Biography Books > F Biography Books > 5 GBP to 9 GBP

Advantages: Learn things about yourself you never knew
Disadvantages: Can be emotional

...(at the end of this year and the beginning of 2007) which I look forward immensely to purchasing and reading through. # PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives (compiled by Frank Warren) # Hardcover: 278 pages # Publisher: ReganBooks (Dec 2005) # Language English # ISBN: 0060899190 ... Read review

Advantages: A wonderfully written heart wrenching story
Disadvantages: Based on true story and is true of our modern history

I have both read the book and seen the film of this story but have found the book is the best version of this true story. The book goes into alot more detail than the film and you get more of an insight of the true feelings and emotions of the main character - Frank McCourt a young boy growing up in a poverty stricken Ireland within a family that consists of a drunken father who squanders their little come by money on alcohol and a depressed and ...
...sexual favours to support her family. He has to endure the hardship and indignity that goes along with this and watch the heartache unfold as his mother loses her children to starvation and illness as a direct result of the poverty that they daily face. Although this could have turned out to be a sombre heavy going book he has managed to lighten the mood with many humourous moments which are told with great wit. Even though they are still a result ... Read review

Advantages: Price, brilliant reading.
Disadvantages: Some strong language

...had written his first novel, Weerz me Dad? I felt a great desire to read this, so I rushed to buy it. The Story. An extremely humourous, yet tinged with sad moments, autobigraphical recollections of a 5year old boy growing up in the late 40' to the age of 10 years in the early fifties. The location of the story in the , then, heavily industrialised City of Sheffield. The book recounts many stories of the hardships and struggles of an age long ...
...weeks before his new book, Weerz Me Mam? is to be published and on sale. My Personal Comments. Not only have I have read this when I first bought it, I have re read it and achieved the same enjoyment second time around. Rarely has actually reading a book brought tears to my eyes with laughter, but this certainly did. Being nearly the same age as Fred was, together with living near to Sheffield, not only could I empathise fully, I could also picture ... Read review

Advantages: A thoroughly entertaining but disturbing read
Disadvantages: Would have liked to have seen the author draw more from the Scottish culture

...Tufty badge and loosing it on the way home. I’ve never gotten over that loss and to this day it still haunts me. I remember clearly where I dropped it and can still recall searching for it every-time I passed that spot. Several months later, my family and I moved towns, and my searches had to cease. THE MAD MEDDLING MONK Of course I can still remember other events in my childhood and snatches of conversation, but as the years pass and I turn into ...
...people pen their autobiographies: how on earth do they recall conversations with such detail? Did they minute each conversation like a paranoid Keeper on Traken? Or did they have a special Dictaphone like Sarah Jane Smith on the heels of a hot story? Or did they just use a bit of artistic prose and make it up! Frank McGillion refreshingly says that’s just what he did. Don’t make the mistake of reading his autobiography about his childhood without ... Read review

Advantages: Realism, humour
Disadvantages: No speech marks, can be slow

'Tis is the sequel to Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt. It is autobiographical and tells us the large majority of his adult life. We pick up the story as he arrives in New York. Throughout the novel we see McCourt work in the lobby of a hotel, have frequent problems with antagonistic bosses and landords, and generally struggle to survive. Later in the book we watch McCourt progress thorught the army - he's fortunate not to be sent to war - and he ...
...not quite what he expected. He constantly struggles with women - in the book he marries has children and subsequently breaks up with his dream wife. We learmn of the successes in the bar trade of his brother Malachy but are sadly confronted with the death of both his mother and father - near the end of the book. McCourt also describes his first steps in the teaching world - having obtained his qulaifications and successfully landing a temporary job, ... Read review