedropping, he concludes there is, in fact, a formula for writing humour. Somewhat both un and surprisingly, “The Love Song of Johny Valentine” is both formulaic and sort of depressing. And not like, depressing in a funny way, like Maugham or Salinger or even Nick Hornby.
First of all, Wayne has spent way too much time reading about Justin Bieber than it is acceptable for a dude his age. Except that Jonny Valentine sounds nothing like Justin Bieber, so all his reading was useless in the end. I’m just saying, if you are going to write about writing humour, you have to actually be funny. Or maybe it’s like everything else- those who can’t do, teach- and the world lives on.
I still think the funniest line in all of World Literature is that in Maugham’s “Ashenden”- the book he wrote on his time in the secret service- when Ashenden and “the Hairless Mexican”, an alopecia- suffering aristocrat, are tasked with killing a Greek man. After a night of stressful searching and covering up, Ashenden finds out that the Greek never actually left his country. “You bloody idiot, you killed the wrong man”, he says exasperatedly. This is top-notch comedy, with a basic premise; quid-pro-quod. It is also definitely something that could happen on “The Office” if Michael and Dwight were incompetent murderers for hire. Obviously, “does it sound like The Office” is the standard question one must ask when writing comedy.
I actually liked it. Being able to have a inside view of what the life of a pop star is like. To read how they feel when being used by people they saw as friends and to create an image of the one person you thought would never hurt you and it being crushed over money. Definitely sad but a good book.
I can't say I'm too impressed. This book was essentially the first chapter (a day in the life of a pre-teen pop star) repeated ad nauseam for what, 300 pages? With the same issues and the same overbearing style of writing and the same sense of "surely this must get somewhere soon". But it didn't. Not really. It reached a weak conclusion in the end, I suppose. The whole thing sort of walked along until it reached the end and then it stopped. Any of the interest I had for it, any of the feeling for Jonny and his sad, secluded life, ended after chapter two. And I can sure say that it didn't leave me with anything other than a sense of relief that it was over. Such a promising cover, too.
Was definitely one of my best bargain buys! Got this copy from my local £world and i certainly got more than £1 worth of content!
You can tell straight away where the influence came from to write this book - sometimes not so subtly. It has been wrote as if Jonny Valentine is narrating and there are a lot of typical 11 year old grammar and vocabulary. Sometimes I felt as if i was listening to the part in 'Dude Wheres My Car?' where the drive through machine is going 'and then' over and over.
There was a few uncomfortable reading moments where Jonny was, lets say; exploring himself in a mature way. I'm not sure if its just because he's had to grow up quickly so feels he has to advance or if 11 year old boys actually do this so young! Seems a bit premature to me, and was definitely a skimmed quickly read through those parts.
This was a nice, quick to follow and east to read book. I'd probably only recommend to someone if they were interested in the behind the scenes celeb lifestyle genre.
You can tell straight away where the influence came from to write this book - sometimes not so subtly. It has been wrote as if Jonny Valentine is narrating and there are a lot of typical 11 year old grammar and vocabulary. Sometimes I felt as if i was listening to the part in 'Dude Wheres My Car?' where the drive through machine is going 'and then' over and over.
There was a few uncomfortable reading moments where Jonny was, lets say; exploring himself in a mature way. I'm not sure if its just because he's had to grow up quickly so feels he has to advance or if 11 year old boys actually do this so young! Seems a bit premature to me, and was definitely a skimmed quickly read through those parts.
This was a nice, quick to follow and east to read book. I'd probably only recommend to someone if they were interested in the behind the scenes celeb lifestyle genre.
Perhaps a more appropriate name for "The Love Song of Jonny Valentine," might have been "The Unauthorized Biography of Justin Bieber." Justin and Jonny share so many similarities, that it's hard to imagine Justin having a dissimilar view on his life and career. I never thought I'd actually feel sympathetic toward Justin Bieber. He, like the fictional Jonny Valentine, is a multimillion dollar industry - packaged and sold by a clever marketing strategy - it must be hard having all that rest on your shoulders - not to mention the constant fear of childhood predators, your absentee father, and your hard partying mother…all the while trying to successfully navigate your way through puberty. Teddy Wayne succeeds in creating a character so real, as I mentioned before, that it's difficult to imagine "the real thing"(Justin Bieber) feels any differently. Don't get me wrong, I know this is a work of fiction - obviously - but in all the important ways I think it's a diary of every famous child star.
An inresting look into the world of pop stars and manipulative families, the only criticism I have is that it ended too early.
Teddy Wayne is another writer I know from grad school. This book is written from the perspective of a Justin-Beiber-esque adolescent pop star. I found it funny, clever, touching, and oddly informative.