The Hard Part About Reading Books Written By Celebrities

By lorboy

I don't know if anyone else runs into this problem or not, but I often find it very difficult to read books by famous people. I don't mean works by famous authors, although I guess sometimes that happens, too.

What I am talking about is works written by celebrities of one sort or another. I don't read things like the tell-all books, because, frankly, I don't care. Unless one of the people on the list is my husband, I could really care less who slept with who. Most "celebrity books" (86%) are not written by celebrities at all, but by ghostwriters and are fluff and drivel.

But, anyway . . .

Everyone has a voice in their head. (No, I don't mean the one that tells you to go to the supermarket, strip off your clothes and jump up onto the butcher counter while screaming "Rump roast on sale today!")

I mean the voice you think in. It is generally your own voice, as far as I know. The voice I think in is the voice I read in. Sometimes with works of fiction I guess it switches to another voice. This is the voice I would imagine that character would speak in. These voices sometimes make no sense. For instance, "The Old Man and the Sea" gets the voice of George C. Scott. I have no idea why.

Well, my problem is that sometimes when I read a book by a famous person, the voice in my head switches to their voice. With certain people, this can get really annoying.

I took a book out of the library called "Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity" By Jon Stossel. It's all about things that people generally believe to be true, even though evidence and statistics consistently prove that they are not.

Things like:

Myth: The EEOC will make America less sexist

Truth:The EEOC will torment people and enrich lawyers

Myth: Kids learn to read in public elementary school.

Truth: Many graduate high school unable to read.

It is a very interesting and enlightening book; packed full of information and statistics that I would normally gobble up and take notes on and research to write about myself at some point.

The problem is, I can only read a few pages at a time because when I read it, I hear John Stossel's voice. This is in no way a criticism of Mr. Stossel. His work on 20/20 is just fine. However, I HATE his voice. His whiny, nasal twang drives me crazy. And the funny thing is, I didn't even realize this until I tried to read his book.

This got me thinking, who else would be a "can't read" for me?

Well, I think anything by Andy Rooney would be a no-go.

Barbara Streisand

Suzanne Somers (it would be one long narrative by Chrissy from "Three's Company")

Arnold Schwarzenegger (could you imagine? That would just be VERY funny.)

Rosie O'Donnell

Barbra Walters

Whoopi Goldberg

(Now, that I think about it, everybody from "The View")

Regis Philbin

Dr. Phil

Phyllis Diller