Glop: Non-Toxic, Expensive Ideas that Will Make You Look Ridiculous and Feel Pretentious by Gabrielle Moss

Glop: Non-Toxic, Expensive Ideas that Will Make You Look Ridiculous and Feel Pretentious Reviews

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  Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨ Campbell

  
  
  
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  After reading and loving this author's other book, PAPERBACK CRUSH, I immediately went to see what other glorious titles she might have in her backlist. I came across this scathing Gwyneth Paltrow parody book, and seeing that it was also on sale for an affordable $2.99, I went ahead and bought a copy because I think we can all agree that some celebrities basically make fun of themselves-- but it's far more fun to see other people do it with a bit more panache.
  
  
  
  Gwyneth Paltrow isn't just a celebrity, she's an influencer with a lifestyle brand she calls "Goop." Maybe you've heard of it. There's a TV show right now called Goop Lab, which is kind of like BuzzFeed's "try it" videos but for privileged, fully-grown adults. On her website, you can find items like $3000 yurts, semiprecious gemstone "
  vaginal eggs," and candles that allegedly smell like her secret garden (no, not an actual garden) and run about $150 a pop.
  
  
  
  I think part of what it makes it so annoying is that she couches all this baseless consumerism in pseudo-science, privilege, and cobbled-together new age philosophies that serve as a pastiche of superficial scrapings from far deeper sources. No matter how authentic an influencer seems, there's always a reward, whether it's an endorsement deal or a free product. GLOP takes that oddly hypocritical sanctimoniousness that makes up Goop's core brand and runs with it, in a book that will teach you mindfulness but only if you're willing to pay for it.
  
  
  
  GLOP is pretty funny... at first. It feels a bit like a BuzzFeed listicle that was padded out to fill a book. Some portions are better than others, although I feel like the chapters were longer than they needed to be in some cases. Seeing ridiculous recipes and weird names played out over and over again felt a little one note. The cover also leads you to think that this book will feature comedic imagery; it does not. All of the photos, while situationally appropriate, are from stock imagery sites.
  
  
  
  If you feel incredibly annoyed by Gwyneth Paltrow and want to see someone mock her for everything from her business acumen to her personal life, then this is the book for you. I said in a status update on Twitter that it's easy to make fun of Gwyneth and it never really gets old because it seems like she's always plugging or doing or saying something that basically lends itself to mockery. But if you were hoping for a sophisticated attempt at satire that delved a bit deeper than the surface and featured meme-like images of ridiculous beauty "treatments," this book is not that. I wish it was, because it would probably be a much funnier book. This one was just okay.
  
  
  
  2.5 stars
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  Maggie Thrash

  I love Gabrielle's sense of humor, and in these super serious times all I want every now & then is to be given permission to laugh at how stupid everything is
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  Jennifer

  A delightfully crafted parody. If pretentious and condescending blogs/celebrities/etc. make you want to hurl and you have a sarcastic sense of humor, you will enjoy this book.
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  Kitty

  A fun read for those of us fed up with diet culture, celebrity worship, and aspirational blogs. I listened to the audiobook, which was really well read, but I felt like I was probably missing out on some good pictures.
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  Heather

  Hilarious!
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  Lizzy Wizzy

  I liked the concept of Glop but thought the execution was sorely lacking. We see the author fall back on the same jokes over and over again, which were funny the first two or three times but really lost their zing over countless applications. Example: the entirely unrealistic, ridiculous name choices of every single peripheral character throughout the entire book (did G’s children’s names *really* need to change every single time they’re mentioned?). Another example: none of the recipes in here is even remotely edible or replicable. The jokes here flew so over the top that they came across to me as utterly try-hard. I think the author was trying to pack too many punches in at Goop and went too absurdist with it all, so the overall effect is rather dense. One article taken out of this book’s greater context feels novel and hilarious, but pack in seventy-three of them that read exactly like one another and the overall effect comes off as trite. As far as shitting on Gwenyth Paltrow goes, I think Richard Ayoade did a much more effective job of this in his book Ayoade On Top. Richard’s take is very tongue-in-cheek and sly, whereas Gabrielle here beat the proverbial dead horse to a complete pulp. I do think that the formatting of this book was something of a saving grace, the authentic Goop look and feel. On the whole, I think this book would have benefitted greatly from some injection of realism.
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  Hannah

  This is a bit overlong and could have used some tighter edits (also, ebook is not the best format; I'm sure it looked way better in print), but it's pretty genius, especially if you look up Gwyneth Paltrow and see how many actual, literal things she has said are repeated and riffed on for this text. It's like when Tina Fey played Sarah Palin on SNL and didn't actually need to have lines written because she could just say literal sentences as Palin had said them. A totally random read I picked up out of nowhere, and overall a fun way to spend some time. Major points for the kids' names throughout the book and for the really clever decisions as to when real celebrities were named and when fake names were used. I think this book is smarter than it lets on.
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  Brigid

