5 comments about Charles Chaplin: My Autobiography.

1. Love it...........That man or rather when he was a boy worked so many jobs and moved around constantly, he sure had a lot of "ups and downs" as a child. Still reading the book, but I find it very fascinating.
   Really getting into the Silent film era, I wish more people would too. These marvels of the early movie industry are genius's.
   
   Thanks Again



2. There is no doubt that Chaplin was a man of many talents, but he was also a human being. And like us all, was of contradictions, and many flaws. He tells of an absolute horrible childhood,with an alcoholic father, and a very emotional, unstable mother,that left him with a wary eye,towards practically everyone. It is true, that this autobiography left out those that he considered his equal. Such as Stan Laurel and Buster Keaton. He was probably deeply in love with a young girl named Hetty Kelly,that he knew in England-whom he never told how much he cared for her, and when she died, affected him profoundly. His pattern of marriages and their subsequent failures, told me that forever after, he continued to search for Hetty Kelly. Chaplin may have been famous, but this was one deeply sad story, that gave him a lifetime, to reflect on, and mourn.



3. Charlie Chaplin was always a sort of mystery to me. I never understood the political mystique, the teary-eyed love of all his fans, the emotional attachment. But I do now. He was a wonderful and courageous individual. He was human. He had weaknesses; he had loves. The story of his childhood in England and his mother was a Dickens novel in itself. I could hardly believe it. What a book. I thoroughly enjoyed it - from cover to cover.



4. CHARLES CHAPLIN: MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY tells the revealing life of one of the most beloved and iconic American silver screen legends of the twentieth century. In his well-known bowl hat, toothbrush mustache, floppy shoes, and bamboo cane, Chaplin had a long illustrious film career that spanned from 1914 to 1957 where he made about 88 films. Through his modest upbringing in Victorian era England by former stage performers, Charles and Hannah Chaplin, Charles picked up where his parents left off. He was an entertainer as he was an articulate man who lived a somewhat vagabond life, which included travels all over the world, but between directing and performing, he spent his time reading the classics from history to philosophy; he was observant of the world around him, but dealt with the subject of history as poetic and a breath of skepticism. Chaplin states, "After all, there are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books" (323).
   
   MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY does not cover controversial terrain. Chaplin is honest and respectful of the people he encountered throughout his career, and this is conveyed within his narrative. Charlie Chaplin lived and worked during the most serious periods in world history, the two World Wars and the controversy of looming accusations that he was tied to communist sentiment. Chaplin had the opportunity to become acquainted with the most towering dignitaries of the world, Sir Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, US presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. However, he offers little hints of particular encounters, such as with his meeting with Herbert Hoover, but does not elaborate on the details and leaves it up to the readers to come to their own conclusions. Indeed, he had a deep concern for humanity. He clearly was cognizant in translating his concerns through his creative endeavors, such as in his full-length films, "City Lights" and "The Great Dictator." One of the interesting aspects of Chaplin's discussion of "Dictator" is that he includes the transcript to the last lines to the film in this book.
   
   As a fixture of Hollywood, Chaplin shared the limelight with his peers. His most revered friendships were with Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, William Randolph Hearst, H.G. Wells, and mentor Upton Sinclair. He also experienced less than stellar relationships with different women that led to three failed marriages, but finally succeeded in finding happiness with his fourth wife, Oona O'Neill, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill, when she was only eighteen years old and shockingly, he was in his 50's.
   
   Overall, Charlie Chaplin shares with readers his most creative and colorful life. The only weakness to the book is that Chaplin seldom mentions any particular date to an event, thus readers are assumed to have knowledge of history and the individuals in which he speaks about in order to parallel these events to his own life. Nevertheless, MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY will enlighten the Chaplin aficionado or curious reader.



5. Once grown up, sort of, I never lingered long at the video shop over Chaplin's oeurve, passing his famous movies by for another day and then renting the Mambo Kings or True Grit, whatever. Finding his autobiography on a sale rack at Gecko Books in Chiang Mai stopped me though, and a few perused pages were enough to intrigue me as the man wrote affectionately and well. How the world has changed! Chaplin will acquaint you with turn-of-the-century London with its vibrant theatrical entertainment juxtaposed with 'work houses' and 'loony bins'. His initial tours as a stage actor in America are wonderfully rendered, filled with anecdotes worthy of Dos Passos, then followed by his swift ascent to fame and fortune working in and transforming the nascent movie industry in Los Angeles. After that sweet ride Chaplin confronted the 'talkies', a somewhat diminished energy and, eventually, the crude machinations of a voracious media and paranoid government. These latter periods are peppered throughout with overly long renditions of the rich and famous who sought him out or he them; mostly they ate and drank together. The look into celebrityhood is, at the very least, quite entertaining as a test of trivia. My Autobiography is a fine book and very well written, by one of the most engaging men of the twentieth century - I've got to rent those videos.

No comments about Kings and Queens of England.

No comments about Goodbye, Darkness.

No comments about Winston Churchill.

5 comments about My Left Foot.

