Rating: 
Summary: Bitchy and proud of it ...
Review: Finally, somebody is giving a voice to all those difficult women in the world! Having read "Prozac Nation" at least ten times, if not more, I was dying to read Bitch and it did not disappoint me. We all put up with difficult men: those who are moody, unwilling to commit, those who keep their distance for way too long and those who are so intruiging that we can't NOT pay attention. At last there is a voice to all of those women saying, Wait a second, I don't HAVE to get married, I don't HAVE to have children, why slave myself to a man? Wurtzel is funny, she's smart, she's independent and she does as she feels. Between Bitch and Prozac Nation she comments on just about every element of our culture and raises ideas that I had never even thought of. Bitch made me laugh, it made me think, it made me say "Hey you have to read this!" to every single person I spoke to. Wurtzel's witty writing style and blase attitude was one that I've been struggling with for ages and I have finally decided that I have spent too long trying to keep myself in check, and playing the good girl. While cataloguing famous "bad-girls", Wurtzel also points out that being "difficult" IS NOT A BAD THING. In her chapter about Amy Fischer, she brings up the point that by sleeping around and doing as she pleased, Amy was only doing what every other male teenager does, only instead of being a "slut", men are cool. Women who do what they want should not be labeled as a "depressive" or a "drug-addict", but their behavior ennunciated. After all, why should men have all the fun?
Rating: 
Summary: Can't finish it.
Review: I tried to read this book twice and couldn't finish it. It is very bad, and the sentences are long and confusing, and Elizabeth Wurtzel has no direction in the book. Try 'Prozac Nation', but even that is not much better.
Rating:
Summary: I cook for a livin'...
Review: But I read a lot too...and I love difficult/high maintenance/troubled/bad, et al, women...I loved this book.De ol' devilchef gives dis tome a 5 mojo*z review!!!
Rating: 
Summary: A speed-induced salute to the Beautiful Bitch
Review: Elizabeth Wurtzel is a beautiful, thirty-something journalist from a privileged background (including a B.A. from Harvard in 1986). She has been a music critic for The New Yorker and New York Magazine, and has a regular column in the London Guardian. She is also author of Prozac Nation, an autobiographical narrative of how Prozac helped her out of a downward spiral into depression. In her long, rambling introduction, Wurtzel lays out her basic premise, to wit, that the beautiful "bitch" is a vital feminine role model, an essential expression of feminist rage. Though she admits that extreme examples of the Beautiful Bitch (BB) invariably end up as tragic "sex kittens in the slammer," or dead, she believes that ideal BB's are "fabulous women of great mischief," who are excitingly, wickedly dangerous, due to using their beauty shamelessly to enslave men. As such, Delilah from the Bible is Wurtzel's primary BB archetype and rates one of the five sections of the book. The other four sections discuss Amy Fisher, Courtney Love, Hillary Clinton and Nicole Brown Simpson. If you enjoy the sharp, intellectual, stylized writing of New York journalists amped up to a speed-induced extreme, you may greatly enjoy this book for that feature alone. If, on the other hand (as in my case), you find smug, self-satisfied, flashily egocentric voices like Wurtzel's both irritating in their own right and counterproductively overwhelming of the subject matter at hand, Wurtzel's writerly style will not be a plus for you. If, in addition, you don't demand much in terms of substance of opinion pieces, and "witty" cleverness alone is satisfactory for you, you may also enjoy this book on that count. However, if you do appreciate a bit of weight in these sorts of essays, you are out of luck here. (...), all I could ultimately locate as her "point" was the Madison Avenue cliché, "If you've got it, flaunt it." (...), since many autobiographical remarks scattered throughout the book indicate she clearly sees herself as the ultimate BB, a sort of tragic female Byron. Tragic because, though every BB has power, for a while, inevitably, if she isn't killed outright, age steals her beauty, her one source of power. And it is fear of this loss, perhaps, that drives Wurtzel to wonder, in passing, if someday, when she's through doing all the "things" she "has to do," she won't have to fall back on the good girl's dream, building a home and a family. (And, God help her future husband and kids if she does!) Having said all that, I have to admit that there is one redeeming aspect of Bitch--the author's extensive bibliography. Though she may not have much to say worth listening to herself, I have to admit, Wurtzel's read a lot of interesting books.
