this book made me laugh out loud more times than i’m willing to admit

I don't know what was more interesting: reading this book or reading the reviews for this book. They break into roughly two camps:

- This book is bad because I picked it up expecting it to be exactly the same as the TV series which I am completely obsessed with beyond all reason
- This book is bad because it conflicts with my fantasy of what being rich, being single, and living in New York must be like. I will refer to these people as "stereotypes" even though I've never actually been to New York during the period in question.

That's not to say this book is GOOD. This book is ... okay. It's a good subway read. Most of the good stories are spoiled by the TV series, which may take something out of it.

At the same time, I liked this book because it felt more raw and real than it's adaptation. Carrie in the TV show is whiney, codependent, obsessive and insecure. Her narrative constantly tries to pass off her narcissism as empowerment (oh sure, breaking up with your boyfriend on the way to the St. Barts was about "having faith in yourself" not at all about trying to emotionally blackmail him. Keep telling yourself that). Every time someone in the cult of Sex and the City describes themselves as a "Carrie" I want to hunt them down with a shotgun. It's appalling to me that people seem to think this character is some kind of role model.

But... not really surprising, because in the TV series Carrie's bad behavior is consequence free. She's always shown as the wronged party, living a life of relative leisure and successful in all her endeavors. If she does fail it's only in the most charming way with everyone dropping everything to fawn over her. The only time I ever liked Charlotte as a character was when she finally called Carrie on her bullshit and straight up told her "It's not my job to fix your finances" ... of course the show ruins that moment by having Charlotte recant everything in the name of friendship by the end of the episode.

It also really bothered me that the show didn't make more of an effort to explore the relationship of Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda with each other. We're supposed to believe that these four people are all good friends, and yet they only really exist as an extension of Carrie's needs. No wonder Carrie is a narcissist.

Imagine my surprise when I start reading this book and find a Carrie who is real, compelling and kind of badass.

You know Candace Bushnell is not really a great writer. I don't think that will surprise anyone. There were times, especially towards the end, where I felt like I was reading bad fanfic: no description, no narrative, just an endless list of actions. Carrie cries, Mr Big smokes his cigar, Skipper runs over a Serbian hooker.... blah blah blah.

Some will find this book too light on character development, but I always thought that was a pretty insane thing to expect from NONFICTION. How would you feel if your friend was not only publishing stories about your sexual liaisons but also ascribing motives to your action which millions of readers would treat as fact? If you want the trappings of fiction, read fiction. There are thousands of struggling novelists hoping you will.

Anyway.

Unlike TV Carrie, Book Carrie is never portrayed as anything other than a complete disaster of a human being. The first time we meet her she's described point blank as an alcoholic and a bitch. She smokes an ungodly amount of pot. She has a flock of twenty-something girls who worship her but who she publicly despises. She is snarky and cynical.

But most importantly the book doesn't pretend that everything is going to turn out all right for her in the end. The exact opposite actually. Plenty of designer brands are name dropped, Big and Carrie have a house in the Hamptons, vacation in St Barts, get all adorable skiing in Aspen. All the trappings of the rich fantasy the TV series perfected are there, but this version of it is like TV-Carrie's New York Magazine "Thirty and Fabulous?" cover. It's ugly. It has consequences. Money and self-centeredness do not make people happy.

In the last chapter of the book Carrie goes off to visit her friend Amalita Amalfi. Fans of the show will remember her as the international playgirl who introduces Carrie to the idea of being a kept woman. The book starts off with more or less the same storyline, but doesn't white wash it the way the TV show does. In the show Amalita effortlessly glides from man to man, traveling the world, being spoiled with expensive presents. In the book Amalita travels the world, get spoiled with expensive presents but ends up alone, living in a disgusting $500/mo apartment, with a young daughter she is unable to take care of.

That to me is a whole lot more interesting than the pink sparkly special snowflake bullshit the show tries to push down our throats.

