Paul Alexander (1) (1955–)

What can I say about this heartbreaking biography? Although I was only 8 when Lady Day died, I began to follow her and love her music in my 30’s. now in my 70’s after listening to this book, I am in awe of her even more. What a sad, sad, life she had, and what a legacy she left in the jazz and blues worlds! There will never be another like her, and there will never be another be another Lady Day. This biograph reached me somewhere inside and I can’t get it out of my mind. I feel so bad show more for what Billie Holiday endured in her lifetime. And even in her last days, her persecution did not stop. A prostitite at 14, singing in clubs at 18, and at the mercy of predators all her life. Yes, she made some bad decisions, and picked the wrong men, but would we be any different at that time if we were black and alone? Even now, 50 years later, Billie doesn’t receive the homage she deserves. She was the best jazz and blues singer that ever was. She was someone we should be honouring and lauding, but she is still not appreciated for her talent. The only thing that would have made the audiobook better was if they had played clips of some of her songs. I absolutely loved this book, and thought that it provided Billie with the with the appreciation that she deserves. I immediately played Lady in Satin when I finished the book and fell in love all over again. Billie, RIP and know that you are still revered and loved today. This is an excellent biography. Highly recommend. show less

Effective and sympathetic portrait of the noted jazz singer, which doesn't shy away from the subject's faults. One does get the strong impression that, for whatever reason, the federal government had it in for Billie Holiday.

I appreciate all the difficulties inherent in writing a biography of J.D. Salinger: the reclusive nature of the man himself, the lack of interviews, the inability to recourse to correspondence, the very likely highly "slanted" memoirs regarding the man we have received. This isn't an easy subject, and I applaud the author for taking it on. Brave work, and far from an easy task.

However, what we have to work with is what we have to work with, and we don't really want to squeeze available show more materials until they give up "biographical data" that may not be there to begin with. The extensive literary critiques of Salinger's work (which I often found to be controversial interpretations and would caution the reader to make his or her own reading of the primary text rather than to wholeheartedly embrace the author's interpretation) that supposedly reveal details about the author's state of mind-- this is a controversial way of doing biography and is certainly highly susceptible to flaw.

The detailed analysis of WWII is fascinating-- but it is ultimately an analysis of WWII and not of Salinger's own experience in WWII, because we don't know much about his experience in WWII. I do think it's fair to say that the war had a great influence on Salinger's writing, but the author treads a fine line between generalizing the experience of all soldiers and making into Salinger's own personal experience and actually extracting the few pertinent details of Salinger's own war experience that we do know and explaining how they might be relevant to Salinger's biography. At times, I felt like I was reading a history textbook and not a biography. Well-researched, yes, but not exactly on-topic.

And, unfortunately, it must be said that the author is simply a poor writer. His style is lacking, and he does not possess the flair to make one editorial battle sound very different from the next. It makes certain sections of the book seem very repetitious.

The book's main problem is that the author tries to do too much with too little-- and again, that "too little" is not his fault. It results in dragging out some sections for entirely too long (sections of analysis about early struggles to get published are documented in excruciating detail) when compared to the paucity of information about the later years. A biography about Salinger is necessarily going to be uneven in its distribution of information, but this book carries that imbalance to an extreme, slogging through editorial dispute after editorial dispute while rushing through to the end (the unplesant memoir toward the end of Salinger's life, whatever the degree of truth-- and I couldn't begin to make a stab at its veracity-- should at least be addressed, should it not?).

Some heavy editing could have improved this biography tremendously. I would not rely on it as a book for literary criticism, but people interested in the early years of Salinger's publishing career will indeed find much information here. show less

Very short (reading time less than an hour) clinical description of a crime (murder) and a cold case detective solving the crime by the numbers in LAPD. Only news was that the Los Angeles police department protected their own when "Gates" was chief of police and the department was rampant with criminal activity committed by the police. I was disappointed with this writing. No real mystery, the victims father pointed to the perpetrator within weeks of the killing and the investigating show more detective choose not to followup on the lead (cover up?), More of an indictment of the LAPD than a written mystery! I felt it was a misrepresentation as promoted. show less