Rating: 
Summary: Yep, that's how you do it alright
Review: British writer moves to NYC and finds that the upperclass New Yorkers he meets are not like the hacks he worked with in London, and that Americans are not English, even though they speak English, and that the New York publishing world is not at all the same as the way it's portrayed in vintage movies. Hilarity ensues.
Rating: 
Summary: You can't feel sorry for the guy.
Review: He does it all to himself. As I read this, I figured that I would somehow identify with Toby and see his foray into the magazine world as a realist going into a self-stroking, cynical environment. I was figuring he was just the wrong guy for the wrong job. Well, not true.He's a journalist. Granted, he's a British journalist (I did learn a few new colloquialisms reading this) going to an American magazine...but he's a journalist and he should have known. I.e., you would not take a job at Company Y if EVERYONE around you said it's not a good place to work. Either way, he digs his own grave. His failure to play the game is what does him in. Quite frankly, his boss tells him to do things, he disobeys, and he wonders why everyone get's peeved at him. Geee, I wonder why? A decent read. If you're in the publishing industry it might be a little more relevant. A decent read, just not what I expected.
Rating:
Summary: Get it from the libary to bypass author's royalties!
Review: I guess it's easier to like a memoir if you like the writer, but unfortunately, Toby Young appears to be 1) shallow as hell, and 2) harboring delusions of grandeur. Not an attractive combo. Remind me again why I would want to read about him?
Rating: 
Summary: A surprisingly good read
Review: This is a funny book with a surprising amount of vulnerability and erudition. At its core, it's about the child of a celebrated intellectual who is at once fascinated by the bright glossy world exemplified by Vanity Fair magazine and ashamed of that very fascination. Young is struggling with feeling not quite fabulous enough for that world and with the question why one would want to part of same (real intellectuals don't care about going to the Oscar party at Mortons -- they barely register the Oscars in the first place). Young is a facile, amusing and self-deprecating writer with an eye for the little detail that says a great deal (e.g. the expectation that VF staffers walk with a sense of purpose as a way of expressing confidence; talk about form over function!). This is a book for anyone who reads VF or People or Us, etc. with a sense of guilty pleasure.
Rating: 
Summary: Easy, very funny and surprisingly accurate
Review: This book is laugh out loud funny and as an ex-pat Brit, a surprisingly accurate account of how different our cultures can really be. Patently, I am not a journalist but at any level, moving to America presents a minefield of opportunities to upset peers, friends and employers alike. Toby Young has managed to pull off a rare coup. His book is great, the anecdotes are funny, the characters are interesting and I believe, for the most part, accurately depicted and yet you still turn the last page and think, what an irritating little man he must really be. Toby Young is the impish smart ass we all knew at school only he never quite grew up. As for the numerous negative American reviews I have read, I have to believe that much of the disapproving press is more jingoistic pride than rational critique, with every word you write you add rationale to the stance that Young has taken in the book.
Rating:
Summary: This book rocks!
Review: Toby Young gives a searing account of life as a corporate climbing weasel in our fair city of New York. Admittedly, some parts of the book are a tad drawn out and tedious, as he goes into great detail about seemingly meaningless details. But I found even these drawn out parts of the book fascinating and humorous. I don't think this is the first book about superficial life in New York, but Young's description is hilarious enough to nonetheless be original. Watching him slither from one public relations disaster to the next is addictive. This book rocks! Avery Z. Conner, author of "Fevers of the Mind".
Rating:
Summary: Pretty funny
Review: This is a pretty funny look at a pathetic person. Actually, pathetic people. Young really has no redeeming qualities as far as I can see, but then again, he doesn't pretend to have any. N.Y. socialites are good fodder for ridicule and, in that sense, Toby delivers.
Another funny look at a guy stuck in a job while he's trying to merge into the 'fast lane' is "No One's Even Bleeding".
