Kelly > Status Update

I liked Claire Tomalin’s biography of Charles Dickens

Thank you! I hear such good things about her as a biographer in general.

Do You Mind If I Cancel? By Gary Janetti

Thanks that looks funny! Not the biography I was looking for but funny nonetheless. I’m looking for more of a scholarly narrative. Thanks though. :)

It's quite a few years since I read it but I loved AN Wilson's Tolstoy biography.

That has been on my to-read forever. Maybe now is the time! Thanks for the reminder! And it looks like he’s written a whole slew of biographies

Ooh and it looks like there’s a good one on him by Rosamund Bartlett that apparently several people have recommended to me and I forgot about lol. My TBR is too big!!

Two recommendations: The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton by Fawn Brodie, and Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey by Frances Wilson.

I found *James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon* by Julie Phillips absolutely captivating. I've recommended it to a few friends who all really enjoyed it as well, even if they weren't previously familiar with her work or interested in SF/F.

Thanks both of you, these look great!

Biography has always been my favorite genre, so I have read a lot of good ones. Right now, I am reading _Hamilton_ by Chernow. It's right up there with the best.

Heather Clark's new one about Sylvia Plath looks good: it's called Red Comet

Thanks! I definitely do not know enough about her

The Black Count by Tom Reiss :)

Read both of his great ones! The Orientalist is one of my favs.

I just read Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee, and it was amazing. Kind of a group biography of four "golden age" sci-fi legends, and a bracing look at how sci-fi/fantasy and its fandom had a lot of toxicity, racism, and sexism from the start. Also a surprisingly fun and riveting read.

I’d be fascinated to read a biography that’s also kind of a history of fandom too. There must be so much good archival material that’s just now old enough for people to see it as archives, treat it historically.

When I was in 2nd grade my first chapter book was a biography of Clara Barton. Never forget it.

I've been thoroughly enjoying Jeffrey C. Stewart's biography of Alain Locke, the intellectual progenitor of the Harlem Renaissance. It's enormous at almost 1000 pages, but a magnificent chronicle of a life and the times in which that life was housed. A worthy winner of both the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize. If you don't have the time for the length and are partial to audiobooks, then it's perhaps best consumed in that format.

Two suggestions (well three really): My Days: A Memoir. Narayan is (was) a master story teller. This a biographical piece; he said that The English Teacher is largely autobiographical and it is wondrous about the relationship between the young teacher and his new wife. Completely different is The Last Enemy by a young Australian in England as war is declared, who joins the RAF and fights in the Battle of Britain. He wrote the book while recuperating in hospital, after being shot down.