Difference between revisions of "Newest Autobiography Reviews"
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| − | |summary= | + | |summary=Harry Leslie Smith was born in 1923. If you're wondering about the title – that's the explanation – and although it's when Harry began his life it's not where his story began. He takes us back some years before to his father's family with its roots in mining and a sideline in running a pub which was to make them comfortable if not wealthy. Harry's father was middle-aged when he got involved with Lillian, a teenage girl. Unsurprisingly his family were not impressed or welcoming when the pair married because a child was on the way. Albert Smith expected that he would inherit the pub when his father died, but it passed to his uncle and so began a life of disappointment for Albert and Lillian. |
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Revision as of 15:07, 13 February 2011
Autobiography
1923: A Memoir by Harry Leslie Smith
Harry Leslie Smith was born in 1923. If you're wondering about the title – that's the explanation – and although it's when Harry began his life it's not where his story began. He takes us back some years before to his father's family with its roots in mining and a sideline in running a pub which was to make them comfortable if not wealthy. Harry's father was middle-aged when he got involved with Lillian, a teenage girl. Unsurprisingly his family were not impressed or welcoming when the pair married because a child was on the way. Albert Smith expected that he would inherit the pub when his father died, but it passed to his uncle and so began a life of disappointment for Albert and Lillian. Full review...
Life by Keith Richards
Nearly forty years ago, Keith Richards was considered the next most likely rock'n'roll star to succumb to drugs. The man has defied all the odds in staying alive, and continuing to do what he has been doing for almost half a century. In the process, he has earned the sometimes grudging, sometimes unqualified respect of those who would once never given him the time of day. Full review...
The Stranger in the Mirror: A Memoir of Middle Age by Jane Shilling
Middle-aged women disappear. They are not see on television, their lives do not appear in newspapers, the legions of novels that are written each year rarely feature them. At least, that is what the author Jane Shilling believes as she wakes up aged 47 to find the narrative of her contemporaries and their lives which she has been reading about and living in parallel with since leaving university has vanished. She looks in the mirror and sees a face she does not recognise. Even with a punishing regime of early bed, no alcohol and litres of water, it refuses to regain its youthful bloom. So she decides to take a magnifying glass to this particular moment in time, this journey between youth and old age. Full review...
Diaries Volume 1 by Christopher Isherwood
In January 1939 Christopher Isherwood left England for America in the company of poet WH Auden. This hefty volume covers his diaries from that date until August 1960, when he celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday. A 49-page introduction setting out the background leads us into the entries, which are divided into three sections – The Emigration, to the end of 1944; The Post-war Years, to 1956; and The Late Fifties. After these we have a chronology and glossary, or to put it more accurately a section of brief biographies of the main characters mentioned, these two sections comprising over a hundred pages altogether. Full review...
Waking Up In Toytown by John Burnside
After years of alcoholism and borderline insanity, John Burnside decides to become normal. This involves moving to Surrey, working in an office and settling into a numbing daily routine he hopes will prevent him drifting back towards bad habits. These memoirs chronicle the failure of his bid for normality and subsequent disillusionment with the project. It's a solipsistic account but the writing is powerful and it draws you in. Full review...
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Coming Home by Rhoda Janzen
Even although the obliging blurb on the back cover tells the reader a little about being Mennonite, I couldn't resist looking it up in the dictionary. I was intrigued to start reading. And emblazoned across the front cover is 'No 1 In The US'. Great praise indeed, I thought. But how would it go down across the pond? Time to find out ... Full review...
The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt
In 2008 the historian Tony Judt was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative disorder that eventually results in complete paralysis for the sufferer. Unable to jot down ideas as they came to him, Judt had to rely on his memory to hold them until he had the chance to dictate his words to somebody else. His memory, which was already good, became exceptional. The progress of the disorder left Judt unable to move, but no mental deterioration or lack of sensation occurred, which he describes as a mixed blessing. He had to endure whole nights lying in the same position, unable to roll over or even to scratch an itch, a prisoner in his own body. To preserve his sanity during these tortuous nights he focussed on events from his own past, linking then with other events and ideas it had never occurred to him were connected. It was during these reveries that the essays in The Memory Chalet were not only conceived, but also developed in their entirety. Full review...
Running Scared: For 22 Years He Was a Fugitive - The Corrupt Cop Busted by God by Robert Leon Davis
Robert Davis was the eldest of nine children all living with their grandmother in New Orleans – on welfare. His grandmother was a good, honest woman and Davis loved and respected her, but money was so tight that he resorted to thieving to bring some extra food in for the family. He knew that she would be deeply upset about it, but hunger is hunger. In your heart you can't blame him and it seems that all is coming good when Davis becomes a respected police officer in the mid nineteen-seventies. He's living with a good, decent woman and looks set to have a good career. Great, you think, sometimes life is fair and it works out. Full review...
