A preachy if offbeat autobiography
340090
John Harland tells of he and his girlfriend
 setting out to try different alternative lifestyles
 until they found the one that suited them.
 While the philisophical discussion here can be
 interesting, overall the book tends toward the
 preachy side.
881380
As someone who has admired the guitar playing of Eric Clapton since the 60s I looked forward to reading his autobiography hoping to learn more about the man and his music. What I instead found was the story of a self-absorbed, undisciplined, hurtful, irresponsible, drug abusing addict & drunk, who can add ingratitude to his list of considerable character flaws. While I commend the man for his talent and the sobriety and responsibility he has embraced in recent years, this is not someone who deserves much in the way of hero worship. As a former professional musician I fully understand the social environment and temptations one must endure and overcome to succeed in that industry. No matter his talent, succumbing to rock's excesses to this degree is not very commendable. The Crossroads Center really is about the least he could do to make amends.
711371
I was prepared for a fascinating read about the life of a young boy growing up in racially-mixed neighborhoods, with the author emerging wise enough to find some major themes or concepts to bind his story together, but Honky comes off as a pastiche of different vignettes that don't leave a deep impression.  The author's parents seem to me to have been eccentric and self-involved and the other characters in Conley's life just come and go, leaving no real lasting impact.  The autobiography that this should have been has not yet, to my knowledge, been written.
4143617
The book is basically a memoir of the author's time in the Secret Service, uniform division. As the author himself admits, the impetus to write and publish the book came from the fact that he was stationed in the White House during the Monica Lewinsky affair and he was a key witness in the ever expanding investigation that followed. His account of his involvement in the investigation and what led directly up to it, is worth reading and justifies the cover and subtitle. But this aspect is only a small proportion of the overall book. I found the rest of the book not very interesting and heavy going due to the jargon and bias of the author.
481526
One might better experience this documentary when one realizes it is much less about his original subject, Sean, than it is about the documentary maker himself.  I'm sure it started off as a nice, introspective follow-up into the now-life of the precocious little boy that shocked the nation at the time but then rather quickly meandered into the personal life of the film's writer/producer/director, Ralph Arlyck.  In fact you're almost halfway into the documentary until you even see any new footage of Sean, all grown-up and a newly minted union electrician, something that would no doubt making his proto-Communist grandparents very, very happy.

Perhaps the grist of Sean's life today didn't prove to be that interesting to Arlyck's mill, so he turns the film into a kind of reflecting pond upon which he might contemplate his own life and his failings (one reviewer referred to it as "navel-gazing" which seems apropos).  If one considers the reality that Arlyck's own life has essentially been one of meandering around as a professional grant-writer looking for money to fund his film-making ambitions - his French college professor spouse has undoubtedly been the bread-winner through their 30+ years of marriage - it becomes clear that "Following Sean" is more like "Finding Ralph Arlyck."  When his own father openly mocks his career choice - laughingly noting that "every time he says cut that costs me a $1000!" - and he actually includes it in the documentary you know at least he is self-aware enough to realize that he isn't that distant a character from Sean's rather disconnected and extremely irresponsible father Johnny who has largely abdicated his basic responsibilities as a parent and run away from what any one of us might consider a real life.

As such, the documentary is not an entirely bad one, given the context.  A great deal has swirled about Mr. Arlyck in his lifetime and it's interesting, but the freight of it carries into the kinds of probing questions he asks Sean or Sean's father Johnny or Sean's other family or Mr. Arlyck's own family.  His sons, undoubtedly exasperated by the camera being pointed at them yet again, are openly derisive of their father trying to use them to stamp more "meaning" and context on to his documentary.  They prove to be bad material for his introspective mood but he includes them anyway.

