Star by Peter Biskind didn't stay in my hands long enough to make it on to my currently reading tag, but here's the review.
First of all, what is Star? I cringe to admit that it's a biography of Warren Beatty.
Second, how did it ever wind up on my shelf of unreads? I had read a review that wasn't bad, and it showed up really cheap on some online store. So I bought it. When it arrived, the first thing I noticed was how thick it was. IMHO, Warren Beatty is not worth 500 plus pages. But, like with all books that make it onto the unread shelf, I figured I'd give it the usual 50-page try.
WRONG! I stopped midway down page two. Why? Let's back up to Hooked. Throughout Edgerton's continuously repeated statements on the importance of the first sentence, he did occasionally throw in pieces of writing advice, mostly dealing with an imprecise use of words. I've read advice like this before; the one that's always stayed in my mind is when some character's "eyes fell/dropped to the floor." Think about the literal meaning of those words. Grizzly, isn't it? Well, in Star I found on page 2 one of the words-can-be-misinterpreted phrases that Edgerton pointed out. "I'm in, I thought to myself…" (Star, page 2) Edgerton's take—with which I agree (although I never thought of it)—is that if you're thinking, who else besides yourself could you be thinking to? And that gave me an excuse to stop reading Star on only the second page.
