Most Talkative: Stories from the Front Lines of Pop Culture

Andy Cohen knew there was a funny side of television and he was ready to explode or exploit it - take your pick. He probably would have exploded if he'd stayed a moment longer at CBS where he spent 10 years working in the "real TV" world, meantime, picking up enough background material for book on the other side of TV - the funny side.

That's why the book "Most Talkative: Stories from the Front Lines of Pop Culture" should be on your beach reading list. Indeed if you read the hardback or Kindle versions - it doesn't really matter which - you should have "Talkative" bookmarked as the first text to flicker up on screen. Quite simply, Andy Cohen has found that most of television is really irreverent and seems to wonder why we once treated the "greats" with the same "gravitas" that we reserved for presidents and popes.

Andy's bright and light-hearted style, combined with the material generated by his "Watch What Happens Live," where he holds no-holds-barred interviews that may start at how a person ended up beginning a career and end up with what the person was wearing to bed last night or who his partner was.

That has always been Andy's style! He has wanted to know more than just the surface fluff that the studio PR departments were famous for putting out. Here's a prime example: some years ago, when women were just breaking into Formula Ford and Formula III racing, Ford held an interview session and just to be sure that the drivers who were featured kept to the "party line" there were more PR people sitting at the table than there were reporters or drivers.

That we were able to get something out of the interview was the simple fact that no one ever went off record with most of the interview.

Andy uses this as a starting point now and it winds its hilarious way to each ending; you just never know how Andy or the celebrity will pull it off.

Actually, there was something special about Andy way back in his summer camp days as a kid. With "Charlie's Angles" as one of his iconographic shows, and "All My Children" as another, he makes sure that he contact his Mom every day to ensure that those shows are videotaped so he won't miss an episode. Then and there, you knew there was something more to Andy Cohen.

Sure, there are those people who want to know about TV and what's on, but there are precious few who want to get inside and walk around with the actors who look out at the screen at you every week.

His first college paper interview was probably his dream interview with the daytime soap queen Suzanne Lucci. Andy's course, from that time on - he also came out in college which does give him a leg up on some of the competition and does give him a fresh eye when he is looking for a new "Real Housewives" venue for Bravo.

That's Andy's preserve, aside from his own live TV talk show, now. Like a lion, he scours the landscape looking for new reality sites from where he can pounce and he does.

This is the type of book that has no real socially redeeming value, other than the fact that it's enjoyable and fun to read. It's one of the books you can easily pickup on a stormy summer evening and have most of it knocked off before you put it down. In fact, you may pick it up at sundown and never even notice that it's sunup when you've finished.