700 Sundays

The nice thing about reading a memoir of a public figure is that you can hear their voice as you read it, and this book is so completely Billy Crystal that you feel like you're sitting in the theater listening to him (which isn't a surprise, since this was originally a stage show). I loved everything about this book, but most of all, I loved how it wasn't about him, but his family and how important they are to him. A great, fast read.

Incredibly emotional book by Crystal as he details his life before his father died from a cardiac arrest. He speaks about the heavy burden placed on his shoulders at various points in his life and how he tried to deal with the grieving process by means of comedy or sports. Part homage to his mother’s interior strength and part celebration of his father’s desire to preserve Jazz recording artists and their art form, Crystal steps out from the Hollywood good guy persona to reveal some of his doubts and insecurities. I was not expecting such a powerful book. It is based on a stage production but if I had seen it performed live I would have taken it in as a “based on my life” performance and not so autobiographical. I’m really show more glad I experienced this in literary form. Crystal has shown himself to be a masterful distiller of memory, hurts, sense of abandonment by God, and recognition of life’s small triumphs. Americana topics include the Vietnam War draft, The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit. Illustrations are taken from Crystal’s own family photos. show less

I liked this book much more than I expected to. It was downright funny at time, pulled on the heart strings at others and left me feeling like this was a man who really loves his family.

Outside of this book, I really no nothing about his upbringing, his family, his delve into celebrity fame. What I love about his story, is that he focused on all the people who shaped him into who he became and not on the ins and outs of A-List Hollywood [as most celebrity memoirs tend to be..].

His uncle became the first person in the record industry to develop mail order catalogues, they brought jazz into the city, brought musicians together who never would've played in the same venue due to race. His family was the sole reason that Billie Holiday's, show more harrowing song about the lynching of black people in the South, was ever recorded. (Listen to it here!

What touched me the most, was the tenderness he spoke about his Mother and Father. He had rougly 700 Sundays to spend with his Father before his untimely death in the 1960s. He was 15 years old. By those calculations, I got to have about 936 Sundays with my Father before we lost him. It's funny how I would trade all 900 of those Sundays in exchange for just one more with him.

A short, sweet, funny novel that made me really have a new respect and liking of Billy Crystal. show less

This is a little book that packs an enormous punch and will make you laugh until you cry. And then it will just make you cry. Crystal lost his father at fifteen, but Jack Crystal was his first fan, and an enormously important influence. Crystal's descriptions of his grandparents, aunts, uncles and other relatives are just perfect. When he described his grandfather's deafness and chronic flatulence I nearly fell out of my chair laughing. When he tells of his father's sudden death of a heart attack the night after he and Billy had had a rare argument, I nearly wept for the young boy that Crystal was at the time. This is writing of the most honest and heartfelt kind. It only took me a few hours to read this book. I absolutely loved it.

From the book jacket - One of America’s most beloved entertainers takes us home. Billy Crystal opens the front door to a time in his life when he shared joy, love, music, and laughter with an eccentric family headed by the hardworking father who left them all too soon. To support his family, Billy’s father, Jack, worked two jobs and long hours and could spare only Sundays to spend with his loved ones.

My reactions
This just proves that people’s ordinary, every-day lives can be far more interesting and entertaining than any fiction. Well, maybe not so “ordinary.” Crystal grew up in a large extended family that ran a family business – which happened to be Commodore Records. The jazz greats we know through their music were first show more friends and colleagues of Billy’s father, uncles and grandfather. We’re talking Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Rosemary Clooney – they and many others recorded for Commodore Records or participated in jam sessions put together by Billy’s father and uncles.

But on Sundays? Sundays they played ball, or went to watch the Yankees. His father dropped dead of a massive heart attack when Billy was just fifteen. He calculated that they had had only 700 Sundays together. These precious Sundays, and the following years witnessing his mother’s hard work to provide for her sons are the framework for this memoir.

Based on the Tony Award winning play by the same title, is not about Crystal’s career as an entertainer, but about the family that nurtured the boy. I wish I could have had an audio version of this, or watched a DVD of the Broadway show, because as I read I couldn’t help but feel that the material is best performed. Some of the obvious humor sections fell flat on the page (I certainly cannot replicate the comic’s timing on my own). show less

700 Sundays by Billy Crystal
182 pages

★★★★

I assume everyone knows who the actor, Billy Crystal, is and if you don’t we need to have talk. This book does not deal with his incredible career but his childhood and his time with his family and more particularly his father. He would get to spend approximately 700 Sundays with his Dad before he would die when Billy Crystal was only 15 years old. This is adapted from his stage show by the same name.

My first observation was in some of the reviews before I even read the book - people giving it poor rating because it doesn’t deal with his success and career. Well guess what? The synopsis is no secret so don’t blame an author if you don’t know how to read a description of a book. show more

I really enjoyed this book. Billy Crystal is an incredibly funny guy in my opinion and that shines through in this book. But what also shows through is raw emotion and charm. In some parts of the book I found myself laughing and in others I felt my heart sink, I almost wanted to cry. He talks so lovingly about his family – his brothers, his uncles, his parents, etc. I kept going back and forth between a 3 and 4 star rating. I felt like he sometimes forced humor in where it didn’t need to be as if he was trying to soften to sad situations. However, his last chapter and epilogue were so heartwarming that I bumped this one up to a 4 star. It’s a quick one to read, it only took me a day in between errands and a busy schedule to finish this 182 page book. Worth a read if you are a fan of Billy Crystal or if you’ve ever lost a parent, you may just relate to him. show less

It is often hard to read books by comedians. The humor doesn't come across the same and skits fall flat. This was particularly true when I read several books by Ellen DeGeneres. However, this was not true with Billy Crystal. Although several chapters dealing with family issues were hard to determine if he was being serious or I was misunderstanding the humor, for the most part you could hear the dialog like you were listening to him deliver it. Family comes across strong. His love for his parents and his cherished time spent with his father are evident. The tragedy is that his father dies (when Billy is 15) just hours after a simple teenage argument right before his father leaves the house to bowl and has a heart attack.

I hadn't known show more that his father was a jazz concert promoter and operated a jazz record label and his uncle Milt Gabler was a Grammy winning producer and song writer. Though Billy always wanted to perform and do comedy his influences were music and his connections with jazz greats of the time were his background. Very good memoir. show less