Next Week I'll Be Going Through The Christmas Archive Categories, Be Warned! (Top Ten Biographies)

Member Name: jillmurphy

Product:	Top Ten Biographies
Date:	18/10/02 (217 review reads)
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Next up on my suggestions for literary Christmas presents I'm going for adults that don't like reading fiction. I know how they feel. I'm off fiction at the moment. I do that. It's a bit like overloading on Thornton's Continentals and finding yourself yearning for a bar of plain old Cadbury's Dairy Milk or putting It's A Wonderful Life on the video after a jag of straining your brain with art house films. I'm a bit bored with pretend stories. I'm reading lives just now. I like lives; they're interesting. And I reckon they'd make good Christmas presents.

LIGHT MY FIRE ? RAY MANZAREK (for fans of music)

Hmm?.what to say here? This isn't a well-written book ? not for me (sorry Ray) but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it anyway. Ray Manzarek, founder member of The Doors and perhaps Jim Morrison's closest friend writes of his life, the band, Jim and all the madness of those years with a really touching affection. I found it so sad that the mystery surrounding Jim Morrison's death is an equal mystery and an equally unsatisfying close to a hugely significant relationship for Ray Manzarek too. It's an honest and heartfelt book, although I'm too miserly to allow it to be a well-written one, it's also full of shameless name-dropping but it gives a fascinating insight into the bursts of creativity amid sheer anarchy which made The Doors so hugely influential.

Arrow; ISBN: 0099280655, Amazon £6.99

WHAT AM I DOING HERE ? BRUCE CHATWIN (for the backpackers and those with travel in their hearts)

Reading Bruce Chatwin makes you wish you'd travelled more and he really makes me wish I could write "better than what I do". Sadly, he died from AIDS before he'd had time to write nearly enough. What Am I Doing Here is a characteristically witty title from a man who saw the world through his travels, his friends and his own, unique perspective. It&#
39;s a collection of writings about the places he went, the people he met and the impressions he gained. I love his writing. It's dreamy and gentle at times, witty and acerbic at others. Go to China and Russia with Bruce Chatwin, meet his friends just drink him up really? I'm sure you won?t be sorry you did. I only wish that he could have written more.

Vintage; ISBN: 0099769816, Amazon £6.39

BOY and GOING SOLO - ROALD DAHL (for absolutely anyone you know, any where, any time)

These two books can be read with equal ease and enjoyment by anyone aged from eight to eighty. Boy is the story of Dahl's babyhood and schooldays and in it you will find so many of the sources and inspirations for those delicious children's books. My favourite character is the old lady in the sweetshop near his prep school, the blueprint for every evil Granny or Witch who ever danced an evil jig across the pages of his stories. Going Solo tells the story of Dahl as a young man, working for an oil company in Africa, terrified of snakes, and drafted into the RAF at the start of World War Two. Super, wonderful, fascinating stuff which is sure to interest, but above all, raise a smile.

Puffin Books; ISBN: 0141311401
Puffin Books; ISBN: 0141311428, Amazon £9.58 for both

THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER ? ALISON WEIR (for fans of mystery and intrigue)

I really like Alison Weir. She is bringing historical biography to all of us in an interesting and accessible way, just like the small screen's pet don, David Starkey, if not better. I'm using The Princes In The Tower for this one, although I'd happily recommend anything else she's written, because it's about the most famous whodunnit of all time, the murder of the two little princes, sons of Edward IV. Whodunnit? Well, Alison analyses all the available information and it's fascinating. She thinks she knows whodunnit, probably. Are you for or against Richard III?
I think that little poser is one of those questions we?ve all got our own feeling on but don?t know why. Alison has, but she knows why and entertains you telling you all about it.

Pimlico; ISBN: 0712673792, Amazon £7.19

C ? BECAUSE COWARDS GET CANCER TOO ? JOHN DIAMOND (for anyone who likes a good story of personal courage)

It's an easy read by a newspaper columnist suffering from terminal throat cancer. Easy read? Sounds odd I know, but it is. Chatty and humorous, accessible and interesting, sad but intelligent, "C" makes some hugely valuable points in a highly accessible way. A hypochondriac and parent of two small children facing the terminal disease of throat cancer, John Diamond doesn't make you cry for the tragedy of it all - he manages to make you laugh, admire and understand as he takes you through the course of the disease that eventually killed him. Did you know illness, chemo, surgery, even analgesic morphine and all the other associated trappings of disease can seem banal to the sufferer? I did, but if you don't, I think it's something worth knowing. I think Diamond's book is a landmark in cancer awareness.

