I read this for the "a celebrity memoir" part of my 2018 reading challenge, and it was fantastic. I laughed out loud in every chapter, and loved all of the insights into his life. I already loved John before this, and love him even more now. ( )

Fun read, especially of interest to musical theater fans ( )

After listening to Mr. Barrowman's talk at the Gallifrey One convention, I went out and bought his two autobiographies. This is the first one. It is written in a breezy, open style, and is quite readable. It covers his family's move from Glasgow to Illinois when he was in grade school, giving him the opportunity to develop two distinct accents and ways of talking. It chronicles his theatre (Anything Goes, etc.), movie (The Producers, etc.), singing (several albums) and TV (Doctor Who and so on) experiences so far. It also notes that he is gay. In connection with roles, he noted that he lost the part of the lead in "Will and Grace" to a straight actor, because Barrowman didn't act "gay enough". I quite enjoyed the book. ( )

I decided I loved this book when Barrowman started his autobiography with a recap of a Matrix-style wall vault on a busy street, inadvertently almost taking out an old lady.

It's a coming out story, a work-hard-and-be-beautiful story, and a tale about a kid who loves to dance. Granted, the actor seems to enjoy the sound of his voice. To his credit, the voice is rather showbiz, slightly self-centered, and definitely entertaining. I stretched this one out to a few sittings because he made me laugh.

... and yes, I started reading it because I'm a bit in love with his character on Doctor Who. Don't judge. ( )

The Book Report: The life and times of fabulous Captain Jack Harkness, I mean I mean JOHN BARROWMAN of course I do, silly me to get the two confused, he of the TV show Torchwood, in all his dimpled and smiling glory. With butt shots. Two.

My Review: One knows what one is getting with celebrity memoirs, right? Whitewash, excuses, justifications, and a little catty score-settling. It takes a pretty damned big ego to write an "autobiography" (which this ain't, it's a memoir) in the first place; to do it before the age of sixty is, well, it's a bit uppish.

Yeah, so what, pretty people get to do what they want. And Barrowman is nothing if not pretty. Very pretty. Very very pretty. That he is also a talented actor, a fine musical-theatre singer, and a high-maintenance mess of a man makes it all the more fun that he didn't wait to write the book (with his sister, Carole). He takes it upon himself to tell us the tale of what brought Clan Barrowman from Glasgow to Illinois, what made the clan tick, and what happened as a result of this daring and quite unsettling move, made in the Malaise Years of the middle 1970s.

Wait. Make that, he tells us the tale of what happened to John of the Clan Barrowman. This is a book that relentlessly focuses on John Barrowman, contextualizing his life with the necessary information, but skimping on the lives and times of the other people in his orbit. Quite forgivable in a memoir; less so in an autobiography, which is more about the life-and-times, less about the lifestyle.

He's not forthcoming with details of his personal life, eg what his feelings were, what his thoughts were, around his coming out. He doesn't fail to mention them, understand; it's simply that, as is the gentleman's privilege, he goes very soft-focus and moves on quickly from the topic. He writes his most passionate, his most emotional, and his most harrowing stuff when he writes about the descent of a friend into madness. It's an amazing, painful, and quite wonderful passage in the book. It brings into stark relief, though, the absence of these very qualities in some other passages in his life that could have used the same treatment.

That criticism aside, I would recommend the book to most all gay guys because here, gents, here is someone whose joie de vivre and whose enthusiasm for his work have led him down some fascinating garden paths, all the while declining to be stereotyped. It's a very instructive path he's on, for the most of us who aren't in the least famous or likely to get there. It's good to see someone skiing ahead on the trail, hollering back, "there's a crevasse over here, don't go there!" every so often. Good on him that he chose to do it. Good for us that it is, on balance, a fun book to read.

The butt shots don't hurt. ( )