Britney: Inside The Dream looks like it should be really awful (judging by its Amazon page), but it’s actually really good. Have you ever noticed that every public story almost immediately becomes insanely complicated? Like, I understand that Bill had sex with Lewinsky. But why was there a perjury charge involved? Why was the grand jury impaneled? Why did Linda Tripp wear a wire on Lewinsky? And, sure, you can research them on the internet, but every search leads you furthe

r down the rabbit hole. Like, the Lewinsky scandal could not have happened without Whitewater, because that’s the excuse for the independent prosecutor. But then Paula Jones is mixed in there somewhere. And what was Whitewater about, anyway?

And even controversies that are extremely minor are just as complicated! I think it’s probably just because life is pretty complicated. If you have a thousand newspapers and news shows covering something 24/7 for years, then they’re going to attack it from every angle. So it’s nice to just have a book that tells me what happened.

It’s also snappily written and has an eye for detail and attempts some kind of psychological insight (though it does so in the trashiest manner possible: the author sits down with a celebrity psychoanalyst and she does an armchair diagnosis of Britney’s issues).

And as for why I am reading this book?

I just wanted to, okay? Gosh, leave me alone.

(On a sidenote, I am pretty sure that Britney Spears’ first album was the first CD I ever bought–I got it at a bazaar in India =)

(On a second sidenote, I am surprised: there are not that many books out there about Britney)