Get Real!: The Untold Story: Sexy, Scary, Scandalous World of Reality TV! by Phoenix Books Title: Get Real!: The Untold Story: Sexy, Scary, Scandalous World of Reality TV!

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Customer Reviews:
Get Real!: The Untold Story: Sexy, Scary, Scandalous World of Reality TV! by Phoenix Books

Sorry Mike, It's a Snoozer

Like a lot of other reviewers here, I'm a Stern fan and bought this book on Howard's recommendation. I'm a pop culture junkie and was looking forward to getting the inside scoop on the reality genre, but the majority of the book was rehashed gossip items from the last several years. Also disappointing was the presence of many factual errors and misspellings, which made me wonder if Mike even showed this to an editor/fact checker.
Get Real!: The Untold Story: Sexy, Scary, Scandalous World of Reality TV! by Phoenix Books

Real World discrepency

I have not actually read the book yet, but am looking forward to it. A few members have been mentioning about the "Real World" mistake. Maybe he meant Road Rules or Real World/Road Rules Challenge. That's all that I can think of. I agree that this mistake should have been caught! Oh well.
Get Real!: The Untold Story: Sexy, Scary, Scandalous World of Reality TV! by Phoenix Books

If You've Followed Reality TV...

If you have followed reality TV, this is a great book. I am also a big Howard Stern Fan and a Mike Walker fan so I loved this book. It's a quick read, but lots of interesting things and behind the scenes on reality TV both the good and the bad. A nice gift for someone who is a fan as well.
Get Real!: The Untold Story: Sexy, Scary, Scandalous World of Reality TV! by Phoenix Books

A Very Enjoyable Read

Although I have rarely read Mike Walker's regular gossip column, I love this book, and he seems to have the dirt on everyone. The book is large in size with loosely spaced type, and Mike's fun and witty writing style will keep you interested throughout each chapter.

The only reason I am giving it four stars instead of five is because, as one other reviewer noted, Mike totally blew it on 'The Real World', describing the MTV series as having "Pioneered the concept of competition. Contestants battled each other in an elimination contest and were booted off the show, one by one, until only the winner remained." I think Mike was describing 'Big Brother', not 'The Real World'.

But don't let that mistake keep you from buying this book. If you're a fan of reality TV or if you have any interest in what goes on behind the scenes in getting these shows produced, the good and the bad, the down and dirty, there is no better source of information than Mike Walker.
Get Real!: The Untold Story: Sexy, Scary, Scandalous World of Reality TV! by Phoenix Books

Very Good, BUT

I am a huge fan of reality television and also a huge fan of Howard Stern. I bought the book directly as a result from hearing Mike plug the book on the Stern show. I thought it was a great book. I read it in 2 sittings and had trouble putting it down. This would be a five star review, BUT it gets a star reduced from the score because early in the book Mike explains that on MTV's The Real World people get voted off and the last person standing wins.........HUH??? Is there a different Real World on MTV that I have never seen? That's just inexcusable for somebody writing a tell-all book on reality television. How did this misinformation get by his editors also? Shame, shame Mike. It's a great read, but I couldn't get this huge mistake out of my head while reading the rest of the book. How can we trust that Mike's other facts are correct when this one is blatantly WRONG. So I give it 4 stars.
Get Real!: The Untold Story: Sexy, Scary, Scandalous World of Reality TV! by Phoenix Books

Product Description

A riveting expose of reality TV that reveals for the first time why it has exploded into a phenomenon that dominates network television by #1 New York Times best-selling author and National Enquirer legend Mike Walker. The real lowdown on all the "heroes" and "villains" of the genre - from Richard Hatch to Simon Cowell to Paris Hilton.

Delicious Library 2 released

Ars Technica: “DL2 brings some pretty significant new features and a freshly updated UI. At the top of the list is the ability to catalog far more than just media like DVDs and books; users can now keep track of their gadgets, toys, tools, and just about anything else that Amazon carries. Speaking of media, though, DL2 now also catalogs your entire iTunes library, including music, movies, TV shows, and even audiobooks.”

More awesome software from the Pacific Northwest. ;)

Congrats to Wil! And to Lucas and Mike, of course, even though they’re not still Monsters.


Tue, 27 May 2008 04:31:30 GMT

Third Edition of Cocoa Programming Available

Theocacao: “The first edition is the one I used to learn Cocoa (back when it was one of maybe two books on the topic), and I remember being struck by how well written it was.”

Like Scott, I learned Cocoa from the first edition. When I recommend Mac programming books, this is the one I recommend first.


Wed, 21 May 2008 16:53:32 GMT

Comic Life Magiq
Macworld: “The original Comic Life took your photos and let you put them into panels that looked like comic books, complete with captions, dialog bubbles and other effects. Comic Life Magiq builds on that functionality with pre-built templates, ‘props,’ balloons and spraycans to help you tell a story using your own pictures.”

Sounds awesome — congrats to our pals at Plasq!
Thu, 08 May 2008 17:05:03 GMT

New Apple-related books
CARS: “While other book series by other ‘authors’ attempt to ‘inform’ you about ‘features’ and ‘ways’ you can use software or hardware ‘products,’ the Take Control of the Missing Manual for Dummies books will encourage you to let your id run amok through a vast technological landscape formed by people who actually do something for a living instead of living in their parents’ basement like you do.”
Thu, 04 Oct 2007 05:22:27 GMT

Mac OS X Technology Guide to Automator by Ben Waldie
The SpiderWorks folks have published a new book on using and developing for Automator on Tiger.
Mon, 02 May 2005 02:51:11 GMT

New Learn C on the Mac book
MacCentral: Mark’s ‘Learn C on the Mac’ updated for OS X: “SpiderWorks LLC on Wednesday announced the publication of an e-book version of Dave Mark’s seminal ‘Learn C on the Macintosh,’ now updated for Mac OS X.”

We at Ranchero learned C from an earlier version of Learn C on the Macintosh. (In fact, we have a small collection of well-thumbed Dave Mark books.)
Thu, 10 Feb 2005 02:35:15 GMT

Serialized eBooks via RSS
Russell Beattie: “Many of us are too busy to read classic books out there, instead choosing ‘page turners’ or books that are more applicable to our every day lives (like a some new marketing book). But we do have time to zip through our aggregator daily, right? So by taking a 500 page novel and distributing it, a few pages at a time, via RSS, we could read a new book in a month or so without even trying.”
Sat, 15 Jan 2005 01:36:01 GMT

‘Building Cocoa Applications’ book released
MacCentral reports on O’Reilly’s new book ‘Building Cocoa Applications’ by Michael Mahoney and Simson Garfinkel. I haven’t read the entire book yet, but so far it appears to be more comprehensive than Aaron Hillegass’s book (a book I like very much). How the two books compare otherwise I can’t say yet.
Tue, 04 Jun 2002 16:00:56 GMT

From Woeful to Wow! - 6 Steps to a Stunning Site
WebmasterBase: “Absolutely never let a user (or users) have the power to defame your site. Forms of this include guest books with undeletable entries, and other similar not-so-bright ideas. One of my favorites is the ‘Vote Me off the Net’ polls, where users may rate a site from, say, 1-5.”
Sat, 13 Apr 2002 18:16:43 GMT

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