Another book that I thought would be a juicy read but perhaps its because a topic I don't really given much care of, I found it hard to get into and found myself skim reading through the book.

Not my usual read but the reviews and recommendations have been excellent so I thought I would try it. I loved it!. A little on the long side, I will admit to rushing a few pages, but I found the book funny , full of gossip, a great insight into the world of 1980's journalism and printing and well worth the longish read.

Tina Brown writes about the glitzy world of magazine publishing in the 80s, chronicling her time as editor of Vanity Fair. An excellent insight into the world of publishing this book doesn’t skimp on revealing honest details about her personal life and work as well as including encounters with her flashy celebrity colleagues. Set against the devastating backdrop of the AIDS crisis that struck New York at the time, this book contrasts some heartbreaking moments with priceless anecdotes about Donald Trump. I loved this book, thanks NetGalley!

I’ll admit now that although I was excited to read this book, I very nearly gave up on it. The first fifteen to twenty percent of the book was given over to the possibility of Ms Brown moving from Tatler magazine in the UK to being given the Editor in Chief position of Vanity Fair in New York. It felt a strange place to start and laborious to read. The to-ing and fro-ing that occurred during this period could better have been condensed into a paragraph, or at most a page and be less likely to put off readers who give up before getting to the real meat of the book.
Once Ms Brown is finally given the job, the pace picks up substantially and I had real difficulty in putting the book down! Admittedly, I was unaware of some of the names she spoke of, but for the most part it didn’t matter as her vivid, and often amusing descriptions of those she mixes with is more than enough. The book is full of colour and vivacity. It’s a brilliant piece of social history aswell, as we look back on the decadent Eighties, and all that went along with it – the Dynasty power suits, the ‘frosted’ hair that didn’t move an inch, even in a gale, along with the darker side to that freedom in the spectre of AIDS.
Although it’s easy to have visions of the cool and often unkind Miranda from the The Devil Wears Prada when one thinks of an Editor in Chief of a major, world leading glossy magazine but Ms Brown comes across as very likeable. She clearly has drive and energy – just reading about the speed of the world she operated in, and being out for lunch and dinner pretty much every day exhausted me – but she also comes across as very human. She has faults that she acknowledges, and fears and tears. She worries about her friends, and her parents and her children and wants to make sure all are happy and cared for. I loved the switching from the breakneck speed of their lives in NYC to the slow, sedate weekends spent at their beachfront house in the Hamptons, and can easily see that this was something they needed as a family – an escape from the crazy for a couple of days a week.
Once I got past the slow beginning, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the window it opened on a time now past.

4*

The Queen of the Glossies tells all. These diaries reflecting the eight incredible years Tina Brown spent as editor in chief of Vanity, paint a very vivid picture of eighties Manhattan Media world. This book is very much about work, rather than a froth of gossip and parties, but still entertains. Tina Brown can be quite acerbic in her pen portraits of the people she encounters in her endeavours to restyle and re-posiiton Vanity Fair from sales of 200,000 to an incredible 1.2 million.

When I saw this come up on NetGalley I was looking for a lighthearted read between my usual thriller and YA novels and this seemed ideal. I found it intriguing and felt compelled to read on. This is a book full to the brim with gossip and news heard through the grapevine. I thought I would enjoy it more than I actually did but that isn't to say I didn't find it interesting. There were parts I devoured - the remarks on Trump to name one such part.

I felt a slight fraud for reading it knowing it would be based substantially on gossip as I have never been one of those girls interested in talking about others behind their back, especially in a derogatory manner.

Anyway, it's read now and that is that. I think I will stick to my usual genres for the foreseeable! That said, I do like to discover other books/genres that fall outside of my comfort zone. You can often find real gems that way. This just wasn't for me i'm afraid.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in celebrity and the rich and famous, their behaviour and their lifestyle. It's 3.5 stars from me.

I would like to thank the publisher and NetGalley for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I loved the glamour of this book and really enjoyed being swept into a bygone era of magazine publishing. I loved the gossip and the name-dropping but dropped one star as it really was very long!

I really enjoyed this and love reading insights into the magazine industry. I would have rated it higher had there been less entries about random lunches that didn’t really seem to add anything. I had expected a fairly quick read but it felt like a really lengthy book, and took me longer than expected to finish.