1. This is the story of a young man who was born in Ireland in 1932, after a difficult birth and with a severe disability that the doctors of the time were unable to name. They urged his parents to disavow him, as he was, they believed, an imbecile with a severely spastic body. Moreover, his parents then had five other children, all healthy. Christy's mother, however, refused to institutionalize him, keeping him at home and treating him as she would her other children. It would not be until years later that she would learn that Christy's affliction was severe cerebral palsy.

   Imprisoned in a world all his own and seeming without means to communicate, Christy, at the age of five, made an attempt that was to change his life forever. Rather than being imbecilic, Christy was actually highly intelligent. He took a piece of chalk with his left foot and, having captured the attention of his family, proceeded to scrawl on the floor a reasonable facsimile of the letter "A", astounding his loving family in the process.

   By breaking the communications barrier, Christy demonstrated that he could learn and understand. From then on, his capacity for learning was prodigious. Who would have thought that within his severely contorted and convulsed body lay a razor sharp mind and a thirst for knowledge? Certainly not the medical community, which had been so willing to consign him to institutional living. Armed with his left foot, the only part of his body over which he seemed to have some control, Christy Brown would demonstrate to the world who he really was. He was, after all, not the imbecile that the medical community had originally thought but an intelligent and sentient human being.

   This is Christy Brown's triumphant and inspirational story of his battle to learn to read, write, and paint, all with the aid of his left foot. It is an inspirational story of his quest for fulfillment. His yearning to be as others are is palpable, and his struggle for acceptance beyond the borders of his home and his physical limitations are well articulated. Christy Brown gives the reader a birds-eye view of what it is like to be a person with severe cerebral palsy. First published in Great Britain in 1954, when Christy Brown was twenty-two, this book, written with his left foot, is a testament to the resiliency of the human spirit.




2. The book My Left Foot by Christy Brown was an inspiring novel about a young boy yearning to live a life full of communication. The story began with doctors giving his parents no hope for the future for this boy with cerebral palsy. Life takes an unexpected turn when his left foot comes alive. Over time challenges arise. Some obstacles are over come while other hurdles are left for him to face. With his mother by his side they were determined to struggle through poverty and his severe disability.



3. The book "My Left Foot", was one of the best books I have read. It tells the life story of Christy Brown and how he still lived his life while his little body was twisted with a disease. I found it very touching at times and it made me happy to when he would over come bumps in his life. When he first made the letter "A" I was smiling from ear to ear.

   I would recommend this book to for anyone to read, especially to a mother with a disabled child. It really proves that no matter who you are, you can do anything you put your mind to.

   I can't wait to see the movie!




4. This book was a book because it tells how christy over came his disibality and acomplished his goals in life. Not every person with a disibality can acomplish things like that in their life.I think christy is a very amazing person for doing the things that he has done.



5. The book my left foot is very interesting because it deals with a child born with a disease that gives him no control over his body
   but he, at a young age learned to use his left foot to write, eat, actually do anything a normal person can do with there hands. christy shows in this book how any person of any race, or even with any disease has the same feelings and are capable of almost anything.

5 comments about Gift from the Sea: 50th Anniversary Edition.

1. What more can be said about this lovely collection of thoughts? Even as it celebrates its 50th anniversary, it is as fresh as the day it was penned. This book is a keeper if ever there was one, a volume to be read and re-read and handed down to one's children, which is what I intend to do with the most recent Gift from the Sea that I bought.



2. Listed as a 'summer read' in a local magazine list - I hadn't heard of this book. I picked it up and finished it from one afternoon into the next morning. And -- there was nothing surprising or new to be found here in the book - the pace at which its written and the uncomplicated natural way Lindbergh examines her life and her impressions of life's stages will have me passing this book on to many people in my life.



3. What timeless wisdom there is in this little book. Although it was written many decades ago, the challenges and issues faced by Anne Morrow Lindbergh are the same ones faced by women in today's crazy, bustling world. In fact, although women in Siberia, Cameroon, or Ceylon might not have her specific set of circumstances, they can still identify with Lindbergh's ponderings about a woman's life, her obligations, her relationships, and her needs. She lived in an upscale suburb of Connecticut and was the mother of five children, and yet there's something in her writing that can touch the souls of women everywhere whether in a grass hut or trailer beside a busy highway
   
   The chapters in Gift from the Sea center on Lindbergh's musings during a two-week vacation at the shore. Leaving husband, children, and house behind, she lives in a bare beach cabin without heat, telephone, plumbing, hot water, rugs, or curtains. She finds simplicity beautiful and longs to take it home to Connecticut when her vacation ends.
   
   Lindbergh takes a shell at a time and describes it in relation to other things in a woman's life. For instance, the moon shell reminds her that quiet time, solitude, contemplation, and "something of one's own" is needed. The double-sunrise represents the pure relationship found in early stages of friendship and marriage, and she reminds the reader that there is no permanent return to an old form of relationship since all are in the process of change. The oyster bed symbolizes the middle years of marriage and family, especially as the home itself grows and expands to accommodate the growing family.
   
