I absolutely love collections of essays and memoirs where people write about the pieces of pop culture that were important to them growing up and made a huge impact on their life. In Tacky Rax King covers things that are seen as low culture or for people who have “bad taste.” This isn’t a snarky book making fun of these things and it isn’t overly intellectual, trying to analyze them as pieces of high art.

Tacky isn’t just a book of essays looking at pop culture, it’s heavily influenced by King’s own life and experiences with the pieces of pop culture that she’s covering. The essay about America’s Next Top Model is more about King’s best friend growing up and the magic of friendship between girls/women than it is about the show itself. Similarly the Jersey Shore essay is about her relationship with her father and their time watching the show together. I found all the personal touches and how she was able to weave her own story in with writing more broadly about the essay topics to be really moving. But I can see how readers who went into the book only wanting the pop culture talk & analysis might be let down by how much of the essays are focused on King’s life.

I didn’t start reading this collection thinking that essays about The Cheesecake Factory or Guy Fieri would make me cry, but here we are. This book just hit all the right notes for me.

A wannabe version of what The Anthropocene Reviewed already is but from the lens of adulthood and the various excursions that come with it, Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer falls short of what the title claims it should be. Readers follow this periodical of Rax King’s personal woes and how “tacky” some of her favorite things are as well as how they relate to what she was going through in a certain time. Each essay isn’t so much about the thing itself, but about the way it makes you [honestly, just Rax] feel. King is obviously sex positive, and while there are no issues there, it should be mentioned that nearly every essay has to do with her misadventures into dating and capital-L Love. An opinion piece that could have done without some of the opinion and more of how the topics are tacky culture wise. I give Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer three stars.

Okay, I just have to say that this author pulled me in and kept me there with her first chapter about her obsession with Crred as a kid. And I’m not going to lie, I had to immediately go and watch creed music videos and relive the old days.
I’m a sucker for a good memoir and this was perfect and beautiful, slow clap for the author!

Rax King has elbowed into the world of book publication with a collection of essays that poke fun at the ‘worst our culture has to offer’ while holding a mirror up to some striking and painful truths about relationships, sexuality, commitment, death, and the difficulty of communicating love in an increasingly complicated world. But this mirror does best when it is masking the complicated nature of what makes life so complicated through the junk lenses of Sex and the City, Guy Fieri, Creed, Hot Topic and the American Shopping Mall, Jersey Shore, The Sims, and many more shout outs to pop culture kitsch. King’s voice swings from tragic, to sultry, to cute, optimistic, and everything in between as we stand beside her for some of the most important and dark moments of her life. The weight of her experience becomes disarmed in this way, and we feel like we are listening to that friend in high school that has no bones about letting it all spill out while she chain smokes and sips from the endless nips at the bottom of her handbag (if you’d call that old basmati rice thing a handbag).

My favorite essays of the collection were easily “It’s Time To Let Meatloaf Into Your Embarassing Little Heart” and her James Beard Award winning “Love, Peace, and Taco Grease.” King has her hand on the pulse of those of us who can’t seem to stare a tragedy in our life down without a good thrift store TV-VCR night and too-soon gallows humor that give those around us some pause about whether to laugh or not. Her essays have a heft to the prose that holds them up by offering her strength in sharing the heavy themes s we walk through the aisles of a dead Blockbuster video. Bad things happen, and there’s some real garbage out there that we love to listen to and read and watch when we make it through the other side. That old saw goes, ‘life is what happens when you’re making other plans.’ I think Rax King’s Tacky is a great collection about how life is going to happen to you the way it’s going to happen no matter how hard you try and how bad you want to make it work differently...but while it’s happening, you’re kidding yourself if you don’t think about that yellow mayo sauce escaping from the corners of Fieri’s maw as he bathes in the sweaty meat heaven of flavortown.

