Jancee Dunn

This is the best book I've read in, well, maybe a year or so. Jancee Dunn tells fantastic stories and I can literally hear her voice through the pages. I remember reading Rolling Stone during my middle/high school years and seeing her name and thinking she must be the coolest woman in the world. She's not, which makes her so much cooler in my mind. I'm actually considering writing a fan letter to her. The book was THAT good.

I would have titled this book How to Strongarm Your Worthless Parasite Husband Into Contributing the Bare Minimum Towards Household Upkeep and Cope With His Inevitably Underwhelming Performance.

Much (most?) of my disappointment in this book comes from being upset that the useless husbands displayed by the author are, almost certainly, honest portrayals. I'm disgusted and appalled at the determination of these men to contribute close to nothing towards a functioning household. It's not hard show more to change diapers, do laundry, or cook dinner! Those are easy things! You can change the oil on your car, you can certainly wipe a butt!

Others things I didn't like: the author's presumption that after spending and hour with some guru she's qualified to write about their subject of expertise. Or her attempts to legitimize all of her assertions by cherry-picking research findings that support her conclusions. I'm going to start immediately dropping books that commit either of these sins.

I was *especially* galled by the stories of wives who refuse to offer their husbands praise for little efforts around the house, while simultaneously complaining about how DREADFUL it is to live an entirely unappreciated life. And this is *after* they discover how much more helpful their husbands are when given praise! That this appalling hypocrisy apparently completely flew over the head of the author is flabbergasting.

There was some useful passages about forging a stronger bond with your spouse, and I enjoyed the short section on how and why to give your kids a no-strings-attached allowance. But outside of that, I didn't get much out of this one. I'm sure there are people out there who need and benefit from this book, but I'm not one of them.

https://www.timothyrice.org/hownottohate/ show less

3.5 stars. Very entertaining book, shines the most when Dunn recalls some of her more memorable celebrity interviews and gives tongue-in-cheek advice to aspiring music journalists. The autobiographical chapters are less interesting and a little frustrating in their sketchiness. Dunn miraculously gets a job at Rolling Stone magazine as an editorial assistant, and soon she's interviewing famous people and becoming an MTV2 VJ. What led to the promotion? What was it like to work with the show more notoriously sexist Jann Wenner of RS and how was the working environment? Dunn never covers any of this, choosing instead to devote pages to making gentle fun of her earnest JC Penny manager father and her former Southern belle mother (it's obvious that she loves and appreciates them, and nothing is mean-spirited) and portraying a few doomed love affairs before she meets her future husband.

Basically a lot of fun to read, but I wish it could have gone a tad bit deeper. show less

“How could I cultivate a new, hip persona when I lived with my parents in a New Jersey suburb and wore black leggings as pants?”

Jancee Dunn’s memoir is a wonderful combination of interviewing tips, dirt-digging secrets and her own personal life snippets into a mixture that equals But Enough about Me. This just for the record has to be the first and only grammatically correct and easy to read rock-n-roll chic memoir that I have ever read. I was hooked from page one, chapter one titled, show more “How to jolly up a Surly Hung-over Band during an Interview.”

She trekked to the Canadian Rockies to hike with Brad Pitt, was chased by paparazzi who mistook her for Ben Affleck’s new girlfriend, got proof that Dolly Parton really loves SPAM and Velveeta, and danced drunkenly on stage with Kim Deal during a Beastie Boys set at Lollapalooza. . She even became a reluctant TV star as a pioneering VJ on MTV2. But Enough about Me is the story of an outsider who couldn’t quite bring herself to become an insider and introduces readers to a hysterical, lovable real-life heroine. show less