Stories from Candyland

Readers hoping for spicy gossip or retaliation against her disapproving daughter Tori will be disappointed with mother Spelling's mild mannered, saccharine memoir. Spelling, nee Carole Gene Marer, married the late prolific TV producer Aaron Spelling (whose shows accounted for one-third of ABC's 1984 prime time schedule) in her early twenties, and spent their 36 years together making up for her humble beginnings. Apparently devoting much of her time to amassing collections of everything from American Sterling Peacocks to sugar sifters (a list of her collections takes up three pages), she also devotes inordinate space to discussing (and defending) ""The Manor,"" the Spellings' legendary 56,000+ square foot home, featuring a ""gift wrapping room"" and a basement bowling alley. Very little time is spent on relationships or people; a few cursory nods are all that allude to the verbal lashing she's received from actress daughter Tori, and one chapter is set aside, bizarrely, for limited input from family, friends, and her therapist. Twenty-three pages of irrelevant recipes, as well as tone-deaf statements like ""there's a big celebrity culture that you'd have to be here in L.A. to appreciate or truly understand,"" further confuse the point of her endeavor. Unfortunately, Spelling's admitted insecurity (""What am I doing? Can I write a book?"") proves well-founded.