Biographiles Arise!

With so many of us on LibraryThing reading biographies, we seem a strangely silent group. How about a little action? Surely those biographies, memoirs, or autobiographies that were under your Christmas tree deserve some comment. I just finished one of mine -- a very unusual one: Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939 by Katie Roiphe.

She traces (and fleshes out) seven "marriages a la mode". Every chapter revolves aound a crisis that occurred in each of these relationships -- everything from life-threatening illness to slightly drunk dinner table talks. All of the characters are literary figures: H.G. and Jane \Wells, Kathrine Mansfield and John Middleton Murray, Elizabeth Von Arnim and John Francis Russell, Vanessa and Clive Bell, Vera Brittain and George Gordon Catlin and even the Lesbian pair Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge. There is enough trauma, intrigue, drama, and yes love here to keep any true fan of biography eagerly engaged.

This is not your usual marital fare, and I found it a very good and distracting holiday read.

But I didn't have any biographies under my Christmas tree, she wailed!! I only got one book. Sad, isn't it? What a deprived person I am. ;-))

But let me recommend a couple from this last year's reading. Aaron Lansky,'s Outwitting history : the amazing adventures of a man who rescued a million Yiddish books and Studs Terkel's Touch and Go: A Memoir were among my favorites. A couple of very interesting gents!

I got three biographies this holiday, and I just recently finished reading one of them--Piaf: A Biography by Simone Berteaut. Absolutely fascinating and entertaining biography of the singer, Edith Piaf. (Incidentally, I also received the movie La Vie en Rose with Marion Cotillard, which I have yet to see).

Another gift was Sophie Tucker: First Lady of Show Business by Armond Fields. And rounding out my three, I bought Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time by Phyllis Rose with a Christmas gift certificate.

Has anyone read any of these?

Edited for touchstones

I got one book under the tree (and that was mostly a joke). But that doesn't mean I didn't get any biographies for Christmas: my SantaThing package arrived too early for me to not open it, and it included Alison Weir's Queen Isabella. So far (page 50) it's a good read.

Though not quite a biography by a strict definition thereof, Lynn Sherr's Failure is Impossible is close enough and another good read.

I'm surrounded by non-readers so they just give me gift cards to bookstores. ;-) But what I have started in the last week had been laying in my TBR pile for at least a year before I decided to dig it out. It's Benazir Bhutto's Daughter of Destiny: An Autobiography. I always thought she was such an interesting person and am shamed that this tragedy prompted me to finally crack open her book.

I got a couple of memoirs under the christmas tree. Mind you they were on 'my list' of things to get ;o))

Henrietta Taylor's two books on life in France Escaping and Lavender and Linen which have both been consumed already. An Alan Bennett book of memoirs and a couple of others.

I have managed to pick up a few others on my travels lately as well which I am eager to get into.

This is my first post ad I am still getting used to all this LibraryThing stuff.

I didn't get books either but I did get $100 towards the Kindle I have ordered from Amazon. I'll think about the bios I already have and maybe write some more reviews. We do need more discussion. I agree. Let's get on it.

Maybe this will stimulate some talk: Which Presidential biography/autobio have you enjoyed reading the most? Can it help us decide how to vote in November?

Maggie - please post how you like the Kindle when it happens, I'm intrigued... does it make it easier or harder for you to read?

I'll be so happy when I can tell you how it goes. I so want it to arrive. sigh.