Tacky

Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer

By: Rax King

Narrated by: Rax King

Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

An irreverent and charming collection of deeply personal essays about the joys of low pop culture and bad taste, exploring coming of age in the 2000s in the age of Hot Topic, Creed, and frosted lip gloss - from the James Beard Award-nominated writer of the Catapult column "Store-Bought Is Fine”.

Tacky is about the power of pop culture - like any art - to imprint itself on our lives and shape our experiences, no matter one's commitment to "good" taste. These 14 essays are a nostalgia-soaked antidote to the millennial generation's obsession with irony, putting the aesthetics we hate to love - snakeskin pants, Sex and the City, Cheesecake Factory's gargantuan menu - into kinder and sharper perspective.

Each essay revolves around a different maligned (and yet, Rax would argue, vital) cultural artifact, providing thoughtful, even romantic meditations on desire, love, and the power of nostalgia. An essay about the gym-tan-laundry exuberance of Jersey Shore morphs into an excavation of grief over the death of her father; in "You Wanna Be on Top", Rax writes about friendship and early aughts girlhood; in another, Guy Fieri helps her heal from an abusive relationship.

The result is a collection that captures the personal and generational experience of finding joy in caring just a little too much with clarity, heartfelt honesty, and Rax King's trademark humor.

A Vintage Original

©2021 Rax King (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, Bloomberg, KIRKUS

“Ebullient . . . What [feels] new is the glitter and squalor and joy and exactness in King’s writing . . . It reads like sequential shots of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky. King has unfettered access to her mind at 14 or 15. Her ‘Ode to Warm Vanilla Sugar’ is in league, as coming-of-age essays go, with Nora Ephron’s ‘A Few Words About Breasts’ . . . Like Katie Roiphe, King arrives in praise of messy lives. Like Toni Morrison in Song of Solomon, she advises: ‘You got a life? Live it!’ . . . So winsome is the writing in Tacky that, most of the time, there’s no other word for it but classy.” —New York Times

“These sharp, deeply insightful and laugh-out-loud meditations on modern Americana, from the Cheesecake Factory to Jersey Shore, add up to pop-culture anthropology.” —People

"Most writers are boring people. King, though, seems different: Bettie Page meets Carrie Bradshaw, if Bradshaw supported Bernie Sanders for president and sometimes wore an Old Bay-patterned bikini . . . It’s in her writing about sex and sexuality where King’s voice really shines. I have yet to encounter another writer who has so neatly captured what it was like to be a girl during that reactionary cultural period in which I grew up . . . King writes acutely, and sometimes heartbreakingly, about her developing sexuality, the cues she took from pop culture about how to make herself more desirable for consumption . . . There’s much to admire—and, for a kind of pop-culture-loving millennial, it will hit all the right notes." —Wall Street Journal

Don’t judge this book by its cover…or summary or media coverage

I got this because I heard an interview on NPR and I thought it was an interesting thesis. When she talks about brands and things that have fallen out of fassion, it is interesting. Additionally, her sex talk is interesting but a lot. I feel the lede sort of slipped away more and more as the chapters went on. It felt like became more about how these “tacky” things have something to do with the story I am going to tell you about my sex-life. It’s all well as good, but unexpected based on the NPR segment and summaries. I even went back and listened to the NPR segment to see if I missed something, I did not.

As I think about this, I enjoy nonfiction books like this to get new perspectives on the world. This book delivered but not in a way I expected.

Overall, I think it was good, but I think many people may not be ok with that much surprising sex talk.

Loved it

I don’t know if this was marketed as humor or I imagined it. I don’t want to click out of this review to go see but I don’t think it’s necessarily humor. It’s humor OUS, but it’s also heartfelt. It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting but I’m so glad I got it. I’m pretty sure I paid a full credit for it (impulse buy) but I still say it was worth it.

If you can’t handle language or mature content you probably won’t like it. If you’re open to that, you’re in for a treat. :)

Good, no perfect - in the best possible way

I rewatched and re-listened to all the favourite books, tv, movies, and music from my childhood thanks to this book- and it was AWESOME

Searingly honest and funny personal essays

Rax King does an incredible job narrating this partial auto-biography, partial cultural apologia of tacky culture, including but not limited to her love for Creed, the movie Josie and the Pussycats, the television show Jersey Shore, Guy Fieri, the Cheesecake Factory, and Meat Loaf’s landmark album Bat Out of Hell. Where King’s work shines is in her unflinching, brutally honest examination of her own choices, mistakes, needs, connections. This is a work that defies irony and the distance it presumes. It is rooted in sincerity and the kind of storytelling that is only possible when you face things at an uncomfortably close distance. The energetic pace, smart writing, hilarious anecdotes, and painful honesty all make for a great read. And if I’m being honest, it also unexpectedly led to a lot of introspection about my own life.

relatable and gorgeous

riveted from start to finish. an ode to loving what one loves and an invitation to see the connections between the seemingly inconsequential and the utterly integral.

chefs kiss

these essays are so insightful, touching and hilarious. love seeing the way Rax sees the world. grateful she took the time to write it down and share her vision with us.

Sneaks up on you

Rax has the wonderful ability to write about a subject while sneaking in deep thoughts and philosophy. Really appreciated that this one was read by the author.

The Best

How is Rax King so great? Great listen for a couples road trip or while taking a bath.

Gripping, fascinating, captivating

This book will take you in from the moment you start listening to it. Thank you to Rax for bearing your soul and for taking us through the culture many of us were steeped in while also winding us through your own life. I eagerly await your next book. What a privilege to hear you read it yourself.

This book made me feel seen...

I purchased this book unsure of what to expect. TACKY is an insightful, witty, hilarious, brutally honest, painful, and heart-wrenching insight into not only the life of the author, but into what it meant to be a teenaged girl in the 2000s. While not every reader will relate to the more 'salacious' aspects of some chapters, each chapter/article manages to reveal a universal truth. TACKY is going to stick with me for a very long time, and I am grateful to have found it.