Rating: 
Summary: What's all the fuss about?
Review: After hearing about this book for ages, I decided to give it a try. Really, what is everyone all gung ho about? The character is unlikeable, although she obviously thinks that she's got the brains of a rocket scientist the way she looks down on everything and everyone around her at her job. Her relationship with her boyfriend is just plain old boring. The boss is a walking stereotype. I would have given this one star, but because I couldn't even make it through the entire book before I got bored and sick of the nauseating characters, I figured that wouldn't be honest because I don't know if the entire thing is bad - but most certainly the first half that I read wasn't worth all the press.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Characters and Fascinating Situations
Review: Andrea gets a dream job at a fashion magazine, but gets the boss-from-hell. Actually her dream involved writing for the New Yorker but fetching coffee and dry cleaning for the boss seems unlikely to train her for that. She plugs away as the job becomes all consuming and the demands from her boss grate more and more on her nerves.
As her relationships dwindle under the stress of the job, the conflict with the boss becomes more personalized. Andrea becomes more and more paranoid as sleep deprivation and lack of social support turn her into a whining, unpleasant person herself.
Fascinating insider view of the fashion industry and working in the high-pressure NYC jobs. Often funny, a bit romantic and eventually somewhat depressing as Andrea is dragged further and further down by the job and the horror that is her boss.
Rating:
Summary: A predictable 'Chick Lit' story for 8th Graders.
Review: As we all could guess, the esteem a book holds to a given individual has at least something to do with how the circumstances of a story relate to the circumstances of your life.
So let me say: I am a Gen-Xer, a man, and having spent some 23 years in schooling of one kind or another, look for the deeper meaning of the stuff I read. Thus my title for the review... ah yes now it makes sense.
I suppose if you've never been to NYC (as many 8th graders have not) the descriptions of downtown are cool. And I suppose the way materialistic megalomaniacs treat their subbordinates may intrigue a junior high-schooler, yet unaccustomed to the ways of the world. I suppose Vogue holds some appeal for women of all ages, thank God; yes we all admire beautifull women. They are fun to look at, but, often, not to analyse, which this book seemingly attempts to do. Trouble with such subject matter: not much there to delve into.
I knew there was trouble, when, during the first few pages, the main character started listing the prices of the various garments she was wearing. Ridiculous amounts of money of course per item. Who would care how much a Gucci handbag costs? Those of us who don't know don't care. And those of us who do know don't need reminding. Thus, the author is writing for the sake of seeing words on the page: there is no deeper meaning to what whe describes. Expensive clothes, mean bosses, snobby women. These are depicted without analysis, but worse yet, with no tidbits for the reader to form any sort of analysis for himself.
I know what you are thinking: this guy is not smart enough to figure out the deeper meaing of the story, and so he gripes...
Well, be my guest and use a few hours of your time reading that book, so you too agree with this essay.
Now, let's go through the books we've read and think about one with perhaps more substance... and style. A story about young people, young men and young women, who face the moral ambiguities of the day, juggling their 'careers' so to speak, dealing with love and relationships, and where the ending is not as happy as or as concise as one might like. I tell you what comes to mind: Corelli's Mandolin, which interestingly takes up less room on the bookshelf. Now that my young Chick-lits, is something worth reading!
But, as usual, not if you've seen the movie already, which will, if you have seen it, spoil for you one of the finest books around, and will leaving you cursing Hollywood, and henceforth watching IFC.
Rating: 
Summary: I enjoyed it, for what it is... fluffy...
Review: I don't think anyone picks up a book like this expecting a ground breaking work of fiction. No one hopes to have his or her life changed by the moral of a book like "The Devil Wears Prada," and I am not an exception. I expected a book that would entertain me, keep me interested, and would make life a little less dull. These goals were all achieved.
Looking back over the opening scene of the novel, though, I am confused. It seems to start in the present, then explain how the lead character, Andrea Sachs, got to such a miserable predicament. Yet, this scene is never revisited. This certainly isn't important, but it might have helped the flow of the novel if it were.
No, I was not moved by this book. It will have no lasting affect on me (although I DID fall asleep last night wondering how on earth my wide feet would ever be forced into Jimmys or Manolos, but that's a different issue), but it helped me to fall asleep at night, closing my day in a relaxed way.
Rating:
Summary: Sweetie, Move Back to Connecticut
Review: I picked this book up at the airport two days ago and read it obsessively until it was finished. It was like eating MacDonalds or watching a marathon session of The Real World. You know it's bad, you know it's not enriching, but you can't help yourself. Because it's so bad, it's kind of fantastic.
