Regular marked price: $25.00Discount Price: $19.00
Cost Savings: $6.00 (24%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.43028092
EAN num: 9780786716371
ISBN number: 0786716371
Label: Da Capo Press
Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 352
Printing Date: April 10, 2006
Publishing house: Da Capo Press
Sale Popularity Level: 787157
Studio: Da Capo Press
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Adrienne Barbeau never set out to be a sex symbol and she never intended to become the poster girl for women over 50 having babies, but both those stories and a lot more are detailed in this witty, revealing memoir.
This book covers Adrienne's early years in New York ('No one said Mafia out loud in those days. There was always the fear you wouldn’t live to say anything else.'), to starring on Broadway in Grease ('Alexander Cohen swore the only way we’d win a Tony was over his dead body'). She tells tales about her two hit television series (Maude and Carnivale), her many television and feature films (The Fog, Escape from New York, Cannonball Run, Swamp Thing, Back to School, Creepshow), her singing career ('Doc Severinson and the band had been in the audience during my nude foray off-Broadway in Stag Movie'), her romance with Burt Reynolds, her marriage to director John Carpenter, and marrying a much younger man and giving birth to twins at age 51.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
I wouldn't consider myself a huge fan of Adrienne Barbeau, but this book was a great read. In fact, I had a hard time putting it down! The book was very engaging, genuine, and fun to read. Ms. Barbeau is a definitely a class act; and she seems like a good, down to earth person. That's hard to say about many actresses these days.
Rated by buyers -
I have always enjoyed Adrienne Barbeau's acting, but this book has transformed me into a bona-fide fan. Ms. Barbeau shares stories of her Hollywood travels and her journeys toward personal identity and healthy relationships. It's an amazing read -- I hated putting it down!
This book is definitely of a higher caliber than most Hollywood tell-alls, and Ms. Barbeau exudes class, authenticity and humour throughout. After reading it, one will want to sit down and get to know this remarkable lady.
Also, Ms. Barbeau has signed a book deal to write mystery novels! So we will have more books from this amazing writer. Yay!
Rated by buyers 
-
+++++
"I went from being a musical comedy performer to a sitcom actress to a scream queen to a mother and a TV talk-show host and a book reviewer and a voice-over performer, and then back to the stage and back to musical comedy and back to television and concert halls and more films, and even into the recording studio for a CD and into my office to write this book."
This is an excerpt from this page-turning autobiography by Adrienne Barbeau, a candid, funny, and self-deprecating autobiography that covers sixty years of her life. It is based on the journals she kept which she "began in 1955." She "wrote every day for the subsequent forty years."
The above excerpt tells you generally what the book is about. Along the way, Barbeau tells us about "relationships and love affairs, emotional highs and lows, friendships and loss."
Highlights of this book include talking about her two hit TV shows ("Maude" and "Carnivale"), her major movies ("The Fog," "Escape from New York," "Swamp Thing," and "Creepshow"), her relationship with 1970's superstar Burt Reynolds, and her two marriages (the very first to horror and science fiction director John Carpenter).
The title of this book is the title of a major song Barbeau sung in the original Broadway production of "Grease" which was "a major turning point in [her] life."
This autobiography is well written. What I especially liked was Barbeau's directness and the fact that you could easily follow the timeline of her life story.
Included in the book's approximate center are over forty grey and white photographs. My favorite is the one that has her character in the movie "The Convent" gunning down nuns (or as she says "blowing away nuns").
Barbeau throughout her book doesn't come off as self-absorbed or an airhead. Instead she comes off as a smart, witty, loving, and giving person who, as this book chronicles, is a survivor.
Finally, I did find a few problems:
(1) I felt that Barbeau was holding back on certain details of her life story. For example, we are not told anything about the book's provocative cover photograph (shown above by Amazon). I learned that this is Barbeau's 1978 pin-up poster that actually rivaled Farrah Fawcett's poster of the same decade. Why are we not told anything about this?
