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30th out of 1,754 books
—
1,560 voters
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
by
Toby Young
In 1995 high-flying British journalist Toby Young left London for New York to become a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Other Brits had taken Manhattan--Alistair Cooke, Tina Brown, Anna Wintour--so why couldn't he?But things didn't quite go according to plan. Within the space of two years he was fired from Vanity Fair, banned from the most fashionable bar in the city, a...more
Paperback, 368 pages
Published
June 5th 2003
by Da Capo Press
(first published July 3rd 2002)
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I found this book to be really amusing when I read it, but now after seeing Toby Young on this past season of Top Chef, I think he just an unfunny douche bag. I'll leave the original four star rating, but only because reading about a douche bag can be funny.
May 12, 2009
María José
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
gente que esté interesada el el mundo de las revistas de moda y sociedad, de la jet-set, etc.
Recommended to María José by:
la conciencia colectiva
Shelves:
noficción,
noficción-memorias
Así se presentaba el libro: una crónica satírica desde el backstage del mundo de los más famosos y adorados, escrita por un periodista británico que trabajó durante tres años para la muy glamurosa (y casi centenaria) revista Vanity Fair. ¿Suena bien, verdad?
Pues para empezar, no encontré en este libro ni rastro del humor seco británico que tal descripción promete. Tampoco su densidad de detalles sobre el mundillo de la edición de una revista que hace y deshace reyes del mambo era tan alta como p...more
Pues para empezar, no encontré en este libro ni rastro del humor seco británico que tal descripción promete. Tampoco su densidad de detalles sobre el mundillo de la edición de una revista que hace y deshace reyes del mambo era tan alta como p...more
Saw the movie because I love Simon Pegg movies. I was pleasantly surprised by this book though. There were some pretty outlandish things that went on with the author and I question how this book got published if they were true. Let alone the people he talked about so candidly - it's interesting in that he talks about reputation and yet there were some things revealed in this book that would slightly tarnish said rep. In my opinion anyways. Either way, if you're a total fashionista who's into the...more
Toby Young is an Englishman, a journalist who is intent on making a success of himself in the US, namely New York City. He fails miserably. Not because of his character, but because of the gulf in the culture. Despite appearing to be a fool, Toby is well-educated and explains what and why things went wrong, which they do for him with alarming consistency. He cannot get it 'right', but then again, the picture he paints of social life in NYC is one of men who are 'not quite human' and women who ar...more
Why did I find Toby Young such an annoying twerp. I very nearly didn't finish this book, a very rare occurrence. His obsession with celebrity, parties and tottie just made me cringe but his analysis of the cultural differences between New York and London was very incisive and that is what kept me reading, as it was I read two other books in breaks when I'd had too much of Toby.
This book was sort of a break from the ordinary for me. I normally read plot-driven novels -- Louis L'Amour, Dan Brown, and a whole host of science-fiction and fantasy. I picked this one up on a whim, mostly because they cast Simon Pegg to play the lead role in the movie based on it. I was about a third of the way through, and thoroughly disappointed, when I realized I was reading it all wrong. I was waiting for the plot to pick up; for the author to stop making what seemed like pointless, exten...more
Toby Young's ruminative work on social psychology, popular culture, the workplace hierarchy at Condé Nast in the 90s, and generally being unable to relate with people is a raw nerve, honest, and very British-ly self-effacing story that is VERY different from the 2008 movie.
