Usually, celebrity autobiographies are pretty boring. Even if you like the actor, it’s tedious to listen to them blather on about their craft and how lucky they are and blah blah blah (the obvious exceptions are the WW2 celebrities, who made movies and punched Nazis). Neil Patrick Harris gets this-not enough to resist the urge of writing an autobiography-and makes his book pleasant and clever-and surprisingly heartfelt. Framed as a Choose Your Own Adventure book, the reader is an active participant in the book, flipping […]
NPH + CYOA = Pretty OK
This is a Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) book written by Neil Patrick Harris (NPH). I repeat, CYOA, NPH, so out of the gate, it’s strong. I got this book for Christmas (thanks mom!) and was pretty excited about it, as I’m a big fan of the legen(dary) man. Like a lot of budding nerds, I was a voracious reader of the CYOA format in my youth, and thought that the conceit was clever. After reading it, I’m glad I did and enjoyed it, but […]
Not So Legend-waitforit-dary
As I started this book I told my husband, a Neil Patrick Harris fan as well, I wasn’t sure how this idea would play out. As a kid I’d ruin ‘choose your own adventure’ books my bookmarking parts I wasn’t sure about so I could return to them if I was disappointed in my outcome. So perhaps I wasn’t the target audience here. The first night I read through what I could gather was an incredibly condensed, mostly true account of NPH’s life so far. […]
It’s Gonna Be Legen–Wait For It
I’ve gotten a couple books under my belt so far this year, but I wanted to start on a high note. I had really been looking forward to reading NPH’s autobiography and when I got it for Christmas, I dove right in. To put it shortly, it did not disappoint. I loved CYOA books in elementary and middle school. I was the kind of reader who would check out all possible options before picking one, always trying to get the best ending possible out of it. […]
Amazing Amy is a “Cool Girl”
I recently finished reading Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. I wanted to read it before I saw the David Fincher film. In a way, I wish I had seen the film first, as the book was so fresh in my mind, and so riveting a read, that I may not have been as blown away by the movie as I could have been. Gone Girl is structured as a “he said,” “she said” novel. It would not be giving too much away to say that both the he and […]
Kind of Meh
Three Stars (two for the book and one for the premise) As we made our way to the gate before a two-hour flight home last night, we spotted this book. I knew it had come out recently, and realized that the format (ostensibly a ‘choose your own adventure’-style autobiography) would probably lend itself better to a physical book. I picked it up and read it continuously, from waiting in line to board the plane until we caught a shuttle to our car back home. I […]