Celebrity Reads

From Bill O’Reilly to Bob Barker, the year's 15 bestselling memoirs of movie stars, TV personalities, and the rich and famous. Rankings provided by Nielsen BookScan.

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galleries/2009/10/31/celebrity-reads/celebrity-reads---bill-oreilly_ol6ese — by Bill O'Reilly

Atop the ratings in cable news as well as our list, the conservative powerhouse Bill O’Reilly’s Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity continues its strong sales for the second year running. In this hugely popular memoir, O’Reilly goes back to the roots from which his television personality sprouted: “Considering his nightly prayer is to be in everyone's face on every medium other than milk cartons, why this personal book in which he digs back to family, neighborhood, church and school?” asked the New York Post. O’Reilly’s response, "I wanted to tell how it all happened for me, for my beliefs. To tell the journey from a doltish working-class kid in Levittown to a champion bloviator on Fox-TV."
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galleries/2009/10/31/celebrity-reads/celebrity-reads---tori-spelling_svekkk — by Tori Spelling

Although Tori Spelling’s title is the cleverest part of her memoir, the juicy look inside the A-list heiress’ life has been a big hit among readers. Marketed by Spelling as her chance to tell the truth behind the tabloids, the book covers her plastic surgery (yes, she got breast implants), sex on the 90210 set (she won’t name names), and the affair of her mother, Candy Spelling, while her father Aaron Spelling was still alive (“I felt it was necessary to paint the picture of the distance in my family to explain why I was distant”).
Peter Kramer / AP Photo

galleries/2009/10/31/celebrity-reads/celebrity-reads---kathy-griffin_bqmklb — by Kathy Griffin

Titled as an overt plea for acceptance into Oprah’s favorite list, the D-list star’s tell-all memoir recounts her multiple experiences with botched liposuction, being a woman in comedy, and her self-deprecating satisfaction with mediocrity. The spitfire’s characteristically hilarious memoir “catalogs the outrageous redhead’s decades-long struggle to make it in Hollywood, her slow climb to the middle and all the claw marks she left along the way,” writes Time.
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galleries/2009/10/31/celebrity-reads/celebrity-reads---mackenzie-phillips_ipbeh1 — by Mackenzie Phillips

"My father was not a man with boundaries. He was full of love, and he was sick with drugs. I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father,” writes Mackenzie Philips. Her bombshell revelation about her father, The Mama and the Papas singer John Phillips, sent this memoir skyrocketing to the top five of the year, and has reopened the dialogue on a societal taboo.
Virginia Sherwood, NBC / AP Photo

galleries/2009/10/31/celebrity-reads/celebrity-reads---melissa-gilbert_eiu6ks — by Melissa Gilbert

“Half Pint” grows up. Apparently Little House on the Prairie still resonates in American pop culture, if the now-grownup Melissa Gilbert’s strong sales are any indication of the show’s impact. In this tell-all, Gilbert, who played Laura Ingalls on the show for nine years, discusses life behinds the scenes of LHOTP as well as her real-life addiction issues, romance with Michael Landon’s son, sexual escapade with Johnny Depp, and pregnancy with Rob Lowe’s child. The book is “chockablock with juicy tidbits from her point of view,” writes Entertainment Weekly.
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galleries/2009/10/31/celebrity-reads/celebrity-reads---isabel-gillies_slowmy — by Isabel Gillies

Hell hath no fury like a Law & Order actress scorned if Happens Every Day is any indication. Isabel Gillies left her television career to follow her professor husband to an idyllic life with their children in Oberlin, Ohio, until he abruptly left her for another professor. Gillies recounted the tawdry details, from their screaming fights to her attempts to catch his cheating in the act and eventually her life after the split, garnering sympathy (and no doubt vicarious rage) from divorcées everywhere.

galleries/2009/10/31/celebrity-reads/celebrity-reads---paul-newman_hg4qya — by Shawn Levy

A year after his death, Paul Newman’s star still burns bright for legions of fans who have sought out Shawn Levy’s biography. For an actor of his stature, this is surely not the last word on his life, but Levy’s book took a much-publicized look at a supposed extramarital affair on the set of On The Waterfront as well as Newman’s case-of-beer-a-day drinking habits, but Publishers Weekly summed it up as a “glowing assessment of this legend’s career.”

galleries/2009/10/31/celebrity-reads/celebrity-reads---steve-martin_tzc6nt — by Steve Martin

