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A review by pervinca
Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love by Courtney Love
2.0
I discovered this book on my recommendations after reading Kurt's Journals. I like Hole as much as i like Nirvana, so i decided to give it a go.
This book, as well as Kurt's, is made of scans, meaning everything is written in Courtney's handwritting, which is pretty legible and adds a sense of autenticity, although towards the end of the book it gets more harder to read.
Now, what i liked the most about this book was the visual aspect of it. It was all made of little notes, there are loads of collages and drawings, photos, tickets, etc, everything annotated by Courtney, and its visually very appealing.
However, the begining of the book is a bit dull. Courtney writes in a very chaotic way that perfectly resembles her personality- if you've ever read her instagram posts, you know what i'm talking about. What i mean is that most of the book is made of very little fragments of text, and sometimes is very hard to conect them and therefore feel a sense of cohesion within the book. While this fragments are interesting and some of them have very beautiful quotes others make no sense and it makes it a bit hard to have continuity. For example, in Kurt's journals, most of the pieces, while not connected to the others, made self within themselves, you knew how he was feeling or what is he talking about, even if the next piece was about a completely different topic. Here it's a bit more chaotic and there are fragments within the same page that don't seem to be connected whatsoever.
Another part of the fragments are Courtney ranting about anything. With those i have a hate-love relationship. On one hand, i know what she's doing, for i do it myself: writing everything that crosses your mind as soon as it crosses your mind, without redacting it or giving it order, just to blow off steam, to share your feelings. And in doing this sometimes you are not specific- sometimes you just want to let go of your feelings and, in case anyone finds this piece of writing you just made, you want them to know how you feel but not necesarily who or what makes you feel that way.
Some of this pieces were wonderful, but in others not knowing what she's talking about makes it a bit hard for me to connect with them.
As the book goes on, she has longer pieces, which are the ones I enjoy the most. It's great to know how she feels and thinks about what's going on around her, being 100% transparent about how she feels. The middle was my favourite part, i wish the rest of the book was like it. You can learn more about her character and thoughts here, and you definitely can see how much she loved Kurt and how much she loves her daughter, and also how she is living her life.
Towards the end of the book, we get lots of despair poems or compositions. While i liked some of them, others were a bit chaotic and hard to read.
I think if i was a bit older and had lived through all of that, i may had been able to know what she was talking about in more fragments, even if those that didn't seem connected. Sometimes she writes about who she has seen or met or even fucked, but i don't know most of those people.
Overall, it is an okay book. I enjoyed reading it and liked the visual aspect of it, but i was expecting it to be a bit more redacted (like Kurt's Journal is). While i wanted to know more about Courtney, the book was a bit shallow in that sense: you get to know more about the way she thinks but not so much about her opinions on certain topics. In my opinion, there are some fragments that could have been deleted from the book and it wouldn't matter whatsoever, since they were so irrelevant- brutaly honest, as Courtney is, but still not revealing anything really.
I think this would be a great book for people who share Courtney's chaotic way of thinking. For me, it made it a bit harder to connect with her- but perhaps it was due to my expectations, since i did feel that connection with Kurt's Journals and was kinda expecting the same thing with this book.
That being said, she does mention a couple of times in the book that she doesn't want her diaries published and that she only wants her poems and compositions published, which may explain why the content of the book is what it is. I was expecting more personal thoughts and experiences.
This book, as well as Kurt's, is made of scans, meaning everything is written in Courtney's handwritting, which is pretty legible and adds a sense of autenticity, although towards the end of the book it gets more harder to read.
Now, what i liked the most about this book was the visual aspect of it. It was all made of little notes, there are loads of collages and drawings, photos, tickets, etc, everything annotated by Courtney, and its visually very appealing.
However, the begining of the book is a bit dull. Courtney writes in a very chaotic way that perfectly resembles her personality- if you've ever read her instagram posts, you know what i'm talking about. What i mean is that most of the book is made of very little fragments of text, and sometimes is very hard to conect them and therefore feel a sense of cohesion within the book. While this fragments are interesting and some of them have very beautiful quotes others make no sense and it makes it a bit hard to have continuity. For example, in Kurt's journals, most of the pieces, while not connected to the others, made self within themselves, you knew how he was feeling or what is he talking about, even if the next piece was about a completely different topic. Here it's a bit more chaotic and there are fragments within the same page that don't seem to be connected whatsoever.
Another part of the fragments are Courtney ranting about anything. With those i have a hate-love relationship. On one hand, i know what she's doing, for i do it myself: writing everything that crosses your mind as soon as it crosses your mind, without redacting it or giving it order, just to blow off steam, to share your feelings. And in doing this sometimes you are not specific- sometimes you just want to let go of your feelings and, in case anyone finds this piece of writing you just made, you want them to know how you feel but not necesarily who or what makes you feel that way.
Some of this pieces were wonderful, but in others not knowing what she's talking about makes it a bit hard for me to connect with them.
As the book goes on, she has longer pieces, which are the ones I enjoy the most. It's great to know how she feels and thinks about what's going on around her, being 100% transparent about how she feels. The middle was my favourite part, i wish the rest of the book was like it. You can learn more about her character and thoughts here, and you definitely can see how much she loved Kurt and how much she loves her daughter, and also how she is living her life.
Towards the end of the book, we get lots of despair poems or compositions. While i liked some of them, others were a bit chaotic and hard to read.
I think if i was a bit older and had lived through all of that, i may had been able to know what she was talking about in more fragments, even if those that didn't seem connected. Sometimes she writes about who she has seen or met or even fucked, but i don't know most of those people.
Overall, it is an okay book. I enjoyed reading it and liked the visual aspect of it, but i was expecting it to be a bit more redacted (like Kurt's Journal is). While i wanted to know more about Courtney, the book was a bit shallow in that sense: you get to know more about the way she thinks but not so much about her opinions on certain topics. In my opinion, there are some fragments that could have been deleted from the book and it wouldn't matter whatsoever, since they were so irrelevant- brutaly honest, as Courtney is, but still not revealing anything really.
I think this would be a great book for people who share Courtney's chaotic way of thinking. For me, it made it a bit harder to connect with her- but perhaps it was due to my expectations, since i did feel that connection with Kurt's Journals and was kinda expecting the same thing with this book.
That being said, she does mention a couple of times in the book that she doesn't want her diaries published and that she only wants her poems and compositions published, which may explain why the content of the book is what it is. I was expecting more personal thoughts and experiences.