Still, I think Arlyck got his point across.  It's a look at two lives lived parallel and the similarities and differences between them, how one impacted another.  In a way I think Sean came out the winner in the grand scheme of things.  Ultimately I don't think his life was as impacted as much by Arlyck's as Arlyck's was by Sean's, which is certainly why he came back to do the film in the first place.  A thoughtful, hard-working, and even well-educated (he has a degree from Cal) product of a universe that really wasn't quite as bent as we were lead to believe - in fact outside the documentary Sean admitted that at four he probably embellished the reality of his daily life.  He was too savvy and funny and world-weary for his age, already, and probably said vastly too much.  In a way though that made Mr. Arlyck's career and it seems like he's spent 30 years trying to recapture the glory of it.  Ah ha, in the perfunctory details of everyday and the tectonic shifts of this cultural revolution, look at this moral puzzle I discovered!  Instead Sean turned out to be a rather ordinary person and so Mr. Arylck is found back-tracking to recapture that same glory.  The documentary ends up, then, light and moody and pensive and thoughtful about the lives threading through it.  For that it strikes me as quite valuable and meaningful and worth watching, even if it's not ultimately what you expect.
3844580
This is a book where 2 1/2 stars would be about right. Judging from other reviews, White's fans love this book while others give mixed to negative reviews. At its best, White's prose is frankly beautiful. He is able to capture a scene, a place, or a series of events in way that is completely captivating. Unfortunately, large chunks of the book attempt to deal with motives (his own and those of others) and reflections on his own life or the lives of others. In these places, the effort is self-indulgent and often silly. Despite his own efforts at trying to portray himself as "egalitarian", "enlightened", and beyond his heartland roots, he comes across as the worst sort of provincial: the type who moves to the big city, and travels to interesting places but remains pretty small minded, as if he were becoming a yearning provincial's idea of a cosmopolitan. He clearly has been unable to integrate different parts of his experience, which may explain his failures in psychoanalysis as much as the quack analysts he has employed. He drops the names of concepts from Buddhism in the same way he drops the names of famous acquaintances and it's unclear how these or any other of his intellectual name droppings (like Deweyan pragmatism) have made any impression. In the case of Buddhism, the ideal of transcending ego clearly seems far beyond him. He talks endlessly of poverty throughout his life, yet his mother's alimony and child support was about what a 1950s family usually made, plus she had her own salary. As an adult, he claims to have struggled yet helped support his mother. It just doesn't add up. The chronology falls apart in places and people seem oddly missing from his life including his fellow writers from the collaborative he co-founded, as well as his sister.

White was part of the first cohort of gay writers to achieve some degree of commercial success and mainstream critical recognition. I've read many of their books, but they tend to run together to me--coming of age novels, followed, by AIDS era stories and among the lucky survivors, stories about the trials of middle age. As a group, they tend to be liberal arts grads of "good" colleges from upper middle class families who seem a little oblivious to things like making a living. Had White been born earlier, his gifts would have helped him stay and succeed further in his earlier careers as a Time-Life book writer and university textbook editor. Had he been born later, the glut of coming of age books might have led him to genre fiction, with him self-indulging his way through bad softcore S&M fiction or detective novels. It is perhaps to his detriment that my reading of this book overlapped with reading Ted Kennedy's memoir and a somewhat hero worshiping bio of Pat Tillman. Both of those men did something more than would have been expected of most men and Kennedy was an early advocate of gay rights. By comparison, White's uneven and largely self-indulgent writing here seems trivial, particularly in the context of having been part of a cohort of other, often more talented writers. If you're not a fan already, don't expect too much of this effort.
2443398
This memoir is about a family that finds out, after their father's
death from AIDS in 1983, that he was gay and leading a double life.
Ms. Bergman attempts to understand and forgive while reconciling her
spiritual and ethical beliefs about life with her father's actions.

Her father's homosexuality is only one of the ways he distanced him-
self from his family.  He was a huckster, opportunist and scam man
in search of 'the great deal'.

