I like them, can you suggest any you have read, ill wait here, thanks.
Autobiographies
- Thread starter Burndogg
- Start date
Moab is My Washpot - Stephen Fry (Encompasses the first part of his life, and if you're a fan, then it's a must-read. Regardless, it's brilliantly written.)
Keane's is a must read.
The Dirt by Motley Crue.
I read Charlie Chaplin's and it was really interesting.
Reading Alan Davies' at the moment and it's pretty good, charming and affable like him.
Reading Alan Davies' at the moment and it's pretty good, charming and affable like him.
Niall Quinn's is fantastic, no messing.
He's actually a really horrible bloke in real life, I've heard.
no spoilers you bastard
Fascinating book, there's not too many people in history who've lived a more interesting life than Malcolm X. From his father being killed horrifically by KKK types, to being raised by a single mum, to his life as a hustler in Harlem through to conversion to NoI's brand of Islam, self-education in prison, it's just one completely absorbing chapter after another.
His views on women are also frequently disgusting, and so are, at the time it was written, some of his views on the seperation of the races ('the white man is the devil' etc.) It's also fascinating because of the not very subtle way it was written to try and curry favour with Elijah Muhammad after he'd been kicked out of the nation of Islam.
Another autobiography about a black leader that I enjoyed was this:
He was born a slave in America's south and like a lot of black people in that era, he had to go to remarkable extremes to get himself an education. He then went onto take over a shitty, run-down farm and build it up into the country's number one University for blacks.
Like the Malcolm X book, this one's also interesting for the strategic way it was written. He had to try and relate the awful inequalities between the two races in the American South while at the same time having to bend over backwards to avoid offending the white people in it. This resulted in the book being full of embarrassingly gushing accounts about white people's generosity in donating to the University, their kindness in their personal dealings with him, the sorrow of slaves at having to leave their slave-owners, it's actually a bit cringe-worthy.
He's unfairly maligned as one of history's most eminent Uncle Toms as well as a shameless self-promoter, both of which may well be true, but neither are enough to cancel out the fact that he devoted his entire life to working truly insane hours every day to improve the lot of black people.
But the best autobiography I've ever read was this one:
Amazing book. Read it.
This was fecking amazing too:
Yeah, what you heard? He comes across like a damp puppy on QI