An excellent collection from the kitsch punk writer nonpareil. Look for it when it hits bookshelves on November 2, 2021 from Vintage.

i’m giving this three stars, which is extremely generous. my initial inclination was to give this two, but i did see my younger self reflected in some of the essays in this book, even though i didn’t particularly care for them.

the title of this book is misleading-it’s not a book of essays about culture but personal essays using pop culture as a lens for talking about personal experiences. the few essays that i liked-the ones about Creed, Meat Loaf, and the Cheesecake Factory-were good specifically because they focused more on pop culture phenomena and less on the author’s relationship with men, which is what this book is really about.

you know that time in your life when you think the most interesting thing about yourself is how much sex you’re having, who you’re having it with, and how you’re having it? now imagine that you’ve reached your 30s and still believe that and somehow got a book deal-that’s what this book is about, in a nutshell. these essays may be entertaining and/or insightful for the writer’s friends or therapist, but for a general audience they come across as shallow and self-absorbed. things that make for viral tweets don’t necessarily lend themselves to an essay.

i received a free ARC of this book from NetGalley.

Funny, hilarious, serious, sad, wild, mild, outrageous, melancholy, happy. Words I associate with "Tacky." Seems like a run of emotions that goes deep, a run that also goes the other way, starting with happy, melancholy...Many thanks to NetGalley and Vintage for the ARC and all the best to Rax King. Five is the highest I can rate it here, and "Tacky" gets my five, though it's really a 10 or more.

I think my frustration with this book comes from a case of false advertising. From the cover and blurb, I was expecting something way more generalized, a piece of nonfiction that incorporated both psychology and history to talk about the enduring legacy of (tacky) American pop culture.

And… that’s not really what this is. Does the book talk about pop culture? Yeah, but the content leans soooo personal that I might even categorize it as pseudo-memoir. In particular, King spends an inordinate amount of time on her romantic relationships with men, including tons of details on her sex life. I don’t mind this for a chapter or two, but EVERY chapter seems to circle back on a different sexual relationship, whether the man be a tween, a movie star, or a married man she’s having an affair with! It got old, quick.

You can combine this complaint with the fact that some chapters hit much harder than others. I’ve never listened to Creed or Meat Loaf, never watched Degrassi, never shopped at Hot Topic, never played the Sims. This makes it difficult to relate / care about those chapters. I did enjoy the Jersey Shore chapter, and the one on Cheesecake Factory.

I’m giving this two stars (and a very generous two) because I like to reserve my 1-stars for books I completely and utterly loathe, but would never recommend this book to a friend.

I voluntarily obtained a digital version of this book free from Netgalley and Knopf in exchange for an honest review.

"Tacky" by Rax King is a celebration of all things low culture. The author waxes poetic about her continuing love for the band Creed, discusses how she bonded with her dad over their mutual appreciation of MTV's "Jersey Shore," the catty girl fights on "America's Next Top Model," and how she definitely relates to Samantha more than any other character on "Sex and the City." She also shares her thoughts regarding shopping malls, frosted lip gloss (as seen in '90s and '00s teen rom-com movies), the store Hot Topic, and even Guy Fieri.

I was more interested in the author's thoughts on culture/society than her sharing of her sexual experiences (and by that I mean SO MUCH SHARING). It was just unexpected, I suppose, though I probably wouldn't have picked up the book had I known that before reading it. However, there was one extremely poignant paragraph about how being loud is a way for women to take up space in society, and that alone made reading the book worth it.

Overall, I liked the ideas but thought the oversharing (SO MUCH OVERSHARING) of her sex life was unnecessary, especially when related to some of the topics.

Tacky is a fun memoir for those who grew up in the 90s and came of age in the 2000s. Rax King writes a collection of essays connecting nostalgic pop culture and how it connects to her own life. This is a memoir that will have you laughing out loud, nodding along in agreement, and feeling for the author at the more touching, emotional moments. But mainly it had my laughing and relating to the author. This truly is for those who grew up in the 90s or if you didn't and want to know the pop culture milestones you missed out on, this is one to check out!

I adored this book. Rax King's sense of narrative is as compelling as it is tangled, and the snarled mass of emotions brought out the colors of humanity.

An entertaining collection of short essays about some of our most guilty pleasures (and displeasures). I enjoyed the author's voice, and found myself both laughing and sympathetically hurting during the various stories.

While I enjoyed a few "Love Letters" to Pop Culture circa the 2000s, many of the writing/experiences were lost in translation because I didn't have the same upbringing or experiences, so it was hard to see past the "tackiness" of some things. The way she feels about Creed is the same way I feel about Nickelback (I wrote it for prosperity now). But most of the time, the "love letters" felt more like diatribes to air dirty laundry or come clean but throwing in pop culture to make it worthwhile. I don't know, but the author's voice bugged more from 50 percent on. I enjoyed the first half more than I enjoyed the second.

