Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am a Prince fan from wayyyy back in the day - I saw him on Midnight Special in his thigh-high boots and long coat and was just mesmerized. Have seen him three times in concert and love his music. I love learning about the man behind the music precisely because he IS so enigmatic. I read a snippet of this book in an online magazine and was intrigued and so I bought it. Pretty much wish I hadn't because it was just a jumble of words and it felt like the author was working extra hard to make all the connections he wanted to prove out. Thing is, I agree with this premise - Prince IS an icon, no question. But this book felt like he was pulling way too many disparate pieces together and it really didn't add up. The writing was, in a word, abominable. Just atrocious. Big words thrown in for the sake of having big words in there, whole pages that meandered way the hell off topic (even though I could see what he was trying to do, the execution of same failed big time) - I'm not an English teacher but this whole thing made me want to whip out the red pen and start editing. I found the poor writing took away from what focus Toure intended to bring. What did I learn about Prince that I didn't know before? Not a lot, sadly. And perhaps that's because there's so few he allows in that what does show is all there is he will ALLOW to show. The part about his former lovers spilling the beans? Eww. (Does this make me old? Could be but it just made me feel all oogy. Like, I didn't want to really know that.) Some of it was gossip (albeit sourced gossip) and some was really pointless. The most interesting piece of the book was about how Prince felt "called" to create this music and it flows through him almost to the point where it's become an obsession that he feels he can't stop. The connections between sexuality and spirituality were also interesting and I felt that could have been expanded more because it's truly the two sides of one coin that is Prince. This really could have been an interesting look at how Prince became PRINCE-THE ICON and represented a real shift in music at the same time as a lot of other sea changes were going on. Instead, it felt pieced together with very loose stitching, so poorly written that it became a distraction to me (who actually made it through the entire Twilight series with only a few twitches!) and just a big, jumbly mess. A good editor would have tightened this up and given it a better and more fluid focus. Sorry to slag on Toure - I've not read anything else by him and I'll probably check more out to see if maybe this subject didn't bring out his best. I really wanted to like it.