Books. I love how they can take you somewhere you've never been before, or give you a new perspective on what's familiar. For example, I recently finished a book about Elizabeth Taylor that took me back to the 1960s and her lusty, boozing, brawling jetset life with Richard Burton. Now I'm reading Then We Came to the End, a book set in an advertising agency I worked at in the 1990s, and that's filled with characters based on people I knew. The books couldn't be more different, but they both deliver insight and escape and enjoyment.
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
August Happiness Challenge 2010 -- Day 3
Books. I love how they can take you somewhere you've never been before, or give you a new perspective on what's familiar. For example, I recently finished a book about Elizabeth Taylor that took me back to the 1960s and her lusty, boozing, brawling jetset life with Richard Burton. Now I'm reading Then We Came to the End, a book set in an advertising agency I worked at in the 1990s, and that's filled with characters based on people I knew. The books couldn't be more different, but they both deliver insight and escape and enjoyment.
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Oooh, a book that's close to home! Are you a character?
ReplyDeleteI agree, books make me very happy.
This takes place after I left and I never met the author. But I was gratified to see that The Celebrity Death Pool that *I* introduced (and won once) was featured. You like to think that you left a legacy behind.
ReplyDeleteReading a book about a subject/place that I know well would have been such a surreal moment.
ReplyDeleteWOAH - back up the bus. You knew some of the people the characters were based on? I had no idea this book was based on any true people - I just thought it was a very embellished mixture of lots of random personalities. I really enjoyed that book. It wasn't laugh out loud funny as I had expected - lots of deep stuff going on. But I will never look at an office chair the same way again - that was hysterical. I need to know which characters you knew and your thoughts of their portrayal!!!!
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I am the one who introduced The Death Pool and was the first-ever winner. The fact that it's still going on, 15 years later, makes me happy -- I have left a legacy in this industry! Lynn Mason, the head of the creative dept., was obviously based on a really great woman named Yvonne (who is still alive and well) but managed to travel a few degrees above the slime of that agency. And it really was one of the least reputable places I've ever worked. And Larry was based on ... Larry. Swap out the Cubs cap for the Sox and that was dead on. And I doubt the affair, but the idiosyncracies are spot on. While I never worked with Old Brizz there, I have since and that portrayal is pretty accurate (except that he's about 50 and alive, instead of almost 70 and dead).
ReplyDeleteThe agency is now called DraftFCB. Here's a post I wrote about what a delight it was to work there:
onegalsmusings.blogspot.com/2006/12/choo-choo-here-comes-karma-train.html