Autobiographies in Hot town, summery in the city - 2017

You know the saying that you should never meet your heroes; the reality will never live up to the image you have created. Right?

Well, I think the same goes for autobiographies. I can only think of three that I’ve read, all bought for me by Rich because he needed a gift for me and knew I like the person.

The first was Paula Radcliffe. She’s an incredible runner and I have huge amounts of time for her achievements. But to gain the levels to which she rose one must give up pretty much everything else.

In short: she is as boring as all crap!!!

The next one was Anthony Kiedis, the lead singer of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. One of the ways to wow the reader with an autobiography is to be open and honest, to tell it as it really was without rose tints. And he really, really tried to do that. Reeeaaaaally tried. But he just never owned it, you know? The book started out with him talking about how he had beaten a heroin addiction and now injected pure oxygen into his veins. Not a metaphor, he actually injected oxygen. He was all holier thou, virtuous to a fault, as he described it.

Then, each time he tried to own a major fuck up in his life he managed to actually trace it back to someone from his past. And yes, his dad was a major arse but, at some stage you have to own your own shit.

In short, his autobiography tainted their music for me forever.

At the moment I’m reading Jake Shear’s (lead singer of Scissor Sisters) autobiography. Rich got it for me for the Christmas before last. Jake really does own his own shit, it’s a really honest story of his life. One of the reasons I’ve always thought he was great is because of the utter confidence he oozed on stage (having seen them several times). I loved the chemistry between the band when on stage. The problem with this autobiography is that this has dispelled my impression as myth. There were a lot of arguments in the band (certainly in the early days but that’s when we saw them), and he never fully believed in himself on stage until halfway through a show when the endorphins fully kicked in. Again, my impressions, memories, have been tainted slightly by this knowledge.

So, what genre of book do you prefer not to read and why?