Vermilion; ISBN: 0091816653, Amazon £6.39

BIRTHDAY LETTERS ? TED HUGHES (for anyone who's interested in the literary world)

I wonder if you think poetry is cheating in an opinion on biographies? I don't think you should because this is some of the most interesting I've read. I?m not keen on Ted Hughes as a rule ? all those crows and odd images. I like prettier stuff, sorry Ted. However, Birthday Letters is a must read for anyone that knows the story of Ted Hughes and his marriage to Sylvia Plath, also a poet and who committed suicide after their divorce. Hughes endured years of blame after her death and only spoke out about their relationship in this series of over eighty poems when he knew his own demise approached. They read like a flood pouring through y
ou and perhaps that's what they are. If that's not interesting I don't know what is.

Faber and Faber; ISBN: 0571194737, Amazon £7.19

THE BELL JAR ? SYLVIA PLATH (buy twinned with Birthday Letters)

If you thought Ted Hughes was a cheat then this one is worse. Sorry, it's a novel. I think though, that it counts here. Hughes and Plath are one of the biggest and saddest stories in literary relationships in recent times. This is a loosely autobiographical novel about Esther who suffers a nervous breakdown. She's a bright college girl with everything going for her and we watch through her eyes her breakdown and subsequent treatment. It's beautifully written and is a breathtaking insight into mental illness. I found this book shocking, disturbing, sad and enlightening the first time I read it and my reactions haven't changed an iota each time I've read it since. So for part of the background to the Hughes/Plath story this is a good place to start.

Faber and Faber; ISBN: 0571081789, Amazon £6.39

PRICK UP YOUR EARS ? JOHN LAHR (for anyone who likes a naughty laugh)

Joe Orton the playwright was bludgeoned to death in 1967 by his lover Kenneth Halliwell who then himself committed suicide. Oh no, you say, another miserable read, what is this woman doing to us? Well again, no it's not. Have you seen the film? Well even if you have you should read the book too. Joe Orton was vital, intense and charismatic. He lived life in the fast lane, so manic, rather like one of his best known plays the farce What The Butler Saw. Living pre-Wolfenden when homosexuality was still illegal Orton's lifestyle was all the more outrageous. Scandal surrounded him. Success and his own anarchic nature proved his downfall as poor Ken could only struggle and fail to keep up. This is a funny and sympathetic book that traces Joe and Ken from their days of crudely defacing library books in the hopes of offending th
e Women's Institute (sacrilege I know), through fame and fortune to their final times together. And it's worth it just for the title pun, don't you think? Grin!

Bloomsbury; ISBN: 0747560145, Amazon £7.19

THE CONFESSIONS ? ALEISTER CROWLEY (um.. for the courageous readers amongst your pals, and if you can find it)

Tee hee - this I'm afraid is my comedy entry, that is, if it's permissible to label the arch black-magician as a comedy entry. I bought this book on a whim in a second hand bookshop and paid pots for it too. So I had to read it and I had to read it all. Hideously complex, gloriously funny, pretentious, outrageous, offensive ? I'm not sure how to describe it. Aleister Crowley, born into the Plymouth Brethren the West Country evangelist sect grew up to take rebelling from upbringing to extreme. At nearly a thousand pages it'll probably need months of a life to get through it all and I wonder if anyone but me actually has! Weirdness aside though, it?s fascinating to read of a man searching for self-awareness through mysticism, sex and drugs the best part of a century before the 1960s and flower power. Be aware though, this book is not for everyone. Crowley is held in what you might call rather low regard by many people. So do your homework before purchase!

Second hand only, lots to choose from for under a tenner at www.abebooks.co.uk

AVA'S MAN - RICK BRAGG (for people interested not in the movers and shakers of our world, but in the little people)

The successor to his autobiography, Redbirds, this is Bragg's story of Charlie Bundrum, the grandfather he never knew. He pieced it together using the rich vein of story-telling tradition and strong family tradition that exists in the southern United States. It's a super story of a good man, born into troubled times, one who lived through the Great Depression but never allowed his family to go hungry. Charlie Bundrum was the
sort of larger than life, warts and all person whose daughters still wept when they told stories about him over forty years after he died. Bragg is a great writer, from that happy stock of direct, honest, wry, contemporary American writers who use the written word exactly as the spoken one. It's accessible but intelligent and as honest and heartfelt as can be.

Alfred A. Knopf; ISBN: 0375724443, Amazon £7.48

And there you go. Something for almost everyone I hope. Don't you dare tell me you're stuck for a present!

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