As the son of Michael Young, who coined the term meritocracy long before his son Toby would come to be, well, sort of sidelined and knocked down by the cultural interpretation of it, Young offers an academic insight into the k...more
As the son of Michael Young, who coined the term meritocracy long before his son Toby would come to be, well, sort of sidelined and knocked down by the cultural interpretation of it, Young offers an academic insight into the k...more
Toby Young lives the saddest existence any human could imagine living. But he makes a few good points about the society that’s so quick to call him a loser. I was a little nervous about this one -- no one I knew seemed to like it that much. I think, however, because of my journalism background, my love for New York, and a little magazine experience that I understood (on some points, all too well) the attitudes and airs of the people Toby dealt with during his American stint. I can see how, if no...more
I dvr'd this movie off of Showtime a while back and finally got around to watching it recently and then finally got around to picking up the book. It was an okay read. A bit dated and the guy was a total douche, but I think that was the point. Anyway, I mean, he wrote a little bit about his background, but for some reason Graydon Carter took an interest in him and it seemed like Guy had Gray's ear all the time, which has got to be a total exaggeration. But then, between the movie and also recent...more
I am teaching a memoir writing class to adults, so I went to the library and picked out a bunch of titles. I have been trained to find and share mentor texts with my students,so they can get ideas on how they want to write. I don't think this book will be my prime mentor text, but it is a quick, funny read and the author is very honest about himself. It is full of gossip, so it is many ways a longer, more literary version of In Style magazine. For those who are fans of the Devil Wears Prada or U...more
This was smart and funny. The inside Vanity Fair stuff is great. The last third of the book falls apart. There was too much of his “oh what a loser I am schtick.” I'm glad he found love but the girl comes across as a snobby twit. The first third was a great take on celebrity culture and New York in particular. The book falls flat when he tries to equate New York with America as a whole. His experience with limousine liberals in Manhattan doesn't give him any insight into how the rest of the coun...more
I wouldn't have ordinarily bought this book in a bookstore or Amazon.com. I was about to finish another book on a weekend trip and was slightly panicked at the prospect of traveling on a bus for hours or staying at a hotel without a book to read. Luckily there was a gringo-owned restaurant-hostel in the town I was staying at in El Salvador, meaning secondhand books in English. Yay! I had seen the movie that the book was based on awhile back, so I knew it would be light, comical reading. Plus, wh...more
Toby Young is basically the Benny Hill of journalism and this snapshot of his five-year run in New York is hilarious. The memoir covers the British journalist's attempt to "take Manhattan by storm" and is just brimming with over-the-top, slapstick, Three Stooges-type behavior on his part. Young seems to be one of those people who has a hard time picking up on social nuances and expectations. Kinda sucks for him, but it makes for very entertaining reading.
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This book was a very light read and not too difficult to get through, interesting enough to keep me reading. Beyond that I can't think of much positive to say. Another British writer (at least this one didn't use a lot of terms that were unfamiliar to me), male, and very opinionated, his biography reflects his experience in a very specific social setting in America in which he, self admittedly, acted like a pompous jerk. In the telling he seems to work through his problems and become a better pe...more
One of the funniest books I have ever read. Toby Young is hilarious in his memoir which details his inabilities to conform to the roles and responsibilities at the prestigious Vanity Fair. Almost everything he does is wrong, yet he manages to stay afloat for an impressive amount of time. Imagine a real-life version of Ron Livingston (Office Space) working at Vanity Fair.
A decent, quick read that becomes less satisfying as you realise how awful a person the author actually is. His moralistic crusading against the journalistic compromises of the staff of Vanity Fair become a little much when the evidence of his own loathsome behaviour expands beyond the definition of a lovable rogue.
Young aspires to write as one who recognises his own weaknesses, but truly seems mostly unaware of how awful he can be. This calls into question the accuracy of his claims, complaint...more
Young aspires to write as one who recognises his own weaknesses, but truly seems mostly unaware of how awful he can be. This calls into question the accuracy of his claims, complaint...more
I gobbled this memoir down like a box of Morden's Russian Mints over Christmas week. Young hops the pond to take up an internship at Graydon Carter's revitalized Vanity Fair, with visions of storming celebrity ramparts a la Spy magazine (Carter's earlier rag). Anyone who's leafed through VF in the last 10 years is assured exactly which direction this story is going to go. Young gets all his signals crossed, grossly misreads the rigid Manhattan/Hollywood class system, offends pretty much everyone...more
Aug 13, 2007
Kirsten
added it
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Anyone locked in a prison cell for 10 years with this book as the sole object in it
What I learned from this book? Don't believe the hype. This was one of the shittest books I've ever read. Toby Young has no conception as to why he can't get a shag and why no-one laughs at his jokes. Want to find out why Toby? Read your own retarded humour-vacuum of a book.
2 likes · like · see review
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Jan 26, 2013
Sian Wadey
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
a-z-of-authors,
autobiographies
This book does not do Toby Young any favours. I'd seen the trailer of the film, but other than having a vague idea of what it was about I pretty much went in blind.
First of all, I don't think I am the target audience for this book. I'm that kind of person that Toby Young describes that is interested (not obsessed) with celebrity culture. The bits I found most interesting were the times he was trying to get into parties and the various encounters with celebrities or people of authority. The bits...more
First of all, I don't think I am the target audience for this book. I'm that kind of person that Toby Young describes that is interested (not obsessed) with celebrity culture. The bits I found most interesting were the times he was trying to get into parties and the various encounters with celebrities or people of authority. The bits...more
With a title like "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People: A Memoir", you'd expect Young to come off as a completely annoying prat that you'd want to stab to death, say, 50 pages into the book. I found myself pleasantly surprised on this front. Young does come off as a clueless and delusional prat with self-destructive tendencies at several points, but his book is surprisingly readable. Unlike, say, Tom Parker Bowles' Year of Eating Dangerously (now there's a prat for you) or the Twilight serie...more
I didn't expect much when I impulse bought this book at a used book store. I recognized Toby Young's name from his appearances as an occasional guest judge on Top Chef, where I didn't like him much but appreciated his shameless bitterness, and I found the book title very clever. When I finally got around to reading the book, though, I was surprised to love it.
