Tag: television personalities united states

Amish Confidential by “Lebanon” Levi Stoltzfus and Ellis Henican

Amish Confidential by “Lebanon” Levi Stoltzfus and Ellis Henican

I wasn’t expecting much from Amish Confidential, a tell-all memoir, by Amish mafia reality television star, Lebanon Levi Stoltzfus. Despite my expectations, it was quite good.

I picked it up because watching The Amish Mafia is one of my guilty pleasures. It is a reality, cultural, crime-syndicate show with horses.

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The Amish, like other insular communities, have plenty to teach the outside world about they live their lives. Levi definitely has the inside scoop, having been raised Old Order Amish, a more conservative branch of the culture.

I loved learning about how the Amish were formed and the historical background of his people. I ate up the bits about Amish marriage ceremonies and the social customs surrounding the party afterwards. Celery, apparently, is huge. Who knew, right?

I wish he had talked more how he fell into the world of “Amish mafia” itself. It’s clear from his narrative that he feels the Amish are taken advantage of because of their religious pacifism. He believes that they desire to deal with potentially criminal matters among themselves rather than going to the authorities. That is the basis of the mafia. For legal reasons, he probably couldn’t be that transparent. But it would have been excellent if he had.

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If you enjoy the television show, you may not like this as much because it lacks some of the moment to moment tension and drama that one gets from watching the show. But, if you go into it with an open mind to learn more about the Amish in general, it certainly accomplishes that.

If you enjoyed Amish Confidential, I’d recommend The Terrorist’s Son: A Story of Choice (a Muslim boy is raised one way but chooses to live another) or License to Pawn: Deals, Steals, and My Life at the Gold & Silver (a memoir by a pawn shop owner who has his own reality television show).

Thanks for reading!

The Andy Cohen Diaries: A Deep Look at a Shallow Year by Andy Cohen

The Andy Cohen Diaries: A Deep Look at a Shallow Year by Andy Cohen

The Andy Cohen Diaries is the type of book that you have to be in the mood to read. It is basically like a book length gossip column, which can sometimes be exactly the kind of fluff that I want to read. Other times though… it is more annoying than amusing.

Andy writes it in a stream of consciousness style- event, event, feeling, event, aside, event, personal thoughts, inside joke, repeat. So, jump into this one if you want a bunch of gossip about the New York scene and Watch What Happens Live.

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I thought Andy’s description of his book was spot on:“Sometimes-like life itself-these chronicles are funny, sometimes dishy, and sometimes even a little sad. And sometimes they are really, really shallow. Because sometimes life is shallow. I understand that and have accepted it. I hope you will too.” pgs 7-8 ebook

Andy’s life is filled with drama, divas, and emotion laden moments both on and off the screen. I enjoyed watching him juggle it all. He offers this advice for handling the more challenging people in your life: “…I told her I was sorry if I offended her. Sometimes, the only option is to say you’re sorry, even if you have no idea what someone is talking about.” pg 11 ebook.

I’ve never watched any of the Real Housewives of (fill in the blank city). So, those gossip bits didn’t mean all that much to me.

However, the parts about Lady Gaga were a different story! : “Then the weirdest cake arrived from Lady Gaga, red velvet cheesecake with white chocolate on top with Lady Gaga Art Pop written on it… the note said “Love, Gaga” in teeny little capitals. It looked like-I don’t know what actually-robot writing?”pg 18 ebook

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I also learned in this book that Andy Cohen makes a cameo in Gaga’s surreal music video, G.U.Y. Who knew?

Andy is from St. Louis, the closest city to my small hometown. So, we had that in common.

Any time he was taking about the weird things that people from St. Louis do, I was nodding my head in sympathy: “Everybody in St. Louis, all they talk about is how great St. Louis is. The hostess lady in the suite asked me if I lived in LA and I said no, I live in New York, and she said to me very earnestly, “Why, may I ask, would you ever leave St. Louis?” pg 38 ebook. Yeah, they do that.

I could go on and on. The Andy Cohen Diaries is just so quotable. Some read alikes: Amish Confidential by “Lebanon” Levi Stoltzfus (tell-all about the Amish Cofidential show and the Amish community) or My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler (hilarious recounting of Chelsea’s various escapades).  Thanks for reading!