Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe

Goodreads Summary:

A teen idol at fifteen, an international icon and founder of the Brat Pack at twenty, and one of Hollywood's top stars to this day, Rob Lowe chronicles his experiences as a painfully misunderstood child actor in Ohio uprooted to the wild counterculture of mid-seventies Malibu, where he embarked on his unrelenting pursuit of a career in Hollywood.

The Outsiders placed Lowe at the birth of the modern youth movement in the entertainment industry. During his time on The West Wing, he witnessed the surreal nexus of show business and politics both on the set and in the actual White House. And in between are deft and humorous stories of the wild excesses that marked the eighties, leading to his quest for family and sobriety.

Never mean-spirited or salacious, Lowe delivers unexpected glimpses into his successes, disappointments, relationships, and one-of-a-kind encounters with people who shaped our world over the last twenty-five years. These stories are as entertaining as they are unforgettable.

My Thoughts:

I have a crush on Rob Lowe. Not the Brat Pack Rob Lowe but the West Wing Rob Lowe. Now I also have a little bit of a crush on the real Rob Lowe.

He is honest, and in some ways, raw in his telling of his stories. You really get a sense of the man while oddly you still feel like there is something more to learn about and from Rob Lowe. Well written, entertaining, and thought provoking. An all around good read, well done Rob Lowe.

At no point did I feel like his stories were name dropping stories so much as someone navigating a world that is both just like mine and entirely different than mine. Reading this book humanized Rob Lowe for me and made me respect him. I have always liked the way he looked and acted in the West Wing, but now I just like him as a person. I think that is actually quite hard for the celebrity folk to achieve, expression of being normal people while owning the ways that they are different and their experiences are rather rarefied.

Overall a great read. I would recommend this book to fans of Rob Lowe and fans of biography. 

While writing this review I was listening to Miles Davis.