[[Category:Autobiography|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Autobiography]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->
{{newreview
|author= Ngugi wa Thiong'o
|summary=It's more than two years since I read [[Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh|Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery]] but the memories have stayed with me. I had thought then that a book about brain surgery might sound as though I was taking my pleasures too sadly, but the book was superb - and very easy reading and when I heard about ''Admissions'' I decided to treat myself to an audio download, particularly as Henry Marsh was narrating. I knew that my expectations were unreasonably high, but how did the book do?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1474603866</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anna Kendrick
|title=Scrappy Little Nobody
|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Celebrity autobiographies. It's a genre long tainted by the examples of people who clearly didn't deserve to be a celebrity, let alone have a ghost-writer create their book, and by those who did so little but managed to churn out five memoirs before they were even thirty. But more recently it's become a way of staking a claim to importance for female comics. They've not all written autobiographies, as Bridget Christie proved, but enough have to provide for a rapidly-filling shelf at the bookstore. 2016 we had Amy Schumer winning a GoodReads award, Lena Dunham's been at it, and we've also got Anna Kendrick. Now she's not a strict comic – not all of her films are designed to make you laugh, and some of them that are just don't – but this has to be in the same bracket.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471156834</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author= Chris Packham
|title= Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir
|rating= 4
|genre= Autobiography
|summary=''Everything seemed alive in that scintillating moment and as the gleams gyrated and glittered I imagined I could see their tiny twinkling hearts, seeding the sparks that made them so very vivid. And then I wiped away the spilled slop of the river, polished the glare and thrust my fingers into the sparkle jar to stir the soft tickles of the swirling tinsel of fishes.''
''Fingers in the Sparkle Jar'' is a unique memoir, written in a distinct style quite unlike any other. Chris Packham, well-known TV presenter and wildlife expert, takes us back to his childhood in 1960s Southampton, and we meet a curious child who doesn't quite fit in to the societal norm. Fast forward a few years, and the chasm widens, leading to bullying, name-calling and beatings at the hands of the local thugs at his comprehensive school.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785033506</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author= Jo Pavey
|title= This Mum Runs
|rating= 4
|genre= Autobiography
|summary= I am something of a self-confessed running addict: I think nothing of hitting the roads for 50 miles a week, and spend much of my time searching for races to run all over the country. That is, until I wound up with a persistent sports injury, hung up my running shoes for nearly a year, and switched the road to the pool. At the time I thought nothing could alleviate the misery of not being able to run; but now I wish I had had Jo Pavey's autobiography, ''This Mum Runs'', to keep me company because the elite athlete’s account of the Olympics, injury, family, and life in general falls nothing short of inspirational.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224100432</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Patrice Chaplin
|title=The Stone Cradle
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary= 'The Stone Cradle' is a remarkable book from the author Patrice Chaplin. It is a biography, the third in a series set in the Catalonian city of Girona. It is also an enduring love story and a journey into mystery and spirituality. The city has drawn artists, writers and philosophers for centuries. Rich in Kabbalistic thought through Azriel, the most famous student of Isaac the Blind, it has always been a home for mysticism and secrets. The magnetism and resonance of the city has had a hold on Patrice Chaplin since she first visited it in the fifties. The series of books detail her journey and her encounters with the esoteric society that have protected its mysteries since ancient times. 'The Stone Cradle' also gives a new life and direction to the mysteries of Rennes le Chateau, the small French village, made famous by the Da Vinci Code and the Holy Blood and The Holy Grail. Linking the two places through sacred geometry to the mountain of Canigou.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190557083X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author= Min Kym
|title= Gone
|rating= 4
|genre= Autobiography
|summary= Gone is a fascinating peephole into the world of solo musicians and their instruments. When Min Kym's 300 year old Stradivarius violin was stolen in 2010, the newspapers were eager to tell the story; this memoir is Kym's side of it, from her early childhood and education at the Purcell School (their youngest ever pupil) to the recovery of the Strad and beyond.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241263158</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author= Cathryn Kemp
|title= Coming Clean
|rating= 4
|genre= Autobiography
|summary= When Cathryn develops acute pancreatitis it leaves her in intense pain. With no obvious cure, she is prescribed strong painkillers to manage the painful flare ups. Yet still she bounces in and out of hospital, from one 'expert' to another, undergoes needless operations when Consultants say ''I know there's no evidence for this, but we may as well try it''…the list goes on. As time passes, the pain remains but is joined by a new friend: a dangerous addiction to painkillers, prescribed at many times above the usual dose and soon to have a damaging effect on her health.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749958073</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Charlotte Rampling, Christophe Bataille and William Hobson (translator)
|title=Who I Am
|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=I'll drop all pretence of plot summary, and set the stall out, just as this book does. Here's a quote from page one – Who I Am: ''not a biography''. With the name of one of cinema's most esteemed actresses on the front, you might assume it to be an autobiography for a start, but before that quote we'll already have been disabused of that thought, for apart from a couple of quotes the first six and a half pages of the book is addressed ''to'' Charlotte Rampling, and not apparently by her. There are gnomic paragraphs and lyrics here, in italics that suggest they are direct quotes, leaving the rest of the text here to be both a collaborative look at the star's background, and a musing perusal of the nature of creating the book in the first place. And that stall I was setting out certainly doesn't have the right number of legs if I don't mention this book can be read in well under an hour.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785781936</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Peter Korn
|title=Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary='My intuition from the day I first picked up a hammer was that making things with a commitment to quality would lead to a good life,' Peter Korn writes. As an aimless, free-spirited University of Pennsylvania student, he moved to Nantucket Island to earn the rest of his college credits through independent study and happened to be offered a carpentry job. That arbitrary job choice at the age of twenty would come to define the rest of his career. Manual labour was all new to him, but 'from the start there was a mind/body wholeness to carpentry that put it way ahead of what I imagined office work to be.'
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784705063</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author= Henning Mankell
|title= Quicksand
|rating= 5
|genre= Autobiography
|summary= How do you judge a book? Not by its cover, we're told. In my case, often by the number of turned down corners or post-it-note-marked pages by the time I've finished reading it. Sometimes, by whether I worry about leaving its characters to fend for themselves while I take a break…or by how much of it stays with me afterwards or for how long. In this case, it doesn't matter. However, I judge ''Quicksand'' the judgement comes up the same. This collection of vignettes from an ageing, possibly dying, writer looking back on his own life is as powerful as it is simple, as easy to read as it is impossible to forget.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784701564</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sue Klebold
|title=A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of the Columbine Tragedy
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Sue Klebold's son Dylan was one of the shooters at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Her book opens on 20 April 1999, the day of the shootings. Klebold remembers the confusion and dread she and her husband and older son felt when they learned something was happening at Columbine. Early on they were told Dylan was a suspect, and before long they also knew he was dead, but they didn't know how he was involved or how he died. From the start, though, it was clear that there would be fallout: one of the first things they had to do, before they even cremated their son, was have a clandestine meeting with a lawyer. In the months that followed, they were essentially in hiding in their own hometown.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753556812</amazonuk>
}}
