Thank God My Friend's Book Doesn't Suck: 'The Last of the Live Nude Girls'

Obviously, I dig a sex work memoir. So I was psyched when my friend Sheila McClear sent me a galley of her new memoir recounting her previous career in the Time Square peep show scene, "The Last of the Live Nude Girls." But I was also a little nervous, because, as one must ask oneself when many of your friends begin to write books, WHAT IF IT SUCKS?

This hasn't actually happened to me yet, but I guess my working strategy would be the same as when seeing a bad play starring your actor friend: Pick a small detail you found marginally pleasant and compliment-bomb the hell out of it. "The sets! THE SETS WERE AMAAAAAAZING!"

Luckily, Sheila's book does not suck, or I obviously wouldn't be writing about it here because I don't push the suck on you. It's quirky, weird, funny, smart and sad, and it offers a window (not the kind with a naked girl behind it) into a part of seedy, freaky New York not many get to know intimately.

And reading it made me want to know her better, because while I called us friends before, we're really more like aquaintances and I want to be friends.

So read it! If you like books about ladies taking their clothes off for money at all, this is a good one of those.

I think I should also disclose here that every few years I try to sell a book so unsuccessfully that I suspect those who actually complete the task to be in possession of some kind of voodoo. It's hard as hell!

You have to get an agent (I've had two), then you have to write this huge, stupid book proposal that's like 20 pages long and includes outlines of all your chapters and target market and PR stuff ... I know some people who have been working on them for years.

Then you finish the thing and you take meetings with publishing companies who love you love you love you love you and then PS: don't want to buy your book.

The whole thing is pretty disheartening, and I used to get really resentful and jealous of my friends who have successfully published, until I accepted the fact that perhaps I am just not a book type of girl. Perhaps, instead, I am a born blogger, with just enough patience to entertain you in 300-800 word pops. I am the Bagel Bites of writers.

So now, when I write something that elicits emails from lit agents that say, "Have you ever thought about writing a book???" I'm just like "PSAH" and go back to posting pictures of stomach on the Internet.

But I love books, and I love Sheila's book, so I'm very glad that she has more discipline and dedication than me. And also sorry that I made a review of her book all about me. BUY IT! And tell me your favorite sex work memoirs in the comments.