More Fool Me by Stephen Fry

I alternated between the audio book and a regular book with this one. The audio book was more enjoyable as it was read by Stephen Fry. It added a lot to the conversational tone, and I have to confess that I abandoned the physical book before the half way mark and just enjoyed listening.

The beginning was the best part. It was informative and quite humorous (his exploits on horses were worthy of quite a few laughs). Although structurally it would have driven the precision-fanatic nuts (chronological order did not exist), the tone was still very conversational and entertaining while still being informative.

Sometimes memoirs tend to knock people off their pedestals. I am sorry to say that this memoir achieved that for me. Yes, I was disappointed to learn that Fry was a coke user, but I also found that some of his humour, particularly in the diary section, very reminiscent of the grade 9 boys I teach. (That is not a compliment.) Do men still get the giggles from words like clitoris, for god's sake? That disappointed me more than the coke - which is probably odd. I think what really happened was that he became a human and not some god-like (amusing comparison for a budding atheist) entity who lauded his intelligence and wit for all to appreciate (which I still do appreciate). I never thought that I would have ever associated the word 'juvenile' with him though.

The latter part of the book was where I began to struggle. If it weren't for the fact that I was listening to it and could get on with crafty things while listening, I would still be stuck there with my next 'Great Train Robbery' (In case you are new here, that is a book that took me 5 months to read because I was bored to death with it.)  I enjoyed the beginning of his diary entries as it was written while he was writing 'The Hippopotamus' and I have a personal interest in the writing process. But then, after the book was written, it became a rather tedious description of social gatherings (generally at The Groucho Club) generally with coke and celebrities that I couldn't claim to know - the effect of not being British, I suppose. While the tone still remained conversational and entertaining, I just can't say I was interested in the content. I think I would have preferred it if he had returned to the initial style and wafted through memories that were more entertaining. I do have to wonder what his intention of it was. Did he want readers (which, let's face it, is synonymous with 'fans' here) to frown upon him? I cannot see how any other response is really possible. Unless I am missing something. Maybe people get excited at the thought of private clubs and cocaine. If anyone out there has read this, I would really love to hear another thought on this.

I rated this book 3 stars on Goodreads. It was OK overall, but the stellar parts were lost with a rather loose ending. (He didn't even mention how he stopped doing coke - or if he did, I zoned out... possible.)

This is the 29th book finished for the 2015 TBR Pile Reading challenge and another number off the PopSugar reading challenge. (I should probably do an update on that at the end of this month too.)

PS: If you have any plans to read The Hippopotamus by Fry, I would read it before this memoir. He spoils a lot of the book (I think, never having read it, although it is on my TBR pile) while he discusses the writing process for it. Grrrr...