The book is interesting but a bit obtuse and postured. I recommend
<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Family-Heart-A-Memoir-of-When-Our-Son-Came-Out/dp/0345394089/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Family Heart: A Memoir of When Our Son Came Out</a>&nbsp;in addition to
this book.
1190495
I debated between 3 and 4 stars for this because I actually did enjoy reading it. BUT -- and it's a fairly significant "but" -- since I keep coming across this book as an "RV memoir" of sorts and the description's first sentence speaks about their RV trip, it's potentially important to a reader to understand that the vast majority of the book (like, 80%) is the life story of her husband. It's an interesting story, in fact, but has NOTHING to do with their eventual RV-ing. THAT part of the book fills the final very minimal bit. So, an interesting look at how a seemingly "good guy" can actually fall pretty far down the rabbit hole into a life of crime, but this is only extremely-barely an RV-ing story. Buy and read accordingly.
573881
Amy Hollingsworth's memoir is smoothly written with sweet sentiment, but actually sheds limited light on the life of Fred Rogers. It reads like a eulogy in some aspects and reflects more of the author's experiences and opinions than biographical information about Mr. Rogers. The author mostly homiligizes on a few of his famous sayings and pieces of his correspondence to her. About midpoint, the book seemed repetitive and drags to the finish. If you have never read anything about Fred Rogers, this might be a fine starting point; as for myself, I will have to keep looking for a true biography.
2603360
This work by Andrew Himes--poet, computer pioneer, ex-fundamentalist, and ex-Maoist--combines memoir, biography, family history, and an indictment of southern fundamentalism for its racism.  The book is most valuable for its poignant reminiscences of growing up in a family dominated by Himes' grandfather, evangelist John R. Rice (1895-1980).  Nevertheless, the work is a ramble, moving back and forth in time and making amateurish pronouncements about American history in general and the history of American evangelicalism in particular.  Himes reprints part of a sermon in which his grandfather referred to him as a child not "held accountable as he ought." Whether a few good spankings might have kept Himes from Marxism is unknowable, but it is tempting to believe they might have made him a more disciplined thinker and writer.
276137
If you do, and I do, then you will enjoy this autobiography. The author is well-read, proudly antiestablishment,, self-deprecating, and grumpy. The old truck frames the story. The narrative could have used a bit of editing; I balked at the two incidents of bowls of spaghetti with pesto being eaten the same ugly but comfortable chair.
4318374
Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a 1970 novella by Richard Bach with photographs by Russell Munson. It's about a seagull who shuns the social conventions of his flock to pursue his love of flying.

The book is divided into three parts, beginning with a predictable follow-your-dreams story and then moving into an Eastern-style cycle of self-perfection and reincarnation, and then there's some business about love and forgiveness tossed in at the end.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a short book, but even within these confines Bach does little to give the book much ambition or depth. The seagull flies this maneuver, the seagull flies that maneuver, the seagull spouts some platitude about transcending reality. There's no sense of setting, no real insight - just flying birds and superficial philosophy. Bach's writing is otherwise unimpressive. There's at least one continuity issue, and it does feel rather absurd that these birds have such amazingly accurate internal speedometers (Bach rather belabors that point).

