October 08, 2011

Chicken Soup for the American Idol Soul

For some reason, Chicken Soup books are a guilty pleasure for me. So when I saw this one, and had been watching the show off and on this season, I thought why not? It was merely average and no "Idol" to be truly found.

The Chicken Soup for the Soul books are usually themed and contain stories that make you feel good, make you think, make you cry, and make you smile. They can be inspirational or just happy. This particular book was filled with ones that revolved around American Idol. There were stories from the contestants, producers, stylists, fans, and a few others. Some of them talk about how American Idol helped them overcome obstacles and achieve their dreams. Others talk about how a particular contestant made the difference in someone's life. And a whole lot of other stories contain happy moments from the show or from watching the show.

These are usually well put together but I found that this one contained a lot of boring stories that really had no overall theme. Some of them I would actually start thinking, why on earth is this in here, did they just need filler? There were some good stories, but unlike most of the Chicken Soup's, in which I cry for at least one story, I wasn't even really moved by any of the ones in this one. The book is formatted the same as the others and its easy to keep track of where you are. There were some potential tear jerker stories in this, but the writing was subpar and so the emotion never really caught hold, which was a shame. The chapters usually have some theme in them (loss, finding yourself, etc.) but this one I couldn't really tell why certain stories were where they were.

As far as Chicken Soup for the Soul book goes, I don't think this is a very good one. Its almost as if they were looking to make a quick buck and threw together whatever they could at the last moment. Stick to the others if you're a fan of the book type.

Chicken Soup for the American Idol Soul
Copyright 2007
277 pages + the usual huge section about contributors in the back

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