From The Huffington Post:
For any struggling author who can’t get a book deal, there’s something particularly galling about self-admitted semi-literate celebrities scoring huge advances for ghostwritten novels and memoirs. Sure, some turn out to be good; others, while not particularly literary, at least offer a compelling glimpse into the mind and life of a popular personality.
Often, however, even the celebs themselves seem aware of their shortcomings. Many of them reportedly kept their works under wraps until numerous friends and associates urged them to publish (I’m sure an entirely unbiased wave of support for artistic genius). Macaulay Culkin published a memoir/poetry/comic book hodgepodge for which he makes repeated apologies in the introduction, saying, “I am not a writer. I couldn’t possibly be a writer”; “Writing could not be my calling after the mess I’ve made of all this”; “I’m no writer. This is not my calling.”
. . . .
In celebration of highly questionable celebrity books, and their courage in publishing them, here are 18 of the most side-eyeable books authored by the famous, including an eminently painful passage from each:
Rebels: City of Indra by Kylie and Kendall Jenner
Kylie and Kendall totally wrote this sci-fi book. (Let’s just say they did, because otherwise their poor ghostwriter will be saddled with the blame for this dud.) A tale of haves and have-nots, it’s a dystopia set in a bifurcated society — half a shining city above, the other half a desolate underworld. Maybe not the young Jenners’ savviest move to draw attention to a world in which some are undeservedly given far more than others.
Holy Cow by David Duchovny
Duchovny studied English at Princeton and Yale before he was ever on “The X-Files,” so his debut novel didn’t lack for ambition and complexity. Still, a convoluted parable of talking farm animals, industrial meat farming and Israeli-Palestinian politics might not have been the best idea.
Link to the rest at The Huffington Post
The OP doesn’t consider that celebrity books, good, bad, or indiferent are all about monetizing their “Q factor”. Literary merit rarely matters.
One of the several things that make this article itself cringeworthy is that it’s at HuffPo, notorious for paying its writers with “exposure.”
And why no political tell-alls? Or children’s books rejected by the purported target audience of children as “too dumb”?