*3.5*

Ok tal vez cumplir treinta ya no suena tan mal!

I decided to try some fluff. I really didn't like this book. I've come to like the TV series because although it can be a bit raunchy or risque, it has the redeeming qualities of humor, introspection, and the value of friendship. This book was all over the place. I guess I thought it would be a series of columns, but it didn't seem that way to me. It also didn't seem to have any introspection at all. I realize it isn't a novel so I didn't expect it to be a book with linear form. The problem is that it had some linear form and some non-linear form...like I said, it was all over the place. I'll stick to the TV series.

This book is definitely not for everyone. At first, you’re going to hate it, because it has nothing to do with the hbo series, but for some reason you can’t stop reading.
I didn’t like a single character, but the little anectodes of imaginary new york were perfectly funny and well written.

Ég er orðlaus

kera bedna knjiga

Let me start off by saying that I am a huge fan of the HBO series. So I was always curious about the original book, which was, I'm sorry to say, very disappointing. Sure there are similarities, ranging from characters, lines, and situations that were mirror images of the TV series, but the charm was almost totally lost. The story follows Carrie and some of her acquaintances, but focuses more so on a countless number of other characters. Each chapter starts off like an essay about another couple or person, but then goes to Carrie, and back and forth and on and on. This format made it really hard to focus on any specific person or portion of the book, and things just became jumbled and uninteresting. The ending also just kind of fell flat, and you just got some a bunch of quick synopses of the more prominent characters. Beyond the content, the writing is sharp, witty and funny, and kept my interest enough to keep reading. I really did want to enjoy this book, but it is probably one of the few times that I'll say the live action version was far superior than the original story.

I know that I’m a little late, but just realized that I forgot to add this into the original review. The biggest shock moment in this book was that Stanford had hair?!?!

I reject the notion of a ‘guilty pleasure.’ What a miserable little life you have to lead if you have to justify the things that make you happy! Having watched (and re-watched) the entirety of the show and those two god-awful movies before reading this book, I was very interested in seeing Sex and the City's origin story. Turns out, the concept is there, but the plot is structured very differently. There is no core four friend group, which is what makes the show so compelling. At its crux, it is a show about female friendships. This book actually hints quite a lot at that idea; one of my favorite parts was when Amalita explained that she was left with nothing when her sugar daddy left her, and the only people in the world who showed her and her daughter any kindness were her girlfriends. This book is very cynical in many ways, but it does not pit women against each other.
On that note of cynicism: I was left in the worst mood after finishing this book! No spoilers; the tone is just so disillusioned. The show was a little more upbeat in part because the women were able to get through their difficulties thanks to their friends and in part because television did not portray that kind of cynicism until very recently. Nowadays, you'd be hard-pressed to find an Emmy-acclaimed show that *doesn't* delve into dark topics, even in the Comedy category. But twenty years ago, the landscape of television was something else entirely, as the term "dramedy" had barely entered the pop culture lexicon. Comedies were supposed to keep it light; dramas were delineated by darker lighting. Obviously, I digress.
Candace Bushnell is Carrie Bradshaw (even their names are nearly identical). Bushnell chooses to create distance between her and the protagonist of this book by presenting her as “my friend Carrie,” which serves as the literary equivalent of posting “my buddy wants to know” on Reddit. And who could blame her? Carrie is whiny, snotty, and judgmental, a woman with no limit on her credit card nor her selfishness, even though she herself comes from humble origins.
What is ultimately central to understanding Sex and the City is that this book is the peak of liberal feminism (an oxymoron). Feminism that fits neatly within the liberal framework--Sheryl Sandberg feminism--is not feminism; it's just liberalism, because feminism inherently requires boundaries of society to be expanded. When you place all of the onus upon the individual (Personal Responsibility!), you effectively erase all actual feminist discourse about how societies are structured. That's basic feminist theory, but it bears repeating in this context. When Bushnell says “New York,” she means wealthy, trendy Manhattan, especially but not necessarily white and cishetero.
Yet, despite it all, I firmly hold that this is a feminist text. Yeah, no shit, it's imperfect. I just don't think it can be overstated how culturally significant this book and (even more so) the television adaptation were during their time period. If you disagree or maintain that Sex and the City is shitty, then that's fine. Obviously, everyone has different interests. Just don't universalize your opinion. Don't forget that not everything has to appeal to you in order to hold value! That's similar to the sort of miserable attitude held by people who feel "guilty" about their pleasure. People do this a lot in general, and it's so elitist and conceited, and it especially strikes me the wrong way when the people in question are men and the media at hand is women-centered.