Paw Tracks at Owl Cottage by Denis O'Connor
'Paw Tracks at Owl Cottage' is the story of four pedigree Maine Coon cats which the author and his wife acquired after moving back to a cottage where they had previously lived. This is the sequel to a volume called 'Paw Tracks in the Moonlight', which I have not read, and which features their first cat Toby Jug. Apparently, on his demise, they had sold the cottage; but now, a little more advanced in years, they buy it again, and do extensive renovations before deciding that it's ready for another cat. Full review...
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Stars by Gervase Phinn
I spent many of my teenage years reading James Herriot's books, and I found that this collection of anecdotes and poems by Gervase Phinn had a real flavour of Herriot about it. Perhaps it was just the setting, for Phinn was a school inspector in the Dales for many years, but I think he also has that knack of capturing a situation, and a character, and bringing out the humour without making the person appear ridiculous. Here he collates stories from his other books, some Christmassy and others not, and he relates them with several of his own poems interspersed between. Full review...
Redeeming Features by Nicky Haslam
Nicholas Haslam, interior designer, columnist, reviewer, the man whom it was said would attend a lighted candle, let alone a party, socialite and name dropper - this is your life. Full review...
Through Thick and Thin by Gok Wan
Famous for his sensitivity and understanding with women, encouraging them and enabling them to accept themselves, and their bodies, as they are, Gok Wan's autobiography sadly tells a very different story with regards to his own body acceptance. Having gained weight throughout his childhood, getting up to twenty one stone as a teenager, he loathed his body and ended up starving himself, becoming anorexic in a desperate effort to be thin and, therefore, successful. Perhaps this is where his empathy comes from? That when he stands a woman in front of a wall of mirrors in her underwear, he actually truly understands what it is to loathe your own body. Full review...
Two Sons in a War Zone: Afghanistan: The True Story of a Father's Conflict by Stephen Wynn
It's almost a nightly occurrence – that news item which contains the words '… has been killed in Afghanistan' and we think of a young life, or young lives cut tragically short. They're fresh-faced young men or women at what should have been the beginning of their adult life and now they are no more. You feel for them and their families, but what about the families who have people they love out in Afghanistan, who live each day with the worry that the knock will be coming to their door? Stephen Wynn has two sons who have done tours of duty in Afghanistan and who are likely to do so again. 'Two Sons in a War Zone' is his story of how he copes with the unrelenting pressure. Full review...
The Boy Who Wanted to Fly by Don Mullan
There is a Foreward by both Pele and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Names to make most of us sit up and notice. The title is certainly quirky and Mullan is probably hoping that prospective readers will be saying to themselves, what's this all about then. Good start, I thought. Then I realised that there's an awful lot of football in this book. Even although it's a slim, sliver of a book, there's no getting away from the subject matter. Football. I don't 'do' football. So, I counted to ten, put on what I hoped was a good reviewer's face and started to read ... Full review...
The Puppy That Came For Christmas and Stayed Forever by Megan Rix
Megan Rix and husband Ian took on two massive challenges at the same time. Their failure to conceive a child became something of an issue with Megan being, as she herself said 'north of forty'. Time was passing quickly and it looked as though IVF was the only option if they were to have the long-for child. It's time-consuming and traumatic. At the same time the couple became involved with a charity which provides helper dogs for people with disabilities. Puppies come to a family for six months to do their basic training and then move on. And that was how Emma, a soft, sweet-natured, adorable puppy came into their lives. Predictably, they fell in love with her. Full review...
A Diary of The Lady: My First Year as Editor by Rachel Johnson
Along with most of my contemporaries I've never read 'The Lady' except once when looking for an au pair job in my student days, and that, it turns out, is the problem. Before Rachel Johnson was appointed in June 2009 the average age of the readership was 75, the circulation was dropping and the magazine was haemorrhaging money. The Budworth family, proprietors of 'The Lady' since it was founded 125 years ago, chose son and heir Ben Budworth to turn the magazine's fortunes around before it folded. He asked Rachel Johnson to be editor. Full review...
Can't Stand Up For Sitting Down by Jo Brand
I am a big fan of Jo Brand and I love her inimitable droll style of comedy. I always enjoy her stand up performances as well as her appearances on my favourite panel programme QI. As a consequence I was really interested to read her second autobiographical book – Can't Stand Up for Sitting Down. As she states at the beginning though, this is not really an autobiography but a collection of thoughts and experiences that have resulted due to her life as a stand up comedian. The book covers the period from her first professional gig up to the present day. Her early life and career in psychiatric nursing are covered in her earlier book Look Back in Hunger. Full review...
