My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

Kudos to Chelsea Handler for bringing a sexual openness to this genre. She lists a number of sexual encounters (mostly hers), often in a very comical way. The only thing that jarred for me was that behind the "look at me being daring by writing about my one-night stands" there are occasional hints of a judgmental personality. Any drugs that are not her own drugs, any sexual acts that are not strictly "pounding Chelsea hard" are summarily dismissed. The low point of the book for me was when she describes an encounter with a guy who had the perfect body and silky smooth skin. She then rips into him because his dick is too big for 'little Chelsea' and sends him packing. This made me sad (and a little angry ;-).
I really liked her other book show more (Are you there, Vodka, it's me), probably because the tone is lighter and more balanced. She also cultivates her predatory, meretricious and sexually upfront persona there, but manages to be more self-deprecating about it. Still, a nice holiday read. show less

It is a mistake to read this book as a serious collection of stories, I think. If you do so, you will find the author to be a deeply unlikable person - alcoholic, shallow, vaccuous and self-centered to an extreme rarely seen in nature. However it becomes apparent over time that Handler is (or claims to be) a comedian, and this changes the book from biography to satire. If you read the book from this perspective, the work changes from unpleasant to merely tedious. Not recommended.

So, two caveats here: I am 48 years old and not the twenty-something partying demographic I suspect this book was intended for. Additionally, I have limited patience for the "I drink and do drugs a lot" kinds of comics; I find a little of that goes a long way for me.

That said, the book was better at the beginning and end than in the repetitive middle. It was at its best describing Handler's family. The book was rather vapid. I didn't expect a deep read out of Chelsea Handler; I figure that this was literary junk food, but in the end, I might do Twinkies a disservice.

I didn't need the "I might want to settle down" theme at the end that I suppose was meant to make Handler more relatable. I also think that, for a book about sex, I could show more have done with more sex than she described. Perhaps all this would have been better as a stand-up routine. Generally, I got bored with Handler's sex life, but it did get me to sleep easily when I read it before bed. show less

Chelsea Handler is a foul-mouthed, drunken, egotistical, politically incorrect slut. She's also hilarious. This "collection of one-night stands" delves into Chelsea's exploits as she, um, dates a male stripper, wakes up in bed with a midget with an outsized penis, acts as a beard--named Beulah--at her gay friend Nathan's prep school reunion, and gets drunk in more situations than you can shake a swizzle stick at.

Think Sarah Vowell meets Sarah Silverman. Think David Sedaris before he got off the meth. However you think of it, you'll laugh your ass off (even if you're sometimes a little ashamed of yourself for doing so) as you read these essays.

I couldn't finish this book. I found it distasteful, facile and pandering. It made my skin crawl. Loathsome. I'm certainly a fan of sex in all its consensual forms, so that part didn't squick me a bit, other than it just wasn't written in a fashion that made me like any of the participants. The author blithely trotted out and proudly displayed nearly every flavor of prejudice in the first 80 pages. I'm bewildered by the apparent popularity of this collection.

Chelsea Handler's funny remarks and outright honesty are what I knew her for before reading her autobiographical book. I still like her as a person, as a comedian and celebrity, but this book did not make me laugh (as seems to have been the sole intention), it did not convince me that it's a good thing to jump from one bed to another bed, and it was most definitely not funny how Chelsea kept discriminating certain kinds of men because of specific faults she discovered in them (too short penises; a lack of willingness to jump into bed with her immediately after meeting each other; being a virgin). That's part of her honesty, of course, that's part of what made her so famous: that she doesn't keep her opinions on her preferences for show more herself. She also implied in her writing that it seems to be okay to have a father who shows signs of abusive behaviour and insults people because of their race ("[He] went to a cocktail party in the late eighties with my mother and upon seeing the only black couple there, approached the woman and asked her if she would be interested in cleaning our house.") by not commenting on this behaviour even once. show less

I needed a light and quick read one day, having spent a lot of time in depressing and heavy reads, some of which were wonderful but still rough. So when I ran across a review of this book, I remembered it was on my tbr stacks and decided that it would be the perfect antidote to hugely depressing. And it was.

Short story essays chronicling Chelsea's love affairs with men of all shapes and colors, some of these stories are hysterical; some are less so but overall, this is a light, fluffy entertainment. I couldn't stop myself from laughing over the tale of the dog who showed up gnoshing on skidmarked underwear just as Chelsea was making a clean getaway. It was both disgusting and side-splittingly funny. She is definitely no holds barred in show more discussing her own sexuality but she can be a bit nasty when she takes on other people: the subjects of her failed and consummated one night stands as well as her roommate. The mean-spiritedness takes away some of the entertainment value and certainly no one would argue this book is anything but designed for entertainment value.

It did for me what I was looking to have it do but I would be wary in recommending it to anyone with a reasonably sophisticated sense of humor (not me) or to someone looking for an in depth look at what Handler's choices mean or even to someone who prefers to have a person show growth before the end of the book. Hilarious, low-brow humor leavened with not much else, this is decent for chuckles and a superficial skim of a life I've never led. show less