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Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love is not a tell-all book. It's authorized and edited by Love, after all, so obviously, many tawdry, juicy, and private tidbits from her life never even made it near print. Instead, Dirty Blonde is a coffee-table history of Love's creative growth -- an often fascinating history, at that -- told through journal entries, song lyrics, adolescent poetry, letters, marginal scrawlings, snapshots, photos, drawing and anything else a girl or woman might cram into her diary.

Love was a precocious, brilliant, rebellious, tormented girl, seemingly destined for success as a rock star or actress from an early age. Most of what you get in the book is Love at her best -- i.e., seemingly sober -- because as she says in her author's note: "It may be that for some people their drug years purchased them greatness but mine brought me nothing but dull, aching pain, misery, and wrecked lives -- mostly my daughter's." Any in-depth accounts of Love's drug years are basically absent (although on a list of what she hates and loves she does put "drugs" under both headings). You can imagine that keeping up with diary entries is not a high priority for an addict.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Love's years with Kurt Cobain get fairly fleeting treatment -- some 36 pages, or slightly more than 10 percent of the book. You learn Frances Bean's first word was "pee"; you don't get any insight into Cobain's suicide, and very little into his music.

Is that a fault? Hardly. Love's book is about herself, not Cobain. On page after page, she's smart, caustic, anti-romantic, and funny -- usually intentionally, sometimes not. In a list called "Things to teach my children," probably written in her early twenties, Love writes, "Be a brilliant equestrienne" and "Stay a virgin." Next to the "virgin" comment Love writes: "Until at least 18, get a horse instead." Her to-do list as an aspiring actress includes, "Get Joan's 8x10's" and "LOSE LOTS OF WEIGHT." Numerous candid and pro photos of Love, Hole, Cobain and various celebrities sprinkled through the pages guarantee that Dirty Blonde will be a killer conversation piece to lay out in your living room.

Bottom line: Love is a sexy, no-bullshit ballbuster most guys could never handle. In a diary entry after a random (pre-Kurt) sexual encounter in New York, she writes, "I think in my lifetime I'll only be in love max 3 times. It's fun to fuck. But I'm like a guy. I don't want any emotion or commitment from 90% of them. I certainly didn't cum. Coz I didn't want to. He will be talking about that blowjob for the rest of his days. Ha. As I stated I'll never fuck him again." Now that's true Love.