   I first read this book when I was a young mother and could readily understand Lindbergh's comment that saints were so rarely married woman because of the distractions inherent in raising children and running a house. "Human relationships with their myriad pulls--woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life." Now in midlife, I can better understand her affinity for all the shells as reminders that each cycle of the wave, the tide, and the relationship is valid.



4. This book came very highly recommended by two friends who are avid book readers. However I hate to admit that the book did not move me as much as my friends claimed that it moved them. I was more interested about the background references to the author's personal life and how the book came into being. That I would have read voraciously. The book is short but I don't intend to read it again to see what I missed. I believe a book either moves you or it doesn't. This particular book despite other rave reviews did not move me despite my great affinity for the sea and women writers. I wonder if perhaps if the book would have touched me differently if I read it in the beach rather than on a plane which I did.



5. I have never been a big fan of books on CD. This changed with Gift from the Sea with the forward by Reeve Lindbergh and beautifully read by Claudette Colbert. This is a beautifully written and recorded book. I keep it in my car and play it quite often. I have orderered additional copies to share with friends. It is indeed as relevant today as it was fifty years ago and probably even more pertinent in today's fast paced world where we fail to slow down give ourselves alone time to comtemplate our lives. Reeve Lindbergh's forward about her mother was a lovely bonus. Although I have not read any of her children's books, I have read everything else she has written that I can find and encourage anyone who has not read her books to check her out on [...].

1 comments about Voices of War Cassette: Stories of Service from the Homefront and the Frontlines (The Library of Congress Veterans History Project).

1. I felt that there was some liberal bias. They seemed to suggest that the Tet offensive was a victory for the MVA and that was not the case. They also suggested that the reason the Korear War and the Vietman War was lost was due to the enemies determination, instead of US political cowardice. However, I did like the coverage of the military nurses, which is long overdue. They saved many lives in terrible living conditions. It was worth buying just for that.

1 comments about I'll Tell Them I Remember You.

1. This book touches your heart in the first few pages as William Peter Blatty vividly describes his very dynamic and entertaining mother. Although seemingly perturbed by his mother's behavior at times, Blatty lovingly illustrates his mother as a caring, strong and yet bizarre woman hell bent to make it in NYC while raising her kids alone. The book is quick to read and will have you laughing out loud at this woman's crazy take on the world around her. The story follows up with Blatty's adult life and portrays how his time with his mother influenced him to be the author, man, and father he later became.

No comments about Craig Charles Live on Earth!: The Star of Red Dwarf Stands Up.

5 comments about The Stone Cold Truth.

1. The book was absolutely amazing. Although some of the stories jumped around a little bit, it was still interesting to read about the man behind Stone Cold Steve Austin. From his humble beginnings, to how he got his gimmick, and lastly to how his career finally ended at Wrestlemania. A fantastic read that is quick and captures your attention from the start to the finish. Highly recommended!
   
   - Griffin



2. A nice read, but the comments from his parents and JR don't really add anything to the story. Also, the story becomes a bit repetitive, with Austin breezing through subjects such as his divorces, him being seperated from his children simply by stating he "loves them to death", and he seems to respect everyone, which is not quite what I expected.
   
   The problem is, that all wrestling books will now be compared to Foley's publications, with the result being that 9 out of 10 won't compare favorably. It's a nice read, but don't expect anything radical, apart from his views at the end of the book, about the state wrestling is in.
   
   It wouldn't have hurt Austin to be a litte more outspoken...



3. This book is at it's best when Steve is being himself instead of the Stone Cold character. Unlike The Rock's book, this one is a bit more honest and not in character every moment. Still not written with as much honesty as Mick Foley's bios (Have A Nice Day & Foley Is Good and coming soon Hardcore Diaries). JR (Jim Ross) helps out mostly at the end of chapters and his insight is very helpful. Without JR this book would be a 2 or 3 stars. Not too much is said that isn't common knowledge, so I recommend this book for the more die-hard Stone Cold fans. This won't appeal to mainstream non-wrestling fans the way Mick Foley's books did.



4. My son has been reading this book for his college reading course. Although his teacher is not a wrestling fan, my son found the book to be filled with interesting information about Steve Austin's upbringing and family values that were enlightening. The book shows that Steve Austin is more than his persona that he projected during his wrestling career.
   
   The book is recommended for any fan of WWE wrestling and is an interesting read.
   
   Ira J. Bromley



5. STONE COLD DOES A NICE JOB DESCRIBING HIS LIFE AND EXPERIENCES IN PRO WRESTLING. I ENJOYED THE EARLY PARTS CONCERNING HIS FAMILY AND FOOTBALL, BUT THE MEAT OF THIS BOOK IS HIS CAREER. STONE COLD WAS QUITE A CHARACTER AND MADE ME LAUGH MANY TIMES. I BELIEVE HE WAS ONE OF MOST POPULAR AND ENTERTAINING WRESTLERS OF HIS TIME. INJURIES, BURNOUT AND DIVORCE DID HIM IN. HE DOESN'T SEEM LIKE A BAD GUY, HOPEFULLY HE WILL DO SOMETHING ABOUT HIS DRINKING. FOR ALL WRESTLING FANS.