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Primetime TV Book Reviews

I'm Just Sayin'!: Three Deaths, Seven Husbands, and a Clone! My Life as a Daytime Diva [Hardcover]
by Kim Zimmer (Echo, OLTL; ex-Reva, GL) and Laura Morton

 Review by Suzanne

I really enjoy reading this book. I did not watch Guiding Light until the last few years, when it was not that good of a show. However, I have always liked Kim Zimmer, who starred in the show as Reva, and many of the other actors on the show. I wish I had watched the show in past years when it had better quality writing.

Kim Zimmer was also on a few other soap operas, including The Doctors, One Life to Live, and Santa Barbara. I did see Zimmer on Santa Barbara because I did watch that show. And now she is on One Life to Live again, which I also watch. She is a very good actress, no matter who she plays. You may not have heard of her if you don't watch soaps, but she was the Susan Lucci of Guiding Light (although a much better actress than Lucci, which is why she won four Daytime Emmys instead of just one).

The other thing I always liked about Kim Zimmer is that she is very outspoken to the press. I have enjoyed reading her interviews in soap magazines and on the net. I think her book should be a little more shocking than it is. I guess she is a little better at holding her tongue when she has time to think about the effect her words might have on her career. Which is a shame because that's the main reason to read a book like this: a tell-all.

Despite that, it is an interesting read. Anyone who has watched Zimmer on shows can hear her voice as you read the book. It is all her, even though she did have someone helping her write it. It is definitely her voice.

I enjoyed reading about the early days of soaps and her experiences. I wish there was more about that, in fact. I would have liked to have heard more details about the other actors and her interactions with them.

She praises almost every actor that she mentions. Besides Ellen Wheeler, the only says bad things about two actors, and she doesn't tell us who they are, which is a shame.

Zimmer is very honest about how badly she thought the show was run in the last few years, and she blames Ellen Wheeler for quite a lot, as well as CBS and Proctor & Gamble. However, she also is very honest about her own problems with drinking and going through menopause.

She talks a lot about her family and how much she loves her husband, and how they are faithful to each other after all this time.

The book moved very quickly and was very easy to read. I just wish there were more of it! It's almost 300 pages, but somehow it seems shorter...that's the sign of a good read.

MORE INFO:

The landscape of daytime television will dramatically change next year when soap operas All My Children and One Life to Live go off the air, cancelled after more than forty years on television. No one knows what the demise of these shows will mean for television and for the affected actors better than Guiding Light veteran and one of daytime's favorites, Kim Zimmer. Her show was cancelled in 2009, ending one of television's longest-running success stories and leaving Zimmer without a job.

This August, New American Library is excited to publish Zimmer's new book, I'M JUST SAYIN'!: Three Deaths, Seven Husbands, and a Clone! My Life as a Daytime Diva (New American Library Hardcover; August 2, 2011; $26.95; ISBN: 978-0-451-23343-1).

Zimmer, a four-time Emmy Award-winning actress, is known around the world for her twenty-seven year portrayal of Reva Shayne on the popular daytime drama Guiding Light. While on the show, Zimmer played a vixen, a manic-depressive, an Amish woman, a time traveler, a Civil War belle, a talk show host, a cancer survivor, a loving mother, and a devoted wife. But now in her new memoir, Zimmer shares the story of the woman behind Reva-from her beginnings as a small-town Midwestern girl to landing one of the greatest roles in the history of daytime television and becoming a soap opera icon.

In I'M JUST SAYIN'!, Zimmer also talks about:

* Why soap operas are going off the air after decades of popularity
* Her struggles with alcohol and how it impacted her family and her career
* How she balanced being a busy working mother (her "greatest role") and a full-time career woman
* Her encounters with such celebrities as Kathleen Turner, Alec Baldwin, and Oprah Winfrey
* How she has managed to maintain a successful marriage for thirty years
* The difficulties of losing a job later in life, especially in a field that is youth and beauty focused, and how she continues to pursue her acting dreams

Blatantly honest and wildly entertaining, I'M JUST SAYIN'! takes readers on an insightful journey through the parallel lives of Reva Shayne and Kim Zimmer and chronicles the stories behind Guiding Light, the longest-running drama in television and radio history (72 years!).

Enter our contest and win a copy!

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