Munson's photographs of seagulls and beachscapes help to set the mood, but the low quality in which they are reproduced in every version of the book I've ever seen just doesn't do them justice.  Nevertheless, they do imbue the book with a certain charm that it badly needs.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull basically comes down to banal fable and trite spirituality. There are a innumerable better "follow your dreams" stories out there, most of which don't get into this unlocking-the-unlimited-freedom-inside-you nonsense.
4745476
"Growing Up in the the Shadow" is a collection of essays of varying value about growing up in an alcoholic family.  There are some insights, but a lot of it is dry academia, and dated since this was written in the early 80s
2994686
Ego-fest of a book, like the Donald himself.
2787633
Overlong, overwritten, over-self-conscious and under-edited, Shantaram is a book that almost sinks under its own weight. While the details on the slums and the criminal underworld of Bombay are fascinating, the second-rate epigrams of Karla and Didier, the endless uncalled-for philosophical symposia, and the final jaunt to Afghanistan all became a bit too much and I was skipping pages by the end. The author has had many unique experiences, but I would have preferred to hear about them without all the fictional-philosophical encrustations. There is an interesting speech on YouTube (search for Gregory David Roberts or Shantaram) where the author recounts some of the same experiences, complete with accents and movement (in particular, head wiggles). It will be interesting to see if the old adage about "Bad Book = Good Film" comes true in this case. How on earth can so much be compressed into an 90 minutes?
3881537
On the one hand, it provides a detailed account of Jim Watson's career and discovery of DNA, so on that account it succeeds, but on the other hand Jim Watson is a fairly unlikeable man.
The risk of autobiographies is that in writing a book centred on yourself it is very easy to come across of arrogant, but in Jim Watson's case toweringly so. His constant insults of other faculty members as dinosaurs, fossils and even calling them vapid gets rather tiresome, and he comes across as quite sexist when he chases any attractive girl he meets, including a number of his own research assistants, constantly describing them as cute or stunning, which makes me wonder if that was the reason he hired them in the first place. I'll admit that this isn't helped by the pictures of him, because while being tall and skinny is fine, having such a bony face and heavily shadowed eyes makes him look quite sinister, though I'm trying not to judge him on that.
For a book called Avoid Boring People, Watson can be surprisingly boring for a Nobel prize winner, going into the minutia of various experiments, and often comes across as very self-aggrandising, describing his constant efforts to get a higher salary and more prestige. To name each chapter after various manners picked up throughout his career is ironic given Watson's almost complete lack of them in his treatment of his peers.
I don't know if I should rate this book highly for the amount of information it contains and for Watson's candour in describing himself, talking about how even Francis Crick got angered by his narcissism, or penalise it for being a self-portrait of such an unpleasant person.
In the end I have decided to judge the book by how interested it kept me, which was very at the beginning and not at all in the second half. I can't help but contrast it with An Appetite for Wonder by Richard Dawkins, which several people have described as self-aggrandising, but which came across as witty and engaging to me, and without the pomposity that Avoid Boring People contained. Indeed, the main reason that I kept reading this book was an interest in how Watson would describe The Selfish Gene, which revolutionised the genetic understanding of evolutionary biology, but unfortunately this book stopped in the year The Selfish Gene was published (1976) without even mentioning it, which was disappointing.
Ultimately, this was simply a poorly written autobiography. To say a chimpanzee could write a better one would be too harsh, as I'm 99% sure that the chimpanzee in question did NOT write his own autobiography, but given the complete lack of evidence to the contrary, this is the default conclusion, and I would much rather reread Me Cheeta than this book.
3578543
The description of this book appealed to me on many levels. I was looking forward to a sort of left-of-center experience, within a relatable story about the struggles of being different in a society that expects you to conform. This book is that kind of story, to some degree, though it's also both more and less than what I expected.

Starting with the good stuff: The story moves at a good pace. The author's writing style is conversational and conspiratorial, bringing us into his world and sharing his secrets. We're right there with Yew's character, seeing what he sees and feeling his emotions.

Now the not-so-good stuff, which, for me, outweighs the good stuff. First, I did not like Yew's character at all. Since this book is written in first person, and we see the world only from Yew's perspective, liking the book becomes even more of a challenge because I didn't like my tour guide. He's self-involved, arrogant, and narrates as if he is the only enlightened one among a bunch of automatons.

We start out with Yew in early grade school. As a child, he's not much different than any other child in that he wants to play and explore, rather than sit and learn. Yet the narration treats his desire to be free as if it's a unique rebellion. His relationship with his parents is the typical push-pull, though here it's treated as if a horrible burden is placed on his shoulders to live up to his parents' expectations. He comes from a well-off family that treats him with love, and the poor pitiful me act simply feels shallow.

As an adult, Yew is no more likable. He flails about in his shallowness, while expounding on philosophy and touting Taoism as if he is superior in his mindset. At one point he states that he's angry because he sacrificed himself by going to college (free!), and his parents never thanked him for doing so. The dichotomy between the self-proclaimed enlightened free spirit and the egocentric ranting of the narrator is profound, and feels more like a parody than a serious statement.

Yew is the only character of substance within the book. We never really meet his parents. His friendships, for the most part, appear to be as shallow as he is. No dialogue feels genuine, and no relationships are explored to help us understand why he feels so out of sorts within his social circle.

In the end, I only felt irritation, as if I'd been forced to spend time with a particularly obnoxious person who believes himself superior while having absolutely no basis for that belief.

*I was provided with a free ebook copy in exchange for much honest review.*