Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
About what I expected from an unauthorized biography..., March 24, 2000
By A Customer
First of all, let me state that I am a hard-core Ani DiFranco fan. As such, there was very little new or interesting information in this book for me. Its main strength is as a compendium of mass media interviews spanning Ani's career. The author relies heavily on interviews for the biographical elements of the book. As a literature review of published interviews, this is pretty complete. Unfortunately, it doesn't add much to the information that's already out there. The next part of the book discusses some of the controversies that have roiled the often-vehement fan community. For this portion, the author relies on interviews although it is unclear how these people were selected for inclusion. Finally, the author provides a song-by-song discography of everything Ani has ever commercially released. While mostly descriptive (quoting lyrics and describing the instrumentation and arrangements) the author does venture into some interpretation of the songs. This is where this book is at its least useful-- many of the interpretations are shallow and obvious, some are downright incorrect. Throughout the book, I found myself thinking this must have made a nice, thorough research paper for a women's studies or pop culture seminar, but it doesn't have the content or quality of writing to warrant serious attention.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
From a true Ani lover, August 20, 2000
I was very excited to just see a book about Ani on the book shelf at my local feminist bookstore. So of course i bought the book in hopes of finding this incredible autobiography on ani and/or her work...well, what i found was a book by what seemed to be a man that just wanted to write a book and used Ani as his focal point. In his introduction he claims he's going to tell us his interprations of Ani's songs in comparison as to what's going on in her life at the time and in society as a whole, at the time. He does this, but very poorly. I don't know how one can write a book like this without even consulting with Ani herself or at least someone close to her, and god knows, the writers that he gets most of his quotes from are not at all close to ani and in most cases know very little about her. I was disappointed in the whole book (other then the wonderful picture...what i could have seen online) and can see why Ani wouldn't like it either. This man knows nothing about her and states that within the first 2 pages of the book.
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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
well, I'm sure he meant well..., July 26, 2000
I was going to give this book 3 stars until I read in several reviews that Ani didn't approve of it being published. I was unaware of this, but, now I know. When I bought this book, I did not know much about Ani or her music. I had only heard a few of her albums, and knew almost nothing about her life. Now, after having finished the book and noticing many errors along the way (he called "Names And Dates And Times", "Names And Dates And Places", and called Alanis Morisettes song "Ironic", "Like Rain", as just a few examples) I am now wondering how much of that information was actually accurate. Needless to say, I didn't appreciate the fact that fans were categorized into two neat piles. I am sure many, if not most, Ani fans don't fit into either category (I certainly don't). We, as people, are more complex than a few pages can define. Also, most of the book consisted of an album-by-album, song-by-song "interpretation" of Ani's music. Ani has said herself that she is happiest when her music is interpreted at all diferent angles, and his generalizations about her beautiful and complex songs are not appreciated in my corner. I get so much more, both emotionally and intellectually, out of her songs than a few highly generalized paragraphs can describe. One thing, though, that I can give Mr. Quirino, is that he at least tried. Next time, he should try a little harder.
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