Rating: 
Summary: Knocked for a loop
Review: This book is knocking me for a loop. It hits so close to home that it agitates me so I can only read a bit at a time. I feel like I've been closed in a box and I want to break out for "MORE MORE MORE!" Elizabeth Wurtzel has been there too. The opening chapter in particular captures this sense of unwelcome restraint bursting at the seams. The writing style is sometimes over the top, and it sort of dances around in a nonlinear way, but this just adds to its agitational effect. This powerful book is a must-read for 30-something women, "rich and spoiled" or not (believe me, I'm neither, not by a long shot), delineating such hard truths that they are sometimes difficult to face head-on. If you don't see yourself in the pages here, and if you don't feel stirred up by what you read here, you are probably already dead inside.
Rating:
Summary: A mind is a terrible thing to waste
Review: And what a waste it is. I had the feeling I was on crystal meth during this painfully meandering and meaningless read. I was on the mark as it turned out from her next disaster. I don't hold much truck with an author who keeps writing "I mean" and other phatic communication devices designed for verbal communication. The pen is truly mightier than the sword - a sword can't bore you to death.
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Summary: Self-justification masking as feminism
Review: I gave this book two stars for its readability; however, its engaging style only made me more annoyed that the book suffered from such an extreme lack of focus. Elizabeth Wurtzel (as she constantly reminds us in every book she's ever written) is attractive, connected, and well-educated. It is clear from even the most unfocused ramblings in "Bitch" that she is also intelligent, insightful, and erudite. It is also clear that the thing she values most about herself is her good looks, which appears to be what she spends most of her life thinking about and obsessing over, like she's in a perpetual state of smugness at having won the genetic lottery. I always get the impression when I read Wurtzel that she is a) totally shallow and self-obsessed, and b) keenly aware that shallowness, obsession with one's own beauty, and openly judging others by their looks isn't "cool", so she has to spend hundreds of pages justifying all the energy she spends thinking about nothing more than herself and how much prettier she is than average girls. The result: "Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women". In the end, this book is nothing more than Wurtzel's attempt to intellectually justify her painfully obvious feelings of superiority over women who are not as attractive as her. As a graduate student that men also flirt with alot, I can honestly say that I find Wurtzel's self-worship both sad and immature. I also can't figure out why she still tries to pull off the whole "I do drugs to ease my self-hatred at being so beautiful and brilliant and alienated" routine - yawn, Ms. Wurtzel, your pose is showing. The bottom line: no matter how many great books she's read herself, she has yet to write one. If she can get over herself and off the speed, maybe someday she will, and I look forward to reading it. Until then, she should stick to concert reviews for Rolling Stone.
Rating:
Summary: I love this book
Review: More more more- there could be more versions of this theme. I loved the book. It is a fun fast read and I learned about alot of women I wouldn't normally see in the light they are portrayed. Good book for a cross country flight. Enjoy!
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Summary: Miss Wurtzel explains why we men love bad girls
Review: In her second book, Elizabeth Wurtzel examines the role and plight of the bad girl through Western history. Feminism hasn't suceded, Miss Wurtzel argues, as long as women have to behave in order to get men.
Miss Wurtzel celebrates the women, for whatever reason, who chose not to behave, to admit to having desires and feel no guilt about fulfilling them.
I have the paperback edition, though I read hardback edition first. I don't understand what all the fuss about her appearing topless on the cover. I liked it. She's very beautiful and talented.
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Summary: Wurtzel for president!
Review: This is a very entertaining and provocative book that proves that Wurtzel does indeed have a brain. A lot of research clearly went into compiling it, and I think she's done a pretty good job of picking women throughout history who have indeed been "difficult" for one reason or another. Her interpretations of the information, rather than the information itself, is sometimes kind of questionable, but I suppose that's artistic license in a book like this. Like another reviewer stated, this book does ramble on a bit, but then again I suppose that Wurtzel's style and she's entitled to it. Overall, a very enjoyable and somewhat thought provoking read that will especially be enjoyed by Wurtzel fans. Avery Z. Conner, author of "Fevers of the Mind".
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