Though he didn’t recycle his film title The Jerk for his memoir, Steven Martin is his own harshest critic in this look at the ups and downs of his standup career, and attempts to create his own genre: He describes the book as a biography rather than an autobiography “because I am writing about someone I used to know.” Categories aside, The New York Times praised Martin as “fearless in charting the awkward stages of his comic breakthrough.”
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galleries/2009/10/31/celebrity-reads/celebrity-reads---candy-spelling_gsp6wd — by Candy Spelling

Seven places behind her daughter, the success of Candy Spelling’s memoir is a bit hard to place. By virtue of marrying a man who created a television dynasty and participating in public feuds with her daughter, Candy Spelling felt that her life merited a memoir. But don't expect her to dish on any family secrets. Entertainment Weekly says, " Candyland is hardly more than an ode to the famous mum’s own sophistication and beauty. In other words, it’s quite boring."
Dr. Billy Ingram, WireImage / Getty Images

galleries/2009/10/31/celebrity-reads/celebrity-reads---walter-cronkite_rcczx9 — by Walter Cronkite

No surprise that Walter Cronkite’s memoir appears on the list this year, a dozen years after it was first published. His death at 92 in July reignited interest in the iconic American newsman. Cronkite’s biography reads like a narrative of American history, from D-Day through the JFK assassination. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote, "the book's chief attraction is in Cronkite's evocation of the America he grew up in, a place that's not here anymore."
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galleries/2009/10/31/celebrity-reads/celebrity-reads---marilyn-monroe_xqmpqs — by Randy J. Taraborrelli

It’s hard to imagine anyone unearthing any shocking, new revelations about Marilyn Monroe, one of the century’s most written-about figures—and according to most reviews, this new biography does not. “Randy Taraborrelli has the track record of a hack biographer so full of chutzpah that he can consider delivering the ‘secret’ life of a wretched woman whose life and death have already been ground down to make so much stale bread,” says The Globe and Mail. “Her story is inexpressibly sad,” says the The Washington Post of its retelling in these 560 epic pages. “And even in the hands of one as inept as Taraborrelli, it retains its power.” Yet, somehow just having her name in the title is enough to put this book in the top 15 of the year.

galleries/2009/10/31/celebrity-reads/celebrity-reads---pattison_l7uegs — by Paul Stenning

Twilight star Robert Pattinson’s life is bringing up the rear due to numerology. Firstly, though the character for whom he is best known is an immortal vampire, the actor is a mere 23 years old. Secondly, the less than 100-page biography consists of 75 full-color photographs and very few words. The Londoner’s light sparkled brightly after starring in the young adult saga, making him an icon to millions of screaming tweens. But his teen idol status is unlikely to last past this ghoulish fad.

galleries/2009/10/31/celebrity-reads/celebrity-reads---bob-barker_bpc8r9 — by Bob Barker

For 50 years Bob Barker gave away millions as host of The Price Is Right and entertained an entire generation of stay-at-home moms. But "[t]he first time I interviewed an attractive young lady and I realized that her tongue was pierced, I knew that time had passed me by," Barker writes. Though he finally bowed out of the spotlight, the octogenarian maintains the distinction of being the oldest television host in history.
Matt Sayles / AP Photo

galleries/2009/10/31/celebrity-reads/celebrity-reads---mary-tyler-moore_era4ra — by Mary Tyler Moore

Ladies of the '70s may have been under the impression that Mary Richards of The Mary Tyler Moore show was perfect—but the actress who played her shows she’s not in her memoir. The candid detailing of Moore’s struggle with (oh yeah) Type 1 diabetes makes light of a disease that afflicts over 20 million Americans. “With admirable honesty and sardonic humor, Moore exposes her failings,” says Publishers Weekly. “It's a credit to the book's bouncy tone that even the detailed appendix is readable.” Fran Drescher’s Cancer Schmancer may have taken a similar approach, but fell short of our list.
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galleries/2009/10/31/celebrity-reads/celebrity-reads---brooke-astor-book_uxvkwp — by Meryl Gordon

All of the media attention for the biggest trial of the year helped sneak Gordon’s biography onto our list. Gordon recounts the lurid events leading up to the indictment of Tony Marshall, the only child of late legendary philanthropist Brooke Astor, who was accused of misusing his mother’s hefty fortune by altering Astor’s will before her death. Sad as it may be, the juice factor is undeniable. “If the tabloids are your morning cup of tea, this is your book,” suggests The New York Times. “Gordon is generally meticulous and evenhanded: Perhaps she felt it wasn’t her job to capture the sort of shadings and nuances a novelist would have drawn on. Still, she could have applied at least a dab of Edith Wharton’s polish.”

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