Rating: 
Summary: "Not Gay Enough"
Review: Toby's self-critique does not go far enough. Despite his confessions, he doesn't seem to genuinely realise how annoying he can be. Instead, he seems to be winking at the reader, saying "Aren't I cute?" Reviewers here give him too much credit for his writing. He would have done well to take to heart his editor's list of banned words, such as "quipped." The narrative went flat in the first pages, as I wondered why he was devoting so many words to that particular incident. It is a tip-off up front that he has little to say in this book. He lingers on one banal story after another. Yes, he does quote a mean historian. Probably not difficult for an Oxford graduate who was raised by activist intellectuals. I believe he is truly is well-read and reasonably articulate. Yet the result is a bit formulaic: personal narrative, lefty political commentary, personal narrative, lefty political commentary. And yes, he does have somewhat insightful things to say about the concept of "Zeitgeist" and the people obsessed with it. But then, you would expect insights from any devotee speaking on his own subject. It is hard to forget that he is complaining about people that he chose to be with, and activities he chose to do. His own immaturity ceases to be interesting as a topic. And his insights are informed by misogyny. Women won't sleep with him. Women don't like him. Women are courtesans, women are condescending and nasty. And perhaps this gives us a clue about the fundamental personal conflicts that fuel his writing. Frankly, I was surprised when he started talking about trying to seduce women at all; from page one he comes across as gay. He seemed too close to the mark when he said women did not buy his personal image because he "not gay enough." In the end, to provide a plot for the book, he frames his retreat from New York as some sort of personal passage. Again, unconvincing. What actually happened was he finally found a woman who would be intimate with him. Perhaps they are living happily ever after. Perhaps he can stop writing now....
Rating:
Summary: quite a disappointment
Review: I have always had a flair for British comedy but this book is a huge disappointment. I kept reading it, waiting for the book to make me laugh and after getting about half way through it, I gave up. Save your money... there are plenty of other good books out there to read, this is not one of them.
Rating:
Summary: The resourceful art of cashing in on warts
Review: The book did indeed live up to its title, while I could identify with some of the author's views about life in NYC, I could not sympathize with him as a person, even though trying to sympathize with him was what kept me reading till the end, but, it did not happen! These are well written ugly stories, with the author's humor and honesty about his own shortcomings being the only thing going for it...However, the constant name dropping, and the pretence to mask some characters while making it clear in every way who they were, was extremely annoying... His jealousy of his friend who "made it" is pathetic every bit as brutally competitive and toxic as any of those New Yorkers he spent so much time vilifying... none of Young's bitter words on that subject talked about the quality of that "friend's" work or his achievements, the only thing that counted, was WHO that friend-who-made-it "was seen to hang out with" from the celebrity circles. As for Young's words on the women he had (or wanted to have)something with, they were described, more or less, like some "beefsteak" to be had for dinner ( the fact that he hadn't had any for a while did not raise any sympathy). According to Young, NY is made mostly of gold-diggers..that may have been the case in the circles Young was trying so hard to become part of, but there are all kinds of women in NY. NY-women, being an intelligent lot, probably saw through his "beefsteak-outlook" on females and headed for the hills..the fact that he was an alcoholic did not seem to register strongly on his radar as offputting factor, for, while he admitted his alcoholism, but towards the end of the book, he did not seem to see how it was responsible for much of the downward spiral in his life... It is a pathetic story that is, however, well-written, but the saddest thing of all is that after all Young's attempts to convince the reader that some epiphany had happened at the end, the very last pages of the book show that no epiphany took place, that he was still that extremely competitive, sick bloke who never stopped feeling venomous bitterness at the success of "his friend", and never really "risen above" the "celebrity-centered culture" that he claimed to have seen through...
Rather than being a story where some major transformation has taken place, this story is more like some resourceful attempt to sneak back into the world of the "beautiful and famous people", only this time through the backdoor, or rather, more accurately, through the gutter...
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