Janice Dickinson,
Check, Please! Dating, Mating & Extricating
(It Books, 2007)


Janice Dickinson is a larger-than-life talent at modeling, hosting and writing funny tell-all memoirs. She dished about her long, hard climb to the top of the supermodel world in No Lifeguard on Duty, and then she updated Americans on her life as a sober, wisened, hard-working mom in Everything About Me is Fake ... and I'm Perfect.

She's already revealed the most shocking and titillating anecdotes from her super-life, so her third book is packaged as a dating guide featuring her "patented blend of hard-won romantic wisdom and diva chic." She even manages to dredge up a few more dating and bedroom antics to throw in her advice chapters.

The tossed-off tell-all anecdotes that worked so well in Dickinson's first two memoirs fall flat in this format. The book meanders with advice that applies more to 6-foot-tall, size-zero supermodels than to the average American woman. Sure, there are fun moments listening to our unapologetic narrator, but it appear that the books was constructed from scraps of shocking tales rather than as a whole entity.

Dickinson's other books succeeded because they had a structure, a message and even life lessons (as subtle as they may have been). This is a mish-mash of tales masquerading as an advice book, and since when does an advice book need a glossy, dozen-page photo shoot of the (very beautiful) narrator in glammed-out poses?

It's always fun chatting with Janice, but this isn't her best effort.




Rambles.NET
book review by
Jessica Lux-Baumann


12 September 2006


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