Someone please strike me with a shovel and ask me why, oh why do I feel that I must finish reading books after I start them. Regardless of how awful the book is, regardless of how many cringes I make before I even get to page two, I have a masochistic compulsion to give every book I open a chance that it will improve, up to the very last page.
Is Elvis Alive? by Gail Brewer-Giorgio is my latest masochistic waste of a few days of living. This is one of my
twenty-year-old I’ll-get-around-to-it reads. I bought this book for a dollar at a remainder outlet and thought it would be a riot to read, yet never bothered with it for the past two decades.
It was a painful read. The author, realizing that her credibility is at stake for writing such a book, makes it known throughout the 220 pages that she is a serious, published journalist, and has conducted extensive research and had interviews with those close to the Presley inner circle. She then proceeds to make spelling errors throughout the book [1] and uses as her own research material such tabloid Presley biographies as Elvis by Albert Goldman, Elvis: What Happened? by Red West, Sonny West and Dave Hebler, and Are You Lonesome Tonight? by Lucy de Barbin and Dary Matera. Goldman’s book rates as the worst Presley biography in history, yet she quotes from it more than any other source.
Brewer-Giorgio also has the extremely irritating habit of writing questions when none are required. For example (and man there are dozens of examples like these): “She asked if he had cancelled it?”; “He asked if he could send the manuscript to the New York office?”; “I don’t understand what you’re talking about?”. Annoying!
Do I really want to write an intelligent review on such a horrid book? Why would I want to waste my time trying to talk intelligently about a book that does not even deserve a thoughtful review? Why didn’t I trash it after the first few pages? I decided to read this piece of crap because I thought it would be a fluffy read, and I might get a laugh out of it. Let me tell you: by the end of 220 excruciatingly badly written pages, I wasn’t laughing. I don’t even want to relive what I read in order to write a book review. It was that awful.
Is Elvis alive? No, he’s dead!
[1] It’s for its; your for you’re; and confusing both there and their for they’re. Yeah–you’ve lost your credibility with spelling error number one.