Booking Through Thursday is hosted by Deb:Which do you prefer: Biographies written about someone? Or Autobiographies written by the actual person (and/or ghost-writer)?
We had a BTT question once about biographies and memoirs, if we were interested in them in the first place, and I wrote that there were only specific ones I would be interested in.
So if I were indeed actually interested in them, I think it could go both ways as to who the author is of a biography. When written by someone else, you have the illusion of someone objective writing the other person's story, as opposed to an opinionated view written by that person being written about, and I would assume that the whole story to something controversial would not be given. Yet, if written by someone else, I would also assume that they would not be commissioned to write an "authorized" biography of someone that would paint them in a negative light. So, in reality, do we ever really get the whole story?
I have the late Patrick Swayze's autobiographical book to read soon, and I am glad it is written before his death and in his own words. Yet, since I haven't the read the book yet, I hope deep down that it doesn't make him sound silly or unintelligent. In this case, or in any case, what if the writing itself is so poor? What if the author expresses opinions that are so adverse to my own opinion, that would make me dislike this same person I otherwise would have admired? So we'll see, I haven't gone down the autobiography road in a long time, and Patrick Swayze's book will be the first for me. I hope that it is written well and that I finish the book still having the same sense of respect for him, if not more. I will always remember watching Dirty Dancing over and over and over, and absolutely loving that sense of adoration I hold for him as he was dancing with 'Baby' on that stage.
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