Full Circle by Ellen MacArthur
It's some years since I read Taking on the World and – against all expectations thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm not a sailor and don't have a great deal of interest in yacht racing – but what appealed to me immediately was the character of someone who was determined not to let anything stand in the way of her ambitions. My only disappointment came later as I felt that the book had been written too soon – I really wanted to know about that big race and what you do with the future when you've done everything. How lucky did I feel when Full Circle landed on my desk? Full review...
Teenage Revolution: Growing Up in the 80s by Alan Davies
Born in 1966, Alan Davies grew up in Essex, the son of a staunchly Conservative-voting father and a mother who died of cancer when he was only six. It was a childhood dominated at first by 'Citizen Smith' and the other TV sitcoms, 'Starsky and Hutch', 'Grease', Barry Sheene, the Barron Knights, and Debbie Harry. The book begins at 1978, the year I started venturing out more, and finishes at 1988, when he graduated from Kent University to find that stand-up comedy could be an alternative to finding a job where he would have to do what he was told. Full review...
Screwing Up by Mark Oaten
Like John Profumo and others, Mark Oaten will probably be remembered for the wrong reasons. It was the episode which made him for a while the country's No. 1 paparazzi target, and which as he recounts in his Prologue, when his 'world was crashing down' and it hardly needs recounting in detail. Yet when all is said and done, this is a very lively, readable, sometimes quite poignant memoir from one of the men whose career at Westminster began and ended with the Blair and Brown years. Throughout there is an admirable absence of self-pity. Full review...
Born Wild: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Passion for Lions and for Africa by Tony Fitzjohn
Maybe it's just my rock-chick nature but "Born Wild" feels a little clunky as titles go. Surely it should have been "Born To Be Wild"? Perhaps that phrase has been copyrighted and wasn't available. Or maybe Fitzjohn was deliberately referencing Joy Adamson's book "Born Free" – since much of the early part of his own time in Africa was spent with her husband George. "Born To Be Wild" would have been more accurate as well. Many of the animals we meet weren't born wild at all – though a good few of them got to live out the remainder of their days and die that way. Full review...
The Badness of King George by Judith Summers
People know how to get round me: they offer me a book and then say 'It's about a dog' and like Pavlov's canine I say 'Oh, lovely'. And so it was with The Badness of King George. George is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and I have to quibble with the title – superb as it is – because George is not bad. If anything he's badly done by as Judith Summers, plagued by empty nest syndrome when her son goes to university, decides to foster rescue dogs. Poor George has absolutely no idea what she's let him in for. And nor has Judith. Full review...
The Kid: A True Story by Kevin Lewis
Kevin Lewis grew up on a poverty-stricken London council estate in the sort of home that the neighbours complain about. His mother – inadequate by any measure – hated him more than most of her six children and he was beaten and starved by both of his parents. You might think that Social Services would have stepped in and removed him, but any relief was to be short-lived. Eventually he was put into care but even then the support was inadequate and Kevin found himself caught up in a criminal underworld where he was known simply as 'The Kid'. Full review...
B Positive by Dai Henley
Dai Henley counts himself lucky to have been born to loving and nurturing parents. When they discovered that his blood group was B positive they gave him his motto in life, and coincidentally, the title of this book. As he explains, it's not a celebrity autobiography (you might be selling yourself a little short there, Dai) and nor is it a misery memoir. It's the story of a man who has made the most of every opportunity he's been given – and a few mistakes along the way – but he's won through despite the difficulties and played a fair amount of sport too. Full review...
Raising My Voice: The Extraordinary Story of the Afghan Woman Who Dares to Speak Out by Malalai Joya
Forget entertainment – this is a book to read if you have any interest in the war in Afghanistan. My particular view has developed from a British armchair, comprising part emotional reaction, a smidgeon of history and an over-reliance on British media sources. In a war zone where truth has been a casualty throughout, this book gives the general reader an authentic view of conditions in Afghanistan over the past twenty five years of continual warfare. Written by a young and hot-headed, wildly patriotic 'ordinary' woman, this is no more reliable than any other partisan view, but its value is to help put official news sources into their proper context. I found it educative in several senses. Full review...
Last Dog On The Hill by Steve Duno
Driving through northern California Steve Duno found a puppy by the side of the road. He was flea-bitten, tic infested, emaciated and suffering from an infection. His father was a Rottweiler and his mother a German Shepherd - both were guard dogs at the local marijuana farm. When Steve whistled the dog came to him and it's no exaggeration to say that in that moment his life changed. He'd always wanted a dog, but hadn't been able to have one as a child. There was a moment's indecision at the side of the road – and then Lou became Steve's dog. Full review...