In 1983 Tina Brown was a celebrated editor of UK society glossy 'Tatler. The indulged daughter of comfortably middle-class parents had graduated from Oxford and with a talent for words, networking and editing had turned around a moribund publication. When SI (Si) Newhouse, the owner of parent company Conde Nast, asked Tina to consult on his ailing magazine Vanity Fair she was both excited and concerned. Pitching her ideas to Newhouse Tina was catapulted into the New York media jungle where business was just as important as content. This book covers the 9 years Tina Brown worked with Vanity Fair, a time when professional acclaim had to be balanced with family life.

I loved every page of this book! Tina Brown was an aspiration to me as a young woman starting out in publishing in the early 1990s, a clever woman who had taken on the world. I moved out of publishing fairly quickly and reading this book I can see that what I felt was the personal issues I had with the industry were exactly that - I did not want to compete in such a business where you are only as good as your last deal. Brown tries to play down the ruthless aspect of her nature but it breaks through often. She has no compunction about moving people on and says what she feels about friends and colleagues. Although essentially a diary of the 1980s it is interesting to see that Boris Johnson is mentioned and Donald Trump is a regularly recurring character, whilst I have no doubt that Brown cam across them I wonder if they have been left in through the editing process to give a little piquancy and 'nowness'. The most moving parts are when Brown talks about her child G and his problems and also about her sadness at the rampaging of AIDS through the gay, liberal New York arts scene in the 1980s. Altogether a nostalgic romp from an inspirational, if not always likeable, woman.

This book is very different to those I normally read, but I still found myself mostly enjoying it. It was interesting to hear about the world of journalism and publishing. I know very little about this world so the book gave me a lot of insight, but sometimes I found it hard work getting through certain sections.

I think the book shows where the fascination with celebrity, and the glamorous lifestyle that goes along with it, began. These early magazines such as Vanity Fair set the boundary from which the pace has gathered over the last couple of decades.

It was very interesting and eyebrow raising to hear stories of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump! The comments are certainly very relevant in today's times. Some more revelations definitely would not have gone amiss though as there were a lot of names that I did not know, and I'm sure there would have been many stories on more currently famous people to share.

The book gave me an admiration for Tina Brown, she started as a very young, determined and ambitious lady, in a world of older males, where presumably a lot of fighting and strength was needed to reach the level of success that she did and she has had an incredibly successful career.

An interesting read and I am grateful to Netgalley and Orion for allowing me a copy in return for my honest and unbiased review.

As I was Born in 1981 I seriously couldn’t wait to read this as I was quite young when this was all going on .
Absolutely fascinating loved it

I first became aware of Tina Brown when I saw an interview with her on British television. It was back in the 80’s and I think she was editor-in-chief at the UK society magazine Tatler at the time. I do remember being amazed at how this young women (she'd have been in her mid twenties then) was in such a senior job. She seemed to have it all going for her: good looking and articulate – the world at her feet. I lost track of her then, until I saw this book.

My knowledge of Vanity Fair was limited to a couple of covers I’d seen featuring Demi Moore, wearing nothing in one photo and just a coat of paint in the other. I recall this kicking up a bit of a storm at the time. I quickly discovered that Tina had taken over as editor-in-chief in 1984 – still in her twenties! If that wasn't enough, it entailed relocating from her London base to NYC, converting her husband Harold Evans (the renowned ex-editor of The Sunday Times) into a long distance commuter. An ambitious lady, to be sure.

Tina kept a diary updated throughout her time at the magazine and I found that use of this format created a sense of immediacy and natural tension. As a reader you were never quite sure how situations would play out because as the extract you were reading was being written the author had no idea how it would play out either. As you'd expect, there's a lot of office politics here, involving people with big wallets and even bigger egos. The overall boss of the parent company, Condé Nast, was a particularly intriguing character. Si Newhouse is from the hire ‘em and fire ‘em school and he certainly kept Brown guessing. Each time she was summoned to his office she was wondering whether it was to receive a pay rise or to tell her to collect her belongings and exit stage left. And then there were constant lunches and dinners with fellow journalists, actors, writers, fashionistas and other movers and shakers. This element did, though, become a little tedious as although these snippets were sometimes amusing I was often left bemused by yet another set of names that meant nothing to me.