  I was most interested in reading Glop: Non-Toxic, Expensive Ideas that Will Make You Look Ridiculous and Feel Pretentious after reading the author Gabrielle Moss’ book Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of ‘80s and ‘90s Teen Fiction. The humor in Paperback Crush had me laughing the entire time I was reading that book, which made me want to read Gabrielle Moss’s take on Gwyneth Paltrow’s pseudoscientific lifestyle company, Goop. Like Paperback Crush, there was a lot in Glop that I found extremely funny! Glop is written from the perspective of insane celebrity Glendolyn Poultry, who offers hilarious and terrible tips to a better life, such as holding in urine to cure a fictitious condition known as “lazy vagina”: “And though a very small percentage of women who engage in a dynamic pee-holding lifestyle die each year, I can assure you that is because they didn’t properly warm up, were not pure of heart and soul, or ate wheat products at some point. Or maybe they were fatally hit by a car and just happened to be holding their pee at the same time, so it was registered as a pee-holding-related death—there’s just no way to know.” I think Glop is an excellent parody of Goop, and perfectly captures the smug way Goop (and its creator) seems to be totally unacquainted with reality. Only in Glop (and Goop) can you find personal finance advice like burning money on a money altar to draw wealth to you, and the power of thinking rich thoughts: “So if your insistence on thinking poor thoughts is keeping you poor, the only way to pull yourself up by your Saint Laurent sandals is to start thinking rich thoughts.” My personal favorite running joke in the book was Glendolyn mentioning her two children by different names every time she talks about them; these names include: Philamena Hoobastank, Chard, Fiorina Hulahoop, Patient Herbivore, Chillax, Fairuzabalk Hemoglobin, Pharisees Homonculus, Phranklin Mint, Comic-Sans, Palladium Hardware, Corthelia, Pizza Margherita, Chabad, Candida, Chiarruscuro, Perforated Hespadrille, Choade, Pawtucket, and Charro. Even though Glop is very funny, by the end of this book, I was very ready to be done reading it. I think if this book were a few chapters shorter, or if the parody in this book expanded into genuine satire, I would have been less exhausted as a reader by the end of the book. The humor in this book is very specific to Goop and Gwyneth Paltrow, which I think dates the book tremendously, and I would recommend reading this book sooner than later so the jokes still feel fresh and relevant. I rate this book as three-out-of-five-stars!
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  Marya

  With the world going to hell in a hand basket, this book is a lovely escape from reality. Literally, the shtick of the book is taking the excesses of Goop and pushing them even further. It's amusing enough in its own, and every 30 pages or so, Moss comes up with something truly laugh out loud funny. If only all our worries boiled down to which under $10,000 item we should put in the unused wing of our 7th manor home!
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  Nancy Abraham

  A work of satire parodying Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop. So, it gets really funny with its honest relay of sarcastic recollection of all the uber-rich eccentricities. Gabrielle Moss has let out an effortless stream of humorous jabs taken at certain expensive lifestyle rituals of the people who are affording and basking in them. A book for you to sit back and laugh deliriously on the stupid practices of our times.
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  Amanda

  This is a funny, bitingly sarcastic read. It was fun to flip through from time to time and there were definitely laugh out loud moments. I haven't read the real GOOP, but I'm sure it's totally ridiculous. This reminded me of Annabel Porter's Bloosh -- now pardon me, I need to go polish my oyster forks with a cage-free olive oil rub.
  
  
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  Kaila

  I laughed out loud several times. Favorites include "My Best Organic Beauty Secret: Being Born to Extremely Attractive Parents" and "Solving the Cultural Appropriation Dilemma by Appropriating from Cultures That Don't Exist"
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  Nathalie Morén

  DNFed after 3/4. Got too repetitive!
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  Kate Woods Walker

  Hilariously cleansing.
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  Lexy Kelleher

  The Gwyneth Paltrow "Goop" parody I didn't know I needed. Some parts were a little repetitive, but there were definitely some moments that had me laughing out loud.
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  Denise L. Koch

  This is a quick hilarious read!
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  Stefanie Klett

  Hilarious.
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  Jen Cameron

  Entertaining satire making fun of Goop and everything that website and its founder espouse. It’s an easy read, written in a self help book style. I chuckled several times.
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  Grace Macej

  Hilarious, cheeky and witty writing. So many LOL moments. Absolutely recommended for regular consumers of health/wellness content.
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  Ellen

  3.5 - this book is fucking hilarious.
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  Riegs

  ***I received a copy of this book through Goodreads' Giveaways in exchange for an honest review.***
  
  If you've ever done a full 360-degree eyeroll over the gazillionaire skincare industry, this is the book for you. While explicitly targeting Gwyneth Paltrow's "GOOP" brand, this book also hilariously skewers terrible beauty advice in a ladies' magazines.
  
  Buy it for your friend who is silly enough to buy $50 cuticle moisturizer, when she could just use coconut oil.
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  TJL

  God, I love this book.
  
  The bit about "eating bees" was probably my favorite part.
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  Louise

  Skimmed it. I don't know how a parody can sustain itself for a whole book but here it is.