How To Lose Friends And Alienate People: A Memoir

Young steers clear of discussing the occasional exquisite political journalism for which Vanity Fair is known--e.g. articles about the Nixon Watergate affair, exposes that led to the prosecution of Big Tobacco, and today several columns documenting the unmitigated disaster of the Bush Years--and gets right to the sex and the city, New York version. (Indeed, Young comes along at just the time that Candace Bushnell is writing her column in The New York Observer that would become the famous HBO series... and now, the movie (which I review here). They're friends.)

He's sort of a testosterone-and-alcohol-afflicted male version of Carrie Bradshaw, and more doggedly politically incorrect.

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Brian Wright
Copyright 2008

Hands down, this is the funniest memoir I have ever read. Young's ability to make fun of everything around him and himself at once makes an otherwise trite set of instances over the top hilarious. I will be going to this movie, as I have no doubt it will be every bit as funny as the book. The ordering a stripper, Vanity Fair Oscar Party and interacting with Graydon scenes alone could carry a whole movie.

If you don't take yourself seriously and can abide a very funny fool, you'll love this.

This is one of those few books that you really want to root for, that the hero/author somehow learns from their errors and does a 180. This is not that book. I wish I could get back the time I spent reading this book. I will probably end up using it to light some winter fires. It is not even worth donating or passing it along.

Toby Young (at least in this book) loves the sound of his own voice (even it is just whining or using his parents' credentials to give him meaning) and never truly admits just how self-indulgent, arrogant, and downright oblivious he is.

I thought that this was a very entertaining book. Toby is not always a very likable person in this story but he is brutally honest about himself and that is part of what makes the book so entertaining. At times I did find it droned on too much about facts on who is who in the fashion industry which didn't interest me so much but it was still a fun read.

The top five things I hate about Toby Young's book:
5. The writing.
This book was seriously dull. His anecdotes and his writing lacked any kind of insightful spark. With access to Vanity Fair bigwigs and Candace Bushnell's inner circle, you'd think he would have more to report than the fact that they all hated him.
4. Any sentence Young wrote about himself.
They usually started out as self-deprecating and quickly eased themselves in self-pitying. "Then I got fired again haha...I'm so underappreciated." "
3. His conclusions about the nature of America and New York City.
While I appreciated that Young did his research and made interesting statements based on Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, I was astounded that he was deluded enough to believe that Americans did not appreciate his boorish and asinine sense of humor because they are too uptight and PC. What made him think that British people were more accepting of his sense of humor if the entire book was about him trying to escape his failure in Britain?
2. His attitude toward women.
To say the least, I was completely repulsed by Young's treatment of women throughout the book. He is a skeez who judges women only on their looks (bonus points are given to women who make a living on their looks), yet he constantly whines that women are shallow for turning him down due to his baldness, mediocre looks, lack of gainful employment, or any combination of these charming factors. Ugh.
1. The fact that I waded through the whole thing despite reasons 2-5.
I must be a masochist.