My Booky Wook 2 by Russell Brand

My Booky Wook 2 : This Time it's Personal by Russell Brand

ISBN: 978-0-06-195807-6

Pages: 309

Inside Flap Description:

In Booky Wook 2, this award winning achievement is surpassed as Russell charts his rise from crack-house junky to Hollywood star, indulging in sexual excesses that make Caligula seem like a prudish spinster. On his quest to find true love, Russell encountered thousands of women, often three or four at a time (for efficiency), and his dizzying ambition led to chaos and controversy that could have landed him in prison and left the BC in ruins.

This is the story of what happens when insatiable desire meets limitless opportunity and when a punk from the wrong side of the tracks is given the keys to the palace. This riot of self indulgence would be rampaging still but for a tossed bottle to the head from one of the world's biggest pop stars.

Can true love conquer all? Is it a more powerful force than the raging libido of a professional madman? The answer lies inside.

My Rating: B

My Review:

First, let me state that I am a huge Russell Brand fan. I think he is funny, intelligent, and crazy and sometimes just what I need from a performer.

This book fell short for me. It took me many chapters to even get into the flow of the writing...or dialect, whichever. Russell Brand writes exactly how he talks, and if you've ever seen him on a late-night show, or even in a couple parts of his movies, he talks erratically.

Sometimes during a story he'll veer off of the subject into something unknown for a while, which is usually funny, but the mixture of the dialect, and the way he writes, on top of these tangents of fun, I found myself having a hard time really understanding what was going on.

Many of the chapters were really good. I know that's not the best way to describe it, but some are hits. Some will leave you feeling enlightened by the realizations that Brand has about himself, or the world around him, but some are not. Some leave you feeling as if you were just told a bunch of information that you can't really decipher. For instance, and this hopefully won't be a spoiler, I am not sure where his relationship stands with Morrisey or with his friend Matt.

Some of the material for the book is repetitive if you've seen him on late-night or his stand up. Some was expanded on, and some was word for word. I found this disappointing, but not surprising as the material is usually on subjects I was not only expecting, but hoping to see in the book.

One last thing bothered me, but it has nothing to do with Brand's writing, or the story. I do not know many of the media names he talks about in the first half of the book. It left me quite confused. Everything seems to be BBC something....but it all seems the same to me. Being here in the states, and not knowing a stitch of information about the media across the pond, made it hard for me to follow, or feel the importance of some of the events that he wrote about. Again, this is not to blame Russell, but my own ignorance.

Somehow, with all of these things that I didn't enjoy about the book, I still felt as if I was getting a honest look into his mind. This made me feel special and included. He does a good job of that. Even though this was not my best experience with Brand's work, it's not in any way put me off. I still recommend that any of his fans read the book, but don't get your hopes up too high. This one falls short of the first, but I'd be pleased to see a third down the road.