Book Review: I’m Your Biggest Fan by Kate Coyne

So this isn’t technically a book I would normally read. Celebrity culture is a low priority topic for me; I don’t read tabloid magazines (where the hell would I find the time?), and I avoid looking at blogs that focus on famous people. I will state up front that I don’t judge other people who do though, because at least they’re reading…

Therefore,  my review of I’m Your Biggest Fan, Awkward Encounters and Assorted Misadventures in Celebrity Journalism by Kate Coyne may come as a surprise to some. But something that many of you will already know is even if you don’t follow the lives of celebrities, it’s still fascinating to read about them. Who hasn’t gotten sucked into a VH1 special “The Fabulous Life of…”? Which is why I still enjoyed this book; it’s good fun, especially for the summer.

Kate Coyne is currently the Executive Editor of People Magazine, but the book follows her climb to this position from her beginnings as a contributor to the New York Post to an editor at Good Housekeeping. Her career path is one of the most interesting things about her story actually, although her writing is mostly self deprecating, you can tell she must be an extremely hard working and intelligent woman to have gotten where she is. So although this may not be seen as an underlying theme of the book, I really picked up on the feminist undertones of her story.

Coyne takes us along with her as she interviews and socializes with some of the top celebrities in the world: Tom Hanks, J-Lo, and Tom Cruise just to name a few. But she never loses her ‘fan girl’ mentality. Although she works with celebrities each day, she still gets nervous when meeting them, and her awkwardness is great fun to read about. We also learn some very surprising facts, one of them being that Tom Cruise has an extremely good memory!

I’m Your Biggest Fan is a great book to pack along on your next vacation because it’s not very long, and no question there will be others on your trip who want to read it as well so you won’t have to pack it home either. And each chapter reads like its own story, so you can put it down and come back to it whenever you feel like you’re in need of a good chuckle.