Paige Davis Books

A beautiful book, in all senses of the word. love life

The Pause is an excellent short story about the receipt of a unique Christmas gift. It is extremely well written, and the compositon of the book is excellent. It has become part of our annual Christmas matter.

I picked this up hoping to get some background on Paige, lots of photos of her and a good read. This book is just a superficial puff piece for Trading Spaces with little or nothing going for it. Not enough pictures, annoyingly shallow text and no depth at all. I think it took me about an hour to read it all - I would have stopped at page 2, but I thought it would get better. It didn't . If you really need to have this , but it used for under a dollar and you may be happy with it. Blech.

I received her book as a surprise gift and found it quick, easy to read. The girl is perky both on screen and in her book. While some may have blasted her for not writing more about the people -- remember, you can't write about people and get paid for it if they do not OKAY it. That could explain it. But again -- this is her diary of a year on Trading Spaces. And it read as such. I found it interesting how close they actually tape the episodes.

I miss Paige on the show. While I like the new TS format (making the designers stick around to actually HEAR what the home owner thinks), I still miss Perky Paige. She didn't know how to do everything but she was willing to try just about anything.

Paige, I hope you are doing well. You are missed.

I really enjoyed this and wish it had been longer. It's done in diary/journal format. There isn't as much behind-the-scenes info, and sometimes there isn't much about the episodes at all. However, the book gives a lot of insight into Paige, both from what she writes and the way she writes. There are a few people who have written reviews complaining about how it's all about Paige or it's egotistical, etc., and my response is "duh." It's written as a diary, and most people who keep diaries are writing mainly about themselves; that's the point. If you want to learn more about Trading Spaces, then this book isn't very helpful, but it does give some info, and if you're a fan of Paige, I'd say go for it. I only wish she'd written more.

I asked for this book for Christmas because of its ratings here on Amazon. Had I actually been able to skim through it, I would have realized that there is very little about the true stars of the show - the homeowners.

Paige had a great idea when she decided to start this diary, which really does appear to have been written bit by bit, every day. (For all I know, she has kept it her whole life, and someone just suggested she turn this year of it into a book.) I like her writing style, and the design of the book is cute, too.

But somehow, when I started reading about Day 1 or Day 2 of an episode, with the homeowners listed by first names, from this layout I expected that she would at least then tell us (or remind us) of whether the homeowners liked their finished product or not. Some closure. And that she would tell us about many episodes, from start to finish.

Instead, she gives only snippets from any number of episodes, leaving off entirely at various points, so disjointedly that you get the idea that the homeowners, and even the process of redoing their rooms, really don't count much to the Trading Spaces staff.

Apparently, Paige and the designers and the rest of the staff don't realize that it is not the "Open" (the brief sketche with Paige and the designers that begins the show) I care about. She rattles on about those effusively and endlessly. I watch (or used to watch) the show for the homeowners, and to see their rooms designed and to get inexpensive design hints myself. My favorite part was seeing the homeowners elated with their rooms. I think we, the audience, identify with the homeowners, and watch because of them. But Paige and the others seem to think it's really all about them.

I liked her writing, and I liked many of the stories she told - it's just that the homeowners come off way too much as practically meaningless props in this book. I would have preferred if the stories of where the designers went to dinner, what they ate, what little this and that thing they did for each other, etc., had been the extras in the book. And that the show itself - the rooms and homeowners - had been the main course. Instead, it's the other way around. I mean, who cares about all her endless travel arrangements?

Other oddities, as well: She gives this big build-up for several pages about the show being nominated for the Emmys, and the book even includes what appears to be an official page from the Emmy people, listing and describing the shows that were up for their category. Then she says something like, "Well, we didn't go home with the Emmy last night." Ok, so who did? SHE DOESN'T TELL US! Apparently, since they didn't win, nothing else is important. I looked again, thinking I had just missed it, but I still couldn't find it, unless I'm still missing it somewhere. Talk about self-centered! That, in a nutshell, is kind of what the whole book is like.

Bottom line: The book is Paige's diary of Paige's days in Paige's career. The "Trading Spaces" aspect of it, especially the homeowners, gets short shrift. As for the show itself, I don't watch it much anymore because it long since became too sadistic to be pleasurable viewing. Instead, I recommend "Clean Sweep" if you want to see homeowners truly thrilled by wonderful, attractive, functional designs in their rooms done by people who actually seem to care about them. ("How Clean Is Your House" is good, too.)

Can Paige really, truly believe that there has never been a room done on Trading Spaces that isn't liked by someone, and that the problem is generally just cranky homeowners who "aren't open to change?" If so, I'd like to point out the moss-covered walls episode, the hay-glued-on-the-walls episode, the all (and I do mean all) white room and all black room episode, the prison room complete with toliets incorporated as furniture episode, the circus tent episode - I could go on and on and on. And this is not to mention some of the ways they make the homeowners labor unnecessarily, such as stapling hundreds of narrow black ribbons to a wall instead of just painting it that color; or hot-gluing thousands of tiny pieces of something to walls or floors or fireplaces instead of just painting or recovering them, or ripping out ceiling fans for no other purpose than to rip out ceiling fans.

As well-meaning and cute as Paige may be, I was as put off by her rather constant and casual dismissal of the homeowners in her book as vaguely unimportant and actually something of a bother as I am by their similar treatment on the show itself.

I love the show and have always thought Paige was great as the host and so I just had to read this book. I am so glad I did too. Paige takes the reader behind the scenes and shares stories and disasters from the set of the show. She shares her experiences and fills the book with interesting and heartfelt writing, which is sometimes even comical. This is a great book for everybody, even if you don't watch the show.