babyv 's review for:

Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV by Emily Nussbaum

3.5

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i think this book was clearly very throughly researched and hit a lot of really important history. i learned quite a few things i didn’t know, even as a long time reality tv fan. my only issue with the book is that it felt like it needed to be multiple books. we spent a long time on a select few reality shows, which is fine, but i don’t think that’s the best way to give a history of the entire reality tv genre. there were name drops of several other shows but i wish we’d been able to go a little more in depth about those and their impact rather than, say, two whole chapters on survivor. i love survivor and know its impact is huge but so were shows like A Simple Life which helped lead Paris Hilton to the first celebrity influencer. similarly, there was little discussion of how reality tv has bled into the influencer era and vlogging channels. TL;DR: i think the information within was good but some parts could’ve been whittled down to make room for more aspects of reality tv history/ impact.