I received an ARC from Netgalley and Vintage.

I'm only a few years older than King, so I appreciated most of the pop culture meditations that form the backbone of this collection. Some of them weren't as engaging to me, particularly towards the end (some seemed a bit repetitive in theme, if not overall topic); but overall this is a solid collection. I particularly appreciated King's discussion of Jersey Shore paired with her relationship with her father. I do wish she'd discussed race and privilege a bit more, though, particularly considering her focus on ANTM and STC...

Thank you to Knopf Doubleday and NetGalley for an ARC of Tacky!

Don't get me wrong, I love me some essays. However, I did not love me any of these essays. The pieces were pretty hit or miss, and overall just didn't do it for me. There were definitely some standouts (Ode to Warm Vanilla Sugar and Vignettes from Hot Topic) that I actually liked and they showcased the writer's humorous storytelling abilities. But the rest fell short, always trying too hard to be edgy or sexy or messy or hit the spot for Millennial nostalgia.

If you feel so inclined as to read this book, don't. Read some Cazzie David or Samantha Irby, or go watch paint dry.

The author has written a funny at times memoir which will definitely take readers back to the culture of the 90s. While I was probably a bit older than the intended audience, I could relate.

I read this in a day. I am not a 28 year old woman from New York(I was born in the Bronx) but I do love tacky stuff and through I’m generations removed from Ms. King, I really enjoyed this series of essays on the tacky. Not just about the tacky but how the tacky defined /influenced her during certain periods of her life. Never have I read a book or essays about the intersection on tacky(not trashy mind you) and the internal life. Neither have you. Read and enjoy!

Essay collections are usually very hit or miss for me, and whooo boy, is "Tacky" a hit.

Rax King's essay collection kicks off with a very divisive hot take: Creed is good. Whether or not I agree with this, it's absolutely the kind of searing debate I'd get deeply invested in on Twitter or LiveJournal. This was an early sign of how well the text agreed with me, mirroring the giddiness and vaguely embarrassed delight I experienced watching the millennial-geared PEN15 on Hulu. I recognized myself--the media that made me who I am--in nearly all of King's essays.

Her voice was equally sophisticated and (I mean this in the best possible way) stupid. Her candor reminds me of the trivial yet deeply important pop culture arguments I regularly have with close friends. It makes you feel connected, like the story is shared especially for you. King not only manages to strike this delicate balance early on, but she maintains it in each essay. The chapters are packed with honest recollections of the impact (mostly 2000s-ish) media had on her along with deeply personal stories of finding herself through changing relationships, family dynamics, and sexual experiences. She shares the media we all experienced while examining the deeper influence it had on her present-day personhood. Come for the laughs, stay for the "oofs."

This was an absolute joy to read. I cannot recommend it enough. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an advanced copy for review.

Tacky is about how pop culture can imprint on our lives and shape our experiences; As a child of the 90's much of these essays felt like they were calling me on my own tacky past with humor and only slight shame. From Hot Topic to Brown Sugar Vanilla body spray Rax King summed up my pre-teens better than I could have. King has a wonderful command of the written word, spinning prose that provokes all types of emotions and make an impact that will be felt deeper than you may expect.

This collection isn't all fun and games though, and some really tough things are brought to light in an honest heartfelt way. This is about more than Jersey Shore and frosted lip gloss; Friendship, growing up, hard lessons are also some themes that come along with the humor. There is nothing like intelligent, flowing prose from a very high level writing about something that's far beneath most peoples desires for themselves. Tacky is anything but.

4 out of 5 stars. Highly recommended if you grew up in the 90's or the early 00's.

Thank you to netgalley for providing me an advance copy of Tacky by Rax King for me to read and share my honest thoughts. I am so grateful for the opportunity to preview the brilliance that is Tacky.

A charming collection of essays that explores the concept of taste level and popular culture. Using her personal stories, Rax uses moments of cultural importance from Sex and the City to America's Next Top Model to explore her life trajectory and to make sense of her experiences.

This was an excellent essay collection. The essays were funny, smart, and a great mix of personal essay and cultural criticism. Even readers who are unfamiliar with the cultural touchstones mentioned will enjoy reading about them. I especially liked the Jersey Shore essay, and the one about Guy Fieri (which I'd previously read on Catapult a few years back).