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A review by twylghast
Spare by Prince Harry
informative
slow-paced
0.25
This was really bad. I have to admit to being biased, in that I had low expectations due to disliking both Harry and Meghan and William and Charles and Kate and pretty much all the people involved in all this. Why did I read it, then? To add fuel to the fire, or maybe be proven wrong. The first thing was the one that happened.
There was no accountability anywhere here, that’s issue number one. Not once did it seem like any blame was taken for anything ever, be it the Nazi thing, the blatant hypocrisy of calling someone a Paki and then bemoaning the way others use the word nigger, or being horrified over elephants and rhinos being killed but cool with ‘culling’ deer and birds back in good ol’ England, or even at times acting as though smoking a blunt is hideous and completely unhealthy one moment but totally cool the next (let’s say nothing of how blunts are so unhealthy drugs but mushrooms and ayahuasca are totally not that). I have no problem with drugs, by the way. I’m just incensed by the stupidity displayed here…in fact, I might need some drugs myself, after this book. It’s therapeutic. It helps connects to gods - as he suggests. Plus, he sees his mother and grandmother in birds. Did that need to be in the book? It’s so personal. Plus he also hunts birds. (Sorry, I’m nitpicking. Hard to resist the temptation, there’s so much of it.)
Nothing new was found here. Maybe something in the story of his early and late life, but from the point of their marriage onwards, I might as well have stopped reading, you could get that bit by watching the ridiculous Oprah interview - I did say I was biased.
Which leads me to all the name-dropping. Getting checked for STDs with Rihanna? Meeting Batman? Meeting and getting ignored by the cast of Friends? Becoming friends with the not-so-secret misogynist Tyler Perry? Plus Elton John? Fucking ew. Mostly to the last two, and the overall name-dropping thing. It’s so fucking pathetic, which about sums up Harold, and this memoir.
It was extremely boring, and extremely slow. I’ve read more amusing grocery lists. Some bits and pieces almost got interesting, but then it’d all muddle back into the endless muck that was this book.
It could have been relevant, despite my dislike, but something went wrong somewhere. If you’re gonna ghostwrite, for fuck’s sake, at least get somebody good. I’m gonna find that ghost so I can avoid reading anything by him - or her - in the future. It was really that bad.
‘Spare’ yourself that torture if you haven’t read this yet.
There was no accountability anywhere here, that’s issue number one. Not once did it seem like any blame was taken for anything ever, be it the Nazi thing, the blatant hypocrisy of calling someone a Paki and then bemoaning the way others use the word nigger, or being horrified over elephants and rhinos being killed but cool with ‘culling’ deer and birds back in good ol’ England, or even at times acting as though smoking a blunt is hideous and completely unhealthy one moment but totally cool the next (let’s say nothing of how blunts are so unhealthy drugs but mushrooms and ayahuasca are totally not that). I have no problem with drugs, by the way. I’m just incensed by the stupidity displayed here…in fact, I might need some drugs myself, after this book. It’s therapeutic. It helps connects to gods - as he suggests. Plus, he sees his mother and grandmother in birds. Did that need to be in the book? It’s so personal. Plus he also hunts birds. (Sorry, I’m nitpicking. Hard to resist the temptation, there’s so much of it.)
Nothing new was found here. Maybe something in the story of his early and late life, but from the point of their marriage onwards, I might as well have stopped reading, you could get that bit by watching the ridiculous Oprah interview - I did say I was biased.
Which leads me to all the name-dropping. Getting checked for STDs with Rihanna? Meeting Batman? Meeting and getting ignored by the cast of Friends? Becoming friends with the not-so-secret misogynist Tyler Perry? Plus Elton John? Fucking ew. Mostly to the last two, and the overall name-dropping thing. It’s so fucking pathetic, which about sums up Harold, and this memoir.
It was extremely boring, and extremely slow. I’ve read more amusing grocery lists. Some bits and pieces almost got interesting, but then it’d all muddle back into the endless muck that was this book.
It could have been relevant, despite my dislike, but something went wrong somewhere. If you’re gonna ghostwrite, for fuck’s sake, at least get somebody good. I’m gonna find that ghost so I can avoid reading anything by him - or her - in the future. It was really that bad.
‘Spare’ yourself that torture if you haven’t read this yet.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racial slurs, Colonisation, Xenophobia, and Racism