Lamest autobiographies you've read

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Knut

Ron Maclean's was a tough read. A bunch of short sentences and it was quite self-aggrandizing.

I hate Ron Maclean, he can choke on a bag of frozen donkey dongs.

[D as in David]

Originally Posted by Knut

Ron Maclean's was a tough read. A bunch of short sentences and it was quite self-aggrandizing.

I guess it would live up to my expectations then.

[CaptainYooh]

Most autobiographies are lame. I can't recall a single good one, actually. Except for professional writers, most celebrities can't write and hire ghost writers to do their writing for them. Writing an autobiography is an exercise in vanity to begin with. Whenever someone really wants to write and publish one, you can bet there either are some personal scores and arguments they want to settle or they have been offered money to publish one due to public interest in their persona. In either case, it will be glossed, skewed and lame. Even people that are otherwise very intelligent and very well-respected can't write a good one. Harley Hotchkiss' book "Hat Trick: A Life in the Hockey Rink, Oil Patch and Community" is incredibly boring considering how great he was in real life. "Burke's Law: A Life in Hockey" is also cringe-worthy.

[craigwd]

Originally Posted by habernac

I'm a big fan of autobiographies, I thought Aaron Ralston's was great.

I also think Aron Ralston's was a great book because he is able to re-examine what his life was like before the incident, realize places where he was a total d!ckhead and change.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Knut

Ron Maclean's was a tough read. A bunch of short sentences and it was quite self-aggrandizing.

Not even worth putting in the bathroom for emergency wipes when I'm out of toilet paper.

Ron is a grade A jack###

[metallicat]

I don’t have time to go through this thread, but the lamest and worst autobiography of all time was Sonny Barger. Absolute garbage book. May he rest in hell.

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by CaptainYooh

Most autobiographies are lame. I can't recall a single good one, actually. Except for professional writers, most celebrities can't write and hire ghost writers to do their writing for them. Writing an autobiography is an exercise in vanity to begin with. Whenever someone really wants to write and publish one, you can bet there either are some personal scores and arguments they want to settle or they have been offered money to publish one due to public interest in their persona. In either case, it will be glossed, skewed and lame. Even people that are otherwise very intelligent and very well-respected can't write a good one. Harley Hotchkiss' book "Hat Trick: A Life in the Hockey Rink, Oil Patch and Community" is incredibly boring considering how great he was in real life. "Burke's Law: A Life in Hockey" is also cringe-worthy.

I totally agree, most really suck. To me that just makes the good ones even better. Part of an autobiography is that you have to accept the inevitable self-serving nature, while hoping it just doesn't go overboard. That said I disagree that there aren't good ones. I really liked Burke's book, but the best autobiography to me is U.S. Grant's. It's not as good as the biography written by Chernow, but the autobiography is still great. I love getting a sense of what the writer was thinking, even if it is inherently biased. As long as it isn't over the top

[darockwilder]

Originally Posted by Yamer

Wrestling autobiographies as a sub-genre is so fascinating. In such a small, protected industry the stories are wild and varied. Everyone has an opinion on everyone else, and nearly every single book tells an entirely different version of reality regarding the same space of time.



The Diana Hart book is infamous in wrestling circles as being a sensationalized hit piece on the likes of the Hart's and the extended family. She even claimed that Davey Boy had drugged and raped her repeatedly. I've never read it but it's supposed to be a trainwreck of utter bull####.



One that hasn't been pulled from shelves but gives what I imagine is a similar vibe is Pure Dynamite by Tom Billington, aka The Dynamite Kid. The ramblings and re-imaginings of history from an extremely bitter man. It's one of the lamer autobiographies I've read as most of it is rubbish, but you definitely get a sense of the misery in which the man lived.



The pinnacle of these books, IMO, is Bret Hart's. This is likely due to the intense attention he gave to documenting his life as it was unfolding. It can come off as self-aggrandizing and was criticized at the time for that reason. However, over time it's turning out that Bret was right about a lot of things, and maybe wrestlers and the industry should have taken themselves a little more seriously.

My friend got that book and I borrowed it. For some reason I seem to remember the very start of the book involved her getting suplexed onto the hood of a car? In the driveway of the Hart House? Am I making that up?

[troutman]

None of you admit reading The Art Of The Deal?

[MegaErtz]

I read The Art of the Deal and actually liked it, despite being the furthest thing from a Trumper you're every likely to find.

The worst autobiography I've ever read was by Matthew Perry. Give that one a miss.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by MegaErtz

I read The Art of the Deal and actually liked it, despite being the furthest thing from a Trumper you're every likely to find.

The worst autobiography I've ever read was by Matthew Perry. Give that one a miss.

Thanks for that as I almost bought it a month ago.

[jayswin]

For me it was Bruce Sprinsgsteen. Amazing career and I was really excited when it came out, but man it was a ramble.

Like others have said, celebrities just aren't great at summing up their lives in an entertaining, good read. They want to tell long stories, they want to settle things, they want to dispel things that have been said about them.

But in Springsteen's case, it was 500 some odd pages, small print and it was like an old man just sat down and started right from the beginning of life, plodding through everything that happened. I bailed halfway through.

[jayswin]

Part of it is because he's a kind, thoughtful person, which is a great quality. But he really wanted to speak to everyone that he encountered in his life, and he had a tendency to really hammer home details like a bored senior waxing poetic of the old days. "I remember walking down 12th street back in the late 60's, the old elk tree hovering over 5th and 12th, you'd walk around that and......."

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by darockwilder

My friend got that book and I borrowed it. For some reason I seem to remember the very start of the book involved her getting suplexed onto the hood of a car? In the driveway of the Hart House? Am I making that up?

It wasn't at the start of the book iirc, Davy showed up stoned or something like that to the Hart house and suplexed her on a car.

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

The Rocks was awful, it was written in character and completely cringe worthy.

Can you read what The Rock is writing?