This is a thinly veiled account of the author's 1 year tenure working as Anna Wintour's assistant at Vogue. The book lacks the narrative structure of fiction because it ISN'T fiction. It's a memoir with made up names. As in life, characters come and go unnannounced and are introduced to us for no apparent reason. Chance events happen that don't really add much to the major themes that this book explores - working for a maniac, being young and ambitious in Manhattan, and growing up.
The author's writing has been vilified, and that seems pretty fair. Half that attack should be leveraged on her editor, however. This is a book about the fashion industry, and noone checked the correct spelling of the makeup artist Bobbi Brown's name? On the plus side, I think the author did a great job capturing what it feels like to be out of college, in your first apartment in a big city. It created nostalgic feelings for this reader.
The main problem is the narrator is herself quite unlikeable. Yes, Anna (Miranda) is evil and psychotic. Surprise. The narrator isn't much better. One can't help agree with her coworker Emily that she is sarcastic and condescending. And a major bigot. The book is full of appallingly snide references to JAPS (!), meek Indian roomates who are indistinguishable from each other and smell like curry(I'm not kidding), and homeless people who are "filthy and smelly" (and whom the author, fancying herself a real humanitarian, supplies free coffees to, which she pays for by stealing from her company). She also doles out judgment to homosexuals (admonishing one bad gay for having sex since we live in tha "Age of Aids"), people with tattoos and piercings, and immigrants. What this girl is doing in New York City at all, I have NO idea.
Rating:
Summary: waste of time
Review: I was excited to see that this book had finally been released on paperback so I picked it up immediately. However, it was very disappointing. The book is a 400-page rant from a selfish, boring character that we've seen millions of times before (think blonde, blue eyed, naive, small-town girl..) The author writes as though she is an expert in her field dishing the dirt - meanwhile the info in this book is common knowledge and there are even some things I find incorrect. Also, it is not particularly well-written or articulate. The author tends to go into such detail about daily trips to Starbucks but briefly mulls over entire months of the protagonist's life. It may be a cute read for younger women or those who are really curious about the fashion industry.
Rating:
Summary: Two and a Half Stars
Review: In reading over the reviews posted here, it seems that people are very bothered by the shallow, materialistic protagonist. I didn't necessarily get that impression and besides, if every character was likeable and exuding righteousness, we'd never have had some of the great litery heroes and heroines. That being said, Andrea Sachs doesn't fall into that category and the book itself was largely a disappointment. I had no expectation of lofty intellectual reading, but some semblance of plot would have been nice. Every aspect of the story was completely predictable and the characters were rather poorly developed. I wouldn't go as far as to say that this was a waste of money, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone either.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't waste your time
Review: It is terrible. She does not know how to write.
Rating:
Summary: entertaining but lacking substance
Review: The book kept me reading, which is a good thing. I'm not a person who reads alot. It was a nice book for the time being, but I don't think I'd read it again. Once I finished the book I was left thinking, "Is that it?". I guess it's all in what you're looking for. If you want a book that is entertaining and fun to read then this is a good book. If you're looking for a book that you'll want to read over and over again, one that builds suspense and provokes feelings, then this is not a good book for you.
Rating:
Summary: A job millions of girls would die for !
Review: The cute heroin, Andrea Sachs, always wanted to be a journalist for her favourite newspaper The New Yorker, but as she makes a first application at the Elias Clark building after the college she discovers a new world. There are the legs longer, thinner and graciler than somewhere else and anorexic seems to be a must have there. But this isn't the worst, Andrea who isn't into fashion gets the job a million girls would die for. But Andrea dicovers really fast that Miranda Priestly, the woman in fashion and editor in chief of Runway, the most popular magazine in fashion, is a dragon. So Andrea has to be prepared for her improper phonecalls 24 hours, because Miranda has to get everything she wants and she has to help her everywhere she can. And everywhere means realy everywhere, so that also means that Andrea has to find Miranda's chauffeur while she's sitting New York and Miranda is standing 5 minutes in Mailand waiting for her limousine.
So after 6 months Andrea gets everytime sweatings when the phone rings, her boyfriend is dissapointed, because they don't have any time for eachother anymore, her best friend is going to be a alcoholic and her family is still convinced that she has got the best job at all. In 1 year for Runway she gets lots of new experiences, contacts and her closet is now brimful with the newest designer clothes. She should get a job at The New Yorker for being Miranda's personal bondsman for one year. But till that time her whole life is upside down.
The heroin is one of the cutest ever and a little duffer, too, what makes her character even more loveable.
This book is truly unputdownable and a must have read for every fashionvictim .
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