LIZ: BOOK #20

The Los Angeles Diaries: A Memoir by James Brown

224 pages

Completed 4/19/10

Overdue for a memoir I would enjoy, I picked this book up off the shelf it'd been sitting on for over a year. Brown allows the reader to delve into his drug and alcohol fueled existence with brief interruptions of his troubled childhood. Relationships with his disturbed mother, equally addicted brother and sister, a less than perfect father, and broken marriage with rarely-mentioned children paint a picture of a broken man.

Shaped by addiction, Brown's memoir is dark and haunted by the suicides of his siblings. However, as in most memoirs I enjoy, dry humor is laced throughout - both by the mere pathetic events that take place and Brown's own awareness.

Of note: the last chapter, focused on the author's suicidal sister, is written in a different way than the rest of the book. Normally, this would bother me; I like consistency in writing. However, the confusion and broken sentences allowed me to understand the desperation of the characters and the rise to the surface of addiction that Brown seemed to have made. With unanswered questions, I went to Google with searches of Brown's epilogue - to me, a successful memoir that led me to wanting more.

LIZ: BOOK #12

Symptoms of Withdrawl: A Memoir of Snapshots and Redemption by Christopher Kennedy Lawford

416 pages

Completed 3/3/10

The Kennedy family seems to intrigue many people; I myself tend to focus more on Jackie O.'s fashion sense than the family 'curse'. But when I stumbled across this memoir of the nephew of JFK, I figured it was worth a shot. I actually began this book as an abridged audio; I was not only bored, but also felt that I was missing a lot of important things that had not been included, so I picked up a physical copy of the book.

This memoir ended up being more of a recovery-discovery set in a notorious family dynamic, rather than a tell-all. Yes, there were some dirty details and fascinating details, but all in all, this was a depressing memoir. Overdoses, deaths, broken relationships - you name it, Lawford writes about it. And not very well, in my opinion.

All in all, I say that this is an account to skip. Someone I had spoken with regarding this book was intrigued by the name-dropping: Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Sammy Davis Jr., and of course, the immortal Kennedy's, all make an appearance. But, in my opinion, this is not enough to carry this book.