Sex and the City show is one of my favorite shows ever. When I learnt that the show was based on a book, I immediately read the book and the book did not compare to the show in any way.

This book read like a narcissist's day to day diary. The main character was so annoying that I straight-out hated her. I wanted to quit mid way but I thought may be it will get better but it didn't. If I had read this book first, I might not have bothered with the show. But then again I love SJP so I may have watched it anyway.

If you love the show, please avoid this disaster of a book.

1 star

DNF at page 104

I'm sorry...
But...
Just... No...

As much as I enjoyed the show, I never intended to read the book, until I discovered that it is classified as nonfiction. That revelation surprised me, and I was further intrigued to know it's a collection of essays. That, as Bushnell might say, sealed the deal.

But what a peculiar collection! The early chapters remind me of nothing so much as Tom Wolfe -- a seen-it-all journalist romanticizing the epic madness of her zeitgeist. This approach is so distinctly 90s that I both rolled my eyes and felt intense nostalgia the same time. I was not, at the time, a single girl roaming Manhattan, but a teenager growing up in the freewheeling state of Vermont. Our lives were different, but I instantly recognized in her writing the celebration of chaos and energy -- the pre-millennial neurosis that made us all a little nuts.

But the book takes some time to figure itself out. The earlier pieces behave like cover stories to New York Magazine; a big, glossy, hey-girl-let-me-tell-you style that almost makes you laugh. Then, slowly, it diverges from its profiles and reportage and becomes a kind of confessional diary, albeit written in the removed third-person of a made-up character, Carey Bradshaw. And here I start to get skeptical.

The artistic half of my brain is perfectly fine with her impressionistic, largely invented version of events, just as I excuse Sedaris and Burroughs their glaring fabrications. I even accepted that soap opera is just a part of the New York lifestyle, even though her characters failed to interest me overall. The HBO series presents these dramas with seasoned and collaborative proficiency. The book, in its second-half, feels like an ironically dumbed down transcript of the show.

This effect is a disservice to the first half, which is riveting. "Carey's" visit to a sex club is clumsy, overprotective, and hilarious, proving that however free-thinking New Yorkers perceive themselves, you can't just throw any old orgy in the era of HIV. The profile of models (and their wealthy seducers) is sexist in the most primal sense; wealthy men prey on very young, very beautiful women with no serious education or reliable social network. The models weather men the way Florida weathers hurricanes, and if they're lucky and tough, they become famous and marry up. Bushnell almost seems to shrug her shoulders at this tragic dynamic, a response that, in this context, I prefer to melodramatic indignity. The game is as old as time, she implies, and in New York, the laws of the jungle reign über alles.

At this stage in my life, the chapter I enjoyed the least but hit closest to home was "Carrie's" visit to the suburbs. She condescends to her housewife friends, for their hypocrisy and stilted expectations. The catty, double bladed dialogue is inherently uncomfortable, but it's something my girlfriend and I face all the time. Sometimes, the Joneses don't realize you have no interest in keeping up with them, which makes their boasting twice as tedious.

"Can we go back to the city now?" Carrie begs.

How many times, stuck in the formless slush of Bucks County or Silver Spring or the North Hills, have I thought those very words?