From the beginning, all you can hear is Russell Brand's voice giving you a private dictation of the story of his life. This book is funny and helps you understand how he came to be. If you're a fan especially, read this book. ( )

meh ( )

My Rating: A

My Review: At first this book was hard to get into. Russell Brand has a very scatterbrained type of comedy and his writing is pretty much the same. But after getting into the rhythm I was able to enjoy it. Many times I felt that he was hilarious and when he was serious it was very easy to take him seriously, which I sometimes find hard with comedians.

The book didn't always seem to follow an even remotely linear time path, but it made of for this confusion by completely bringing you to the present anecdote he was talking about.

The best thing about this book was that for someone who acted so selfishly for most of his life, you could tell that he loves so much the people who took care of him when he was at his worst. This is a great book for lovers of Brand and it will help you see why he his who he his and why things that he talks about are funny. ( )

This book oozes with Russell Brand's intellect and sense of humor. It's written just as he speaks and his voice echoed in my head as I read it. Therefore, if you love Russell Brand, you'll probably love this book. If you don't find him amusing, you won't like the book either. One thing I have to say is that this is more the childhood memories of a man who went on to a life of "Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up". Chapter one opens with Russell in a sort of rehab clinic for sex addicts. The last chapter comes full-circle. But the majority of the book is about Russell's younger years and about him scrabbling around for fame. Once it gets to the point where he's truly addicted to drugs, the narrative loses a bit (likely because Russell's memories from that period are sketchy at best). I really enjoyed the memoir, but a memoir of addiction it is not. Regardless, we are blessed to have a clean and sober Russell Brand today as the man is a comic genius. ( )

Russell Brand is a bit like Marmite - people seem to either love him or hate him. Perhaps this autobiography will help to convert those who seek to dismiss Brand as a flamboyant, egotistic idiot (if, that is, they can see past the simplistic title which is, in fact, a reference to 'The Clockwork Orange').

This autobiography charts Brand's childhood in Essex, in a loving but occasionally misguided family, and his troubled school life. He was a loner, an outsider, and always felt - indeed, sought - to be different from his peers, to set himself apart. Unfortunately, even when his 'Eureka!' moment arrived and he realised he wanted to be a showbiz star, this need to be different manifested itself in troublesome forms which ended in a string of expulsions from various academic and dramatic institutions. Falling in with some interesting characters at school, Brand turned for the first time to drugs and alcohol. As the years went by he added sex to his repertoire, and progressed to harder drugs and more trouble, being fired from job after job, being arrested and released over and over again, and making his way through a string of girlfriends and prostitutes. Ultimately, it came to a choice between drugs and rehab, life and death - and thankfully, with a bit of persuasion from those around him, he chose life. At last, clean and sober (and having spent some interesting time in sex addiction rehab to boot), he was finally diagnosed with manic depression (hardly surprising to anyone with any experience with the illness), his career took off and Russell Brand, Dickensian dandy and charismatic charmer, became a household name in television, radio, movies and the comedy circuit.

It's certainly a gripping and ultimately uplifting story. Brand is incredibly honest about every experience life has thrown at him - for example, he knows that drugs nearly ruined his life, but at the same time acknowledges that they offered much calm and comfort at the time. He doesn't hide his shameful moments, the most cringeworthy experiences of his life, but instead shares them and freely offers his judgement that they were stupid, unforgivable things to do. Not only is this an honest book, it is also well written (albeit with a few slips into that trademark Essex grammar), full of sharp insight, funny musings, a few wonderfully Brand-esque flights of language and a wealth of artistic, literary and cultural references that any professor would be proud of. Even in paperback there are also photos, letters and extracts from his rehab diaries, amongst other things, scattered throughout its pages, which helps put faces to names and in many cases brings a poignant reminder that these hellish experiences were very real.

All in all, I was surprised by this book, even as a Brand fan. Having eagerly read Peter Kay's 'The Sound of Laughter' a while back and been disappointed by how his comedic style translated so badly onto the page, I was delighted to find that 'My Booky Wook' is readable, compelling and has Russell Brand written all over it in a way that adds to its appeal rather than detracting from it. It is vibrant, honest, sexy, moving and despairing in turn, with an ultimate message of hope and redemption which left a smile on my face. I just hope it will open some people's eyes to the man behind the persona, the man inside it, the man entwined with it, who shimmers through in interviews and whose existence is so much more complex than many people realise. ( )