Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself
by Alan Alda
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Book Summary Information
Author: Alan AldaEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-09-04
ISBN: 1400066174
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Random House
Book Reviews of Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself
Book Review: Not really....
Summary: 2 Stars
Yes, sure, like everyone else over the age of 30 I, too, subliminally believe that Alan Alda really *is* Hawkeye Pierce. And I love watching him get down on the asphalt to sniff the exhaust from an electric car on Scientific American Frontiers. But, really? He's not much more than a competent writer, and at least in this book, he doesn't really have anything to say.
Just in case you haven't picked it up from the other reviews, the bulk of this book is a lot of commencement speeches that Alda has given over the years, in which he tried to give crowds of 20-somethings the benefit of his insights into happiness and personal responsibility. These speeches may have been appropriate to the time and audience for which they were originally intended, but reproducing them in a book is pretty pretentious, particularly given that his advice isn't anything that we haven't already heard. Are platitudes about working hard, making time for our families, practicing some kind of social activism, and accepting happiness as it comes to us more valuable because they're uttered by Alan Alda?
Here's a quick rule of thumb for those contemplating a memoir: if you don't have something truly unique to say, stick to telling interesting stories about your life. This would have been a much better book if Alda had just told the anecdotes he uses as padding between the speeches, although even those are often self-serving (we were actors! protesting! in the 70s! you should be more like we were!). Sadly, I find that I like Alan Alda a lot less after having read this book.
Summary of Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself
On the heels of his acclaimed memoir, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, beloved actor and bestselling author Alan Alda has written Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, an insightful and funny look at some of the impossible questions he's asked himself over the years: What do I value? What, exactly, is the good life? (And what does that even mean?)Picking up where his bestselling memoir left off-having been saved by emergency surgery after nearly dying on a mountaintop in Chile-Alda finds himself not only glad to be alive but searching for a way to squeeze the most juice out of his new life. Looking for a sense of meaning that would make this extra time count, he listens in on things he's heard himself saying in private and in public at critical points in his life-from the turbulence of the sixties, to his first Broadway show, to the birth of his children, to the ache of September 11, and beyond. Reflecting on the transitions in his life and in all our lives, he notices that "doorways are where the truth is told," and wonders if there's one thing-art, activism, family, money, fame-that could lead to a "life of meaning."
In a book that is candid, wise, and as questioning as it is incisive, Alda amuses and moves us with his unique and hilarious meditations on questions great and small. Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself is another superb Alan Alda performance, as inspiring and entertaining as the man himself.
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