Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Never have your dog stuffed - Alan Alda

I think I worked out why I seemed to be having a reading drought... I was trying to read the wrong sort of book. Apparently I'm over fiction at the moment and want to read non fiction. I finished The Lost Mother by Anne Summers and have powered through Alan Alda's autobiography - Never Have Your Dog Stuffed.
About the book
The son of a popular actor and a loving, but mentally ill mother, he spent his early childhood  backstage in the erotic and comic world of burlesque and went on after early struggles to achieve extraordinary success in his profession. Yet Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is not a memoir of show business ups and downs. It is a moving and funny story of a boy growing into a man who then realizes he has only begun to grow. It is the story of turning points in his life, events that would make him what he is if only he could survive them.
My Thoughts
I have to say that as I read this book I could hear Alan Alda's voice in my head. It is not an unpleasant voice to have! His story is told in a gently and funny way. All the way through I kept thinking "wow". His childhood is so far removed from my own. Towards the end the amount of details trails off. His way of writing is almost as if he is in the room talking to you, which I quite enjoyed especially as I had his voice narrating in my mind anyway.