My favourite bits were where Tina was voicing her angst regarding her constant fears that Si would sack her, the money worries that plagued her in the early years and her struggles to find a way of making her long distant marriage work. I also enjoyed the fact that I was sometimes prompted to dig deeper into stories and events, undertaking additional research or searching out a story that had been published in VF (for example the murder of writer Dominick Dunne’s daughter and the subsequent trial). And then there were some brilliant reflections on the difference between Britain and America. Fascinating stuff.

There were some frustrations too. The format dictated that I’d sometimes get engrossed in an event or attracted by a new interesting character – for instance the ‘mafia landlord’ overseeing an early flat rental – only for events to jump forward and rob me of more. I also felt that Donald Trump attracted more space here than he would have had his career not taken such a dramatic turn of late. That said, it’s fun to see the none too flattering portrayal.

TB does come across as a little too conscious of her own good looks and cleverness. But she’s obviously tough, determined and focused, and I admired the way she set about changing things at VF despite some significant resistance. It’s also clear that she couldn't possibly have achieved this degree of success at such an early age without being a driven, confident woman. Good on her. There's a lot to like here and I enjoyed the fact that she pulls no punches in stating her views on people. It may be a trifle too long (it could lose a few lunches) but it's a compelling read nonetheless.

This was such an interesting read. You get a glimpse into the life of someone in journalism. I find that sometimes I struggle reading non-fiction books, but this kept me entertained through out.

This books literally sums up the eighties. Power dressing, board room anitics, sexy and cruel. The language is full of hyperbole and sometimes reads a bit like a tabloid headline. I really enjoyed it.

A charming insight on the world of magazines, and fashion. This book is a page turner and funny and witty read.
Strongly recommended to all those who admired Tina Brown in her Vanity Fair/New Yorker years.
Many thanks to Orion Publishing Group and Netgalley

A rip-roaring romp through the golden age of magazine publishing. In the days when greed was still good and champagne lunches were the norm Tina Brown was a pioneer editor and paved the way for many other women. The book is entertaining and easy to read, a real peek behind the curtain of a turbulent time personally and professionally. A real joy.

I really enjoyed this book, it gave me an insight into a world that I knew very little about. I thought it was well written and I would recommend it.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Tina Brown for the copy of this book. I agreed to give my unbiased opinion voluntarily.

I took a chance on this book as I had not really heard much about Tina Brown previously, but as teenager in the 80's/90's and an occasional reader of Vanity Fair I was very glad I had done so as I found it a really good enjoyable and interesting read.
This is a perfect book if you just want to read something not so heavy, it's a fascinating insight into the glamorous worlds of fashion, celebrity and magazine publishing.

Thank you!

I was interested in the reinvention of the iconic magazine Vanity Fair but I’m afraid I have been left disappointed. The diaries describe the petty office politics of any organisation but perhaps in a more ‘glamourous’ setting. They also detail an environment of cliques and those who are ‘in’ or ‘out’ in editorial changes. In one particulary entry, and to show her mettle, Tina Brown sacks someone purely for their allegiance to a previous editor ‘She writes well but her resentful politesse has been getting on my nerves’. This sadly is also a fair description of these entries. Though the diaries are the most accurate account, from Ms Brown’s point of view, they consist largely of lunches with countless publishing figures. The most interesting people, such as the journalist and travel writer Jan Morris, are mentioned only to demonstrate how achingly ‘forward looking’ they were trying to be. I feel if the diaries had been formed into a narrative non-fiction form then the historical context of the modern VF era would have been better served with hindsight and some explanation on motivation and consequences. .

This was such a cool book. I was born in 93 so it was fascinating for me to read about the 80s and all the audacity that came with the era. I wouldn't say it is something that I wasn't able to put down but I did enjoy reading little bits of it over the last couple of weeks and it was a lot of fun. I've always been really into the world of upscale magazines (The Devil Wears Prada) and this wasn't exactly the same vibe but I did feel like I was in the exclusive club for a while. Also, the mentioning of a certain POTUS made the book sound a bit different in the context of what we know today.