The story is a memoir from Young's journey through the New York City magazine publishing world in the mid-1990s. I have little interest in...more
The story is a memoir from Young's journey through the New York City magazine publishing world in the mid-1990s. I have little interest in...more
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Inconsistent, is my one word review of Young's book. At times hilarious; at times tedious. Partly a fascinating glimpse into American culture from an outsider's perspective; partly a repetitive laundry-list of how Brits differ from Americans (as if we didn't already know). Young is amusing, but also obnoxious. You want to like him, but he's an outright jerk. Still, I guess that's what the book is all about -- a 5-year chronicle wherein a full-of-beans British journalist becomes a contributing ed...more
Entertaining, up to a point, but the "silly me" schtick and the constant repetition grate on the nerves after a while. Towards the end he starts inserting all these pretentious footnotes, citing texts like Civilization And Its Discontents, and the general impression is that he had the files from some old university essays and thought he'd bung them in along with everything else. All the self-deprecation and chest-baring can't disguise the fact that this is one smug little man with one big sense...more
This was published some years ago and has also been filmed. It passed me by until a saw a copy in a charity shop and well... £1 is neither here nor there. Took it on holiday to Mallorca and it was excellent poolside reading. Full of amusing anecdotes and witty comments on life as a Brit out of water in the crazy world of publishing in Manhattan in the early noughties. Very insightful too, especially his comments on superstar editor Graydon Carter. Young has since established himself as a success...more
A curious mix of tittle-tattle, gossip and thoughtful historical cultural analysis. It's a fairly crude hybrid of novel and non-fiction, which feels rather like much of it was hastily stitched together from the author's journalistic work. At its best it's moving and almost compelling, albeit too often like a train wreck as you wonder what self-destructive error the hero will make next. The factual passages range from the dull - internal workings of fashion magazines - to the insightful - reflect...more
If you're fascinated by the media culture in New York, you'd probably like this book. It was all about Toby's wild ride as a "writer" for Vanity Fair. I put it in quotes because he says he got paid $60,000 for about 3000 words, making him the highest paid writer (per word) in the history of Vanity Fair.
Toby is, well, original. I thought I've said and done some pretty heinous things at work, but Toby wins. I love the fact that he wasn't actually trying to get fired, and yet, he could write the h...more
Toby is, well, original. I thought I've said and done some pretty heinous things at work, but Toby wins. I love the fact that he wasn't actually trying to get fired, and yet, he could write the h...more
I read this some time ago, but have fond memories of it. Quite humorous! I got quite a few chuckles from the anti-social tendencies of the author, (or, was it the protagonist in the story; I can't remember how autobiographical the book was meant to be). I can remember stealing one of the lines from the book when my aunt ran out of breath telling me how I could get a free $25 gift card for attending some kind of television watching and rating seminar on the other side of the city - I told her, "I...more
It took me quite a while to get properly into the book. It wasn't until near the end, that the book actually became good and surprisingly touching.
The film is very, very loosely based around the plot of the book, (I can't stress that enough!) so if you're reading the book after the film, be warned about a completely different 'plotline'.
Toby starts as this witty, journalistic persona at the start of the book, but by the end, becomes simply human.
A good book for a laugh, a peek into the backstage...more
The film is very, very loosely based around the plot of the book, (I can't stress that enough!) so if you're reading the book after the film, be warned about a completely different 'plotline'.
Toby starts as this witty, journalistic persona at the start of the book, but by the end, becomes simply human.
A good book for a laugh, a peek into the backstage...more
Apr 01, 2009
Christine
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
star-f'ers and David Sedaris or Candace Bushnell fans.
This book = Brit humor meets Sex and the City. Really. It's the true tale of Toby Young trying to make it as a writer in the Big Apple, and in the meantime craves models, hits the hottest bars and restaurants, befriends "Carrie Bradshaw" herself, and enlightens the everyday man about what it's really like around celebrities, socialites, and Conde Nasties.
At times, like anyone would do when telling their own story, Young goes off on a tangent, blithers, and I lose focus. I'd probably give it 2.5...more
At times, like anyone would do when telling their own story, Young goes off on a tangent, blithers, and I lose focus. I'd probably give it 2.5...more
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Toby Daniel Moorsom Young (born 1963) is a British journalist and the author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, the tale of his failed five-year attempt to make it in the U.S. as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine, as well as The Sound of No Hands Clapping, a follow-up about his failure to make it as a Hollywood screenwriter. His obnoxious wit has earned him almost as many enem...more
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“It was journalism at its best: irreverent, mischievous and beholden to no one.”
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