"Pogo Stick Jumping. The greatest number of jumps achieved is 105,338 by Michael Barban in 18 hours on September 12, 1978, in Florissant, Missouri. Scott Spencer...of Wilmington, Delaware, covered 6 miles in 6 1/2 hours in September 1974. -- Guinness Book of World Records, Giant 1980 Super-Edition In this wildly imaginative memoir about an oversized midwestern boy's obsession with the Guinness Book of World Records, a tale of growing up different takes on epic proportions. ""It was the Guinness books that gave me an escape,"" proclaims Steven Church in this darkly comic memoir, ""a strange and seductive escape into the territory of the imagination."" The Guinness Book of Me recalls a perilous youth strewn with the shadows of record holders, past and present, whose cameos add layers of meaning in fabulous and unexpected ways. Have you ever wondered why someone would grow the world's longest fingernails or eat an eleven-foot tree? Steven Church has. His bizarre speculative investigations have less to do with the truth and more to do with a celebration of freaks, an exploration of memory, and an examination of identity. In fierce, muscled prose, Church explores a childhood lived between a father and younger brother who are each larger than life. Both hilarious and heartbreaking, The Guinness Book of Me will captivate and surprise you. This is more than a memoir; it's an engaging homage to pop culture, a powerful look at life's extremes, and an impressive debut from a promising young writer."
--This text refers to the
Kindle Edition
edition.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
"My obsession is not with breaking records," Church clarifies, but with people who set out to break them—specifically the ones in the tattered edition of the Guinness Book of World Records Church bought at a book fair when he was a kid. Imaginative meditations on the unseen lives of the man with fingernails so long they curve in on themselves or the overweight twins who worked as motorcycle stuntmen are woven around an account of Church's own life, starting with an accident-prone childhood that left him with a dozen scars down one side of his body, including a 16-stitcher on his cheek that still draws wary looks nearly 20 years later. The theme of alienation emerges as Church considers his reactions to his younger brother's death in a car accident; expressing his rage with a violent, aggressive style of playing basketball eventually gives way to finding an emotional outlet in creative writing. Church examines many powerful memories—of his father speeding through a cornfield to gather ears of corn in the bed of a pickup truck, or of the author himself blowing off an important interview to watch a basketball game with a professor's 10-year-old son—that mark him as a rigorously observant and emotionally perceptive writer likely to stay on readers' radar.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't miss this if you have an interest in the human heart,
By
This review is from: The Guinness Book of Me: A Memoir of Record (Hardcover)
I read this book (indeed, I became aware of this book) because Steven Church is my husband's cousin (there, full disclosure). I've met him a few times, but I couldn't say I know him. I didn't necessarily want to love this book. But I did, and I devoured it in one sitting.
So why read a memoir of someone who is not your husband's cousin, someone who has never committed a serious crime or slept with movie stars or been present at a Big Moment in History? Someone whose physical scars all come from silly accidents, someone who grew up in Kansas, for goodness' sake? The facts of Steven Church's life would hardly qualify him for a one-page piece in People Magazine. Read this memoir because it is a true (although maybe not always factual) story. Because it is funny, inventive, touching, real, tough and beautiful. Read it because it will make you want to know Steven Church, because it will make you feel that you do. Read it because his musings about Guinness Book record-holders are as real and intimate and fine as what he tells you about his own battered heart. Read it because it is superbly crafted--WRITTEN, not just WRITTEN DOWN (I do not have the luxury of italics here). So READ it for all those reasons, but BUY it because someday you will be proud and glad to own a first edition of the first book by Steven Church.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read it!,
This review is from: The Guinness Book of Me: A Memoir of Record (Hardcover)
I read this book in just two sittings, it would have been only one, but I have 2 small children. I pick it back up and re-read sections again and again. Steven Church is a fabulous writer. Steven Church makes me wish I could eat dinner with his in-laws and visit Kansas. I love his writing and I can't wait for more. I am buying a copy for my dad, one for my brother, and I am keeping my copy. Steven Church, write more soon.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A guy book,
This review is from: The Guinness Book of Me: A Memoir of Record (Hardcover)
This book is sensitive. Church has a way of approching the sadness in his life (brother's death, for one) that is simple, but not overly sensitive. But there are enough male-bonding episodes and inevitable scars to make it a guy book. Refreshing, in a sea of chick lit. *And* he gets the girl.
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