jcpdiesel21's review against another edition
4.0
A fun, sassy and spirited memoir with plenty of dish about the men in Rue's life.
kateklauss's review against another edition
5.0
This was just an amazing book. It runs so smoothly and is hard to put down--you're always in the middle of something. It was really inspiring to hear her stories about love and relationships. It made me feel like I should always be striving for more meaningful and fulfilling relationships. Through it all, she kept her head held high and was never down.
hollysue22's review against another edition
3.0
i didn't enjoy this book quite as much as i expected that i would. it has a lot of technical information about different plays and shows she was in and information about them that i really didn't need to know or care to know. i was reading the book to know about her and her life. i didn't need to know all the details about each and every show and etc that she participated in. but i got past that and did like the personal stuff underneath all the technical jargon. learned so many things about her that i didn't know.
mindsplinters's review against another edition
4.0
As much as she probably wouldn't appreciate it, Rue McClanahan is/was quite quite Blanche... With a bit of the hopefully optimistic, adorably naive Rose thrown in. Oh, bless. I had no idea she had such a life!
clairebearrich's review against another edition
5.0
This is Rue McClanahan’s autobiography and as a fan of the Golden Girls I plucked this off my To Read list. I think celebrity memoirs are just as good beach reads as trashy romance novels. Just as juicy, easy reads (I have yet to read a celebrity autobiography that challenged my intelligence in any way) and you always come away with a couple of fun facts to impress your friends with. But I digress, McClanahan’s book is just as engaging and funny as she is on the Golden Girls. It’s also heartfelt at moments and my heart went out to her on more than one occasion. Mostly though, I just laughed out loud. Thanks for being a friend Rue. 5 stars.
moto1480's review against another edition
4.0
Rue McClanahan is well-known for her roles on Maude and the Golden Girls, but her own story would have been worth a sitcom of it's own. From her early days in Ardmore, OK (where she called her mother Mother and her dad Bill) to her decades of cross-country travel working at her craft, Rue took on any role she could. And what appears to be almost any man. (As Blanche would say, "Many, many men.")
Mostly, I found it hard to not want to grab her and tell her she was deserving of the love and affection she didn't receive from most of the men in her life. Rue bounds through her story at times being brutally honest about what she went through to be successful (for example, the abortion she had in Mexico) and utterly flippant (glossing over physical abuse she and her son endured from her third husband and also detailing a nighttime drunken sexual encounter with a friend that she doesn't seem to think the friend remembers). I found all of these things to be hard to reconcile with the cheerful tone she takes through each chapter. In addition, while this book was published three years before she died, she barely goes into any detail about what happened between 1992 and 2007.
I walked away from this with a better appreciation and understanding of who Rue McClanahan wanted us to see her as. I'm just not sure I could bring myself to be as candid as she was. This is a true "warts and all" autobiography. If you want that, read this.
Mostly, I found it hard to not want to grab her and tell her she was deserving of the love and affection she didn't receive from most of the men in her life. Rue bounds through her story at times being brutally honest about what she went through to be successful (for example, the abortion she had in Mexico) and utterly flippant (glossing over physical abuse she and her son endured from her third husband and also detailing a nighttime drunken sexual encounter with a friend that she doesn't seem to think the friend remembers). I found all of these things to be hard to reconcile with the cheerful tone she takes through each chapter. In addition, while this book was published three years before she died, she barely goes into any detail about what happened between 1992 and 2007.
I walked away from this with a better appreciation and understanding of who Rue McClanahan wanted us to see her as. I'm just not sure I could bring myself to be as candid as she was. This is a true "warts and all" autobiography. If you want that, read this.