Take a photo of a barcode or cover
alexblackreads 's review for:
Reread 6/11/2020
So I did get around to picking up the audiobook of this, and I think I honestly liked that experience a little bit less. Mostly I love hearing celebrities narrate their own books, but I just don't think Ben Folds has the most expressive reading voice. While I was listening, it was like I could visualize him just sitting in a studio reading off the page. It was a bit dry. Not terrible, but I put off listening to it for a few days because I realized he was putting me to sleep a bit.
I guess just disappointing all around, but not terrible. Still a solid three stars and I'm still glad I gave it a go.
***
I want to start this review by saying that I'm a huge fan of Ben Folds. He was my first concert at age 13 (thanks to my sister) so for literally half my life I've been listening to his music. I was so excited to pick up this book and came away largely disappointed. It's not that this book was bad by any means, it's just I had such high expectations and this book didn't hit them.
I would recommend this book to anyone who's a fan of Ben Folds and already interested in this book. I did learn more about his life and his music career, and I found a lot of the information itself quite interesting. I'm quite glad I read it, but also glad I got it from the library instead of picking it up full price from a bookstore like I was considering.
One of the things I loved about this book was how his personality shined through. The way he wrote sounded like the way he talks. I love the way he discussed his life and his past mistakes and didn't try to gloss over them. He'd say point blank, this was a crappy, immature, selfish thing I did. But he also didn't gloss over the fact that a number of those crappy things helped his career. One theme throughout the book was that what's been good for his music career hasn't always been good for his personal life (a paraphrased line from one of his songs).
But it fell flat for me in several regards. First, while I liked the themes, a lot of them seemed forced and hammered in. He sounded very much in sections like he was trying to teach you something, but it wasn't a profound lesson or often anything that needed paragraphs devoted specifically to it. I'd rather he have just focused on himself and his own life rather than lessons for the reader.
I also felt rather disconnected from him. I enjoy memoirs because so often you get such a close perspective of the person's life. You learn so much about them and their relationships and the way they think and live day to day. There was a little of that, especially early on, but this book was heavily focused on his music career specifically. He skipped over a lot of his personal relationships or just mentioned them very briefly. It's not that I wanted all the sordid details of his divorces, but I just wanted more of his life. I never felt close to him in this book, and that's what I'm really looking for in memoirs.
I think someone who's a musician (and also a fan of Ben Folds, of course) would probably enjoy this book more than me. I don't really understand music in the sense of creating it. I quite like listening to it, but I can discuss it or think about it the way I can literature. A lot of his discussion on music in this didn't mean a whole lot to me because of that. Which I totally don't blame him for, I was just looking for a more personal focused memoir and that wasn't what this book was trying to do.
At times it felt like he was focusing on kind of surface level points about his career that the majority of his fans would already know. There were full chapters on both Rock this Bitch and The Fake Album, and it just felt kind of unnecessary in a book that's already intended for fans. He wasn't doing deep dives into basic subjects, just a chapter explaining what they were and how they came to be. Apart from those two specific examples, that felt like how he covered most of the topics in this book. I always wanted him to get more personal and more in depth, and take more time with these subjects. He talked about his mental health at the very end for a page or two and that was the first time in this entire book about his life that he mentioned having panic attacks. I just wanted more.
It also felt more like chronological vignettes than a single cohesive narrative. Each chapter was a few pages about a specific topic that only sometimes connected to the next chapter in the story. It's not a style I particularly enjoy. I much prefer longer form narratives and this felt a little choppy to me.
But with all my negatives, this book was still worthwhile to me and I'd still recommend it if you're a fan of his. It's interesting to learn new things about his career and his life. I actually plan on rereading this via audiobook in a few months because I wonder if that will be a better experience, and even if not, I'll be quite happy to listen to Ben Folds talk at me for a few hours. Not a bad book by any means, just not really what I was looking for.
So I did get around to picking up the audiobook of this, and I think I honestly liked that experience a little bit less. Mostly I love hearing celebrities narrate their own books, but I just don't think Ben Folds has the most expressive reading voice. While I was listening, it was like I could visualize him just sitting in a studio reading off the page. It was a bit dry. Not terrible, but I put off listening to it for a few days because I realized he was putting me to sleep a bit.
I guess just disappointing all around, but not terrible. Still a solid three stars and I'm still glad I gave it a go.
***
I want to start this review by saying that I'm a huge fan of Ben Folds. He was my first concert at age 13 (thanks to my sister) so for literally half my life I've been listening to his music. I was so excited to pick up this book and came away largely disappointed. It's not that this book was bad by any means, it's just I had such high expectations and this book didn't hit them.
I would recommend this book to anyone who's a fan of Ben Folds and already interested in this book. I did learn more about his life and his music career, and I found a lot of the information itself quite interesting. I'm quite glad I read it, but also glad I got it from the library instead of picking it up full price from a bookstore like I was considering.
One of the things I loved about this book was how his personality shined through. The way he wrote sounded like the way he talks. I love the way he discussed his life and his past mistakes and didn't try to gloss over them. He'd say point blank, this was a crappy, immature, selfish thing I did. But he also didn't gloss over the fact that a number of those crappy things helped his career. One theme throughout the book was that what's been good for his music career hasn't always been good for his personal life (a paraphrased line from one of his songs).
But it fell flat for me in several regards. First, while I liked the themes, a lot of them seemed forced and hammered in. He sounded very much in sections like he was trying to teach you something, but it wasn't a profound lesson or often anything that needed paragraphs devoted specifically to it. I'd rather he have just focused on himself and his own life rather than lessons for the reader.
I also felt rather disconnected from him. I enjoy memoirs because so often you get such a close perspective of the person's life. You learn so much about them and their relationships and the way they think and live day to day. There was a little of that, especially early on, but this book was heavily focused on his music career specifically. He skipped over a lot of his personal relationships or just mentioned them very briefly. It's not that I wanted all the sordid details of his divorces, but I just wanted more of his life. I never felt close to him in this book, and that's what I'm really looking for in memoirs.
I think someone who's a musician (and also a fan of Ben Folds, of course) would probably enjoy this book more than me. I don't really understand music in the sense of creating it. I quite like listening to it, but I can discuss it or think about it the way I can literature. A lot of his discussion on music in this didn't mean a whole lot to me because of that. Which I totally don't blame him for, I was just looking for a more personal focused memoir and that wasn't what this book was trying to do.
At times it felt like he was focusing on kind of surface level points about his career that the majority of his fans would already know. There were full chapters on both Rock this Bitch and The Fake Album, and it just felt kind of unnecessary in a book that's already intended for fans. He wasn't doing deep dives into basic subjects, just a chapter explaining what they were and how they came to be. Apart from those two specific examples, that felt like how he covered most of the topics in this book. I always wanted him to get more personal and more in depth, and take more time with these subjects. He talked about his mental health at the very end for a page or two and that was the first time in this entire book about his life that he mentioned having panic attacks. I just wanted more.
It also felt more like chronological vignettes than a single cohesive narrative. Each chapter was a few pages about a specific topic that only sometimes connected to the next chapter in the story. It's not a style I particularly enjoy. I much prefer longer form narratives and this felt a little choppy to me.
But with all my negatives, this book was still worthwhile to me and I'd still recommend it if you're a fan of his. It's interesting to learn new things about his career and his life. I actually plan on rereading this via audiobook in a few months because I wonder if that will be a better experience, and even if not, I'll be quite happy to listen to Ben Folds talk at me for a few hours. Not a bad book by any means, just not really what I was looking for.