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Coal To Diamonds: A Memoir (2012)

by Beth Ditto(Favorite Author)

3.63 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0385525915 (ISBN13: 9780385525916)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Spiegel & Grau

review 1: I'm ashamed it took me so long to read this, Beth Ditto being one of my absolute all-time heroes since the age of 16, but sadly it was a huge, crushing disappointment. As other reviews by big fans have said, the book feels extremely half-hearted, with erratic insertions of potentially really exciting/interesting anecdotes that always fail on their promises. A huge bulk of the book is devoted to very in-depth descriptions of Beth's early life, which is exactly what I wanted to know about, but four chapters on the same information of life at home with a great aunt compared to literally just a few sentences on the monumental explosion of fame Gossip and Beth underwent in 2006/7 with Standing in the Way of Control was appalling. I wanted to know everything, her early life righ... moret through to the development of the band and the music they made, which I love and cherish. You just can't help but feel a bit let down when we spend so long with Beth musing on wanting to escape Arkansas, and then suddenly her band is asked to support Sleater-Kinney on tour and she gets to see the entire United States, and tells us next to nothing about what it felt to visit New York or San Francisco for the first time. Her huge fame in the UK is given one paragraph - something like "and all of a sudden I was best friends with Kate Moss" - girl please, you were all over every magazine, in every paper, you were partying with the elite, you had an entire clothing range for Evans... In the bulk of my later teens, not so long ago, I was obsessed with Beth. I knew her every movement (creepy). I even had a substantially long conversation with her on MySpace (probably the peak of my teens) where she told me all about Paris is Burning (which lit the spark which lead to my current obsession with drag culture) and how it was the source material for Madonna's Vogue (I was also beginning my Madonna obsession at this time, and to hear one of my idols criticising another of my idols in MYSPACE PRIVATE MESSAGE was a hoot).... I dunno, I just feel like that enormous huge part of her life was totally ignored in place for endless, monotonous musings on country life. I've seen her perform live a million times, she once wore a t-shirt I made for her on stage, I've bloody motorboated the woman for god's sake! And also, really really upsetting, zero mention given to her artistically triumphant dance EP she made with Simian Mobile Disco which was a total change from anything she did with Gossip but just as good.And I have no problem with reading ghost written books, obviously you can't expect your heroes, who may be extraordinarily talented in some areas like singing or acting, to be top quality writers, but if it's gonna be ghost written, I do expect the quality to be a lot higher. This felt like it was written by Beth... and that's not such a good thing. Real shoddy writing, clumsy structure, erratically flitting from one subject to another - if there was an author guiding Beth they should have done a much better job.Did any of that make sense?
review 2: Excellent book. Even if you aren't a fan of her band, Gossip or her inspiration on the runway, this is a superb read. While the page length is short at about 150 pages, the life lessons and her hard work for success shows itself on every page. This book is inspirational and I think it will provide hope to many young artists and everyday people who have or want to survive the daily struggle of a dysfunctional, abusive extended family. less

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