(2) Many of the stories in her book are not followed up and this might be frustrating for some readers.
(3) She tends to sometimes flip-flop back and forth between present and past tense.
In conclusion, this is a good, solid, witty, and revealing autobiography about an actor who has been in the "biz" for more than four decades. It is definitely better than the standard actor autobiography!!
(first published 2006; introduction {entitled "The Journals"}; 40 chapters; main narrative 335 pages; acknowledgements {entitled "Thank You"})
+++++
Rated by buyers -
Adrienne Barbeau's very first book is a wonderful testament to a life lived. Good, bad or indifferent she propels her readers to LIVE.
Memoirs are always tough, and Barbeau nailed it! Even if I did not know her voice, from the many films, plays and TV shows she has been a part of, her written voice comes through so clearly. It is simultaneously kind, comic and sad without ever being maudlin.
Barbeau has a wonderful ability to take the reader in as if writing each reader a note about the day to day, and then she turns things that note around. You are reading a note from a friend and then realize that: Yes she was married to one of the most notable directors of horror in the U.S, yes she had an affair with Burt Reynolds. And yes she has had many loves in her time. Wow! But rather than delivering a tell all revealing the warts of others - although we do read a bit about those warts - Barbeau manages to undauntingly keep the focus on herself. While laughing at herself, and her foibles as a person with loves gained and lost, she takes the comic and imbues it with such heart the reader can visualize how double sided comedy is within each us; as when we laugh at ourselves, there tends to be some sadness lurking - conversely she explores her own tragedies such as the passing of her mother and her best friend, and reveals hope.
When reading this book, I was reminded of being lost on occasion. In THERE ARE WORSE THINGS I COULD DO, the reader, along with Adrienne, takes a journey. Barbeau reminds us that when we are lost we seek acceptance, regardless of what that acceptance might mean. But as we lose ourselves amidst gaining acceptance, we discover how within that losing, we can all find ourselves anew.
What is so fantastic about this read is Barbeau's refusal to be consumed by circumstance.
She keeps on going, keeps living, and keeps growing. For me as a woman, what is so particularly compelling about this book, is that she lets all women know that age truly, does not matter. And she does this simply by revealing her life, not by being pedantic. This is a message to all of us, to keep on keeping on. Ultimately she finds the love she so deserves, and rediscovers her muses: her children. Still, Barbeau reminds us that each day is a blank slate. and although Adrienne has found her muses, she keeps working at her life - understanding that with each day, ones life may need some reconfiguring. And that reconfiguring is a good thing...
I was lucky enough to hear Barbeau read passages from the book, and the reading added a wonderful dimension to my understanding of her experiences. Her timing is impeccable, and I hope her publisher will push extensively for a nationwide tour with the author.
Rated by buyers -
Adrienne Barbeau's "There are Worst Things I Could Do" is not your standard kiss-and-tell Hollywood memoir. Although she writes wittily about her affair with Burt Reynolds, her marriage to cult filmmaker John Carpenter, her liaisons with various Hollywood personalities, and behind the scenes mayhem during the filming of "The Fog", "The Swamp Thing", "The Cannonball Run", and her hit television sitcom "Maude", her memoir is more about her personal journey as a wounded woman who ached for peace and joy in her relationships with men.
Her candor is refreshing. She does not flinch from sharing with the reader intimate details about sex, psychics, gurus, and her quest to heal the trauma of being abandoned by her father when she was still a child. The forty or so chapters around which she has arranged her material reveal a vibrant woman who wanted to experience life fully, to learn from her experiences, to heal her wounds, and to grow as an actress and woman.
Though she deals candidly with "heavy" subjects, her style is never maudlin or judgmental or self-pitying. She is able to find humour and farce even in the most intense situations of life.
So read this book as a Hollywood memoir full of juicy revelations if you wish. But the pleasure I got from it was not reading about her career arc but her personal journey as a woman through the quickly shifting zeitgeist of the past five decades.
In time, her well-rounded memoir will grow in stature.
Find other books like this one:
