Big Booty Bios! Sorry, that’s just fun to say and I got a little distracted. I don’t know why, but for some reason this year I have been reading large, gigantic, 500+ page tomes. I don’t know about you, but when I’m in the right frame of mind, I love me a really big book. There’s just something about getting lost in the myriad pages that makes me happy. My 2019 collection of big books includes both fiction (The Fiery Cross by Gabaldon or Fall by Neal Stephenson) and nonfiction, specifically bios (big booty bios! Sorry – I’ll stop…maybe). Since there were so many good ones, I’m going to share with you:
Amanda’s Four Favorite Big Booty Bios of 2019!
A few years ago, I realized that I know almost nothing about our past presidents. So I set out on a quest to rectify that by reading one biography on each man in chronological order. First I meant to do one a month, then it spread out to one a year. Now here we are three years later and I’m just finishing up #2. (To be fair, I continued on to The Art of Power about Thomas Jefferson, by Jon Meacham, so I’m at least caught up with my one a year goal.) I really enjoyed this book and now have a much greater respect for our second president. Very thorough and yet captivating.
I have loved Dr. Seuss since I was little. His section was always a stop for me when I went to my local library. My mom hated reading him out loud though, and would always make my dad do it – which he did with relish. And voices. This book gave me even greater respect for Dr. Seuss and his work ethic. If I’m honest, I don’t think that we would have been friends because he was just a bit rowdy for me, but I still love his books. Excellent insight into one of our greatest American writers.
Robin was Mork before I knew he was Robin. I grew up watching Mork and Mindy reruns and loving Robin Williams. When I got older, I stumbled across some of his old stand-up routines, probably on Comedy Central. I was a little shocked at how blue he could get, but I was laughing too hard to care. I had no idea he trained with John Houseman at Juliard. I loved all the backstory I got with Itzkoff’s book. It was also fun because the audio book I listened to (via Overdrive) was read by Fred Berman who did his best Robin William’s impression when reading quotes from the great comedian. At first I thought this might get annoying, but Berman was pretty good at sounding like Robin and the more I listened, the more I liked.
This book was magical. If I ever get cool enough to be an MC with my two closest friends and take over the world, I hope our bio turns out just like this one. Composed of a series of vignettes written by the two remaining Beasties, as well as friends, critics, a post from uber-fan Amy Poehler (who I love), and even a short cookbook from Roy Choi, there is always something to see here. And that’s before you take in all the great pictures from over the years. I was a little young to catch the Beasties from the beginning, but I definitely jumped in for Hello Nasty and then went back to catch up on what I missed. So put on some License to Ill or Paul’s Boutique, put your feet up, and get set to savor this masterpiece. (RIP MCA – your voice was missed.)
Ok, friends. If my math is right, that means these books hold 2,382 pages of fun for you. And you thought you were going to be bored over Christmas vacation.
Happy reading…and reading…and reading…and reading…
:) Amanda
PS Say it with me: big booty bios! Big booty bios! See, fun. Right?
