Customer Reviews

My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up

5 star:		(62)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

I found *My Booky Wook* laugh-out-loud funny, but not for the faint of heart. Brand's honesty is almost child-like at times, except that he's dealing with very adult topics like depression, sex addiction, and drug use.

That honesty was precisely what made the read so compelling for me. Brand has a unique gift for non-pompous self-reflection, and refuses to bowdlerize his life just because it might offend some. His description of what it's like to take heroin deserves a place right up there with The Velvet Underground's song. It's loving and funny and unapologetic, while still acknowledging the horrific damage that addiction brings.

Brand's prose, like his personality, is deliberately flamboyant. I found myself feeling that, by all logical reasoning, I should be put off by his deliberately Dickensian flourishes. But self-knowledge saves all, and Brand combines his rococo prose with colloquial diction, self-mockery, and traces of his real, non-elite accent. In this regard, I kept thinking that Brand's style was akin to that of a very dirty P.G. Wodehouse.

The result was (dare I say it) addictive. I couldn't put the damned book down, and after finishing it I had to immediately lend it out so I wouldn't re-read it a million times.

Like all great comedians, Russell Brand turns his personal pain into comedy. Given the variety of individual senses of humor, it's impossible to guarantee that you'll find this book funny. But if you're not easily offended, you'll probably be laughing. Even if you are easily offended, you can treat this as a very honest memoir of sex and drug addiction, and be shocked that Brand tells it as a funny story.

[...] -- a site about humor and society

I did not know who Russell Brand was (no...I never watched "Big Brother") till I checked into a London hotel for the holidays and saw him on a holiday talk show. He is hysterically funny in a sharp, no-nonsense, "no sacred cows" manner. This book is a memoir written in a rather disorderly manner but nontheless extremey funny. His recollections and comments are fresh and at time tear jerking. A fast read, it kept me up all night. Even Americans who do not know who he is will enjoy his recollections of experiences growing up, his several stints in rehab (for various causes) and show-biz trials. Really enjoyable, I can't wait for him to write something new!

Russel and I just flew across country together. I giggled the whole way, although he was certainly frustrating at times. Unfortunately, he was only in my kindle. (It was a bit embarrassing when the flight attendant wanted to see what I was reading, and it was a pretty raunchy part for a silver haired woman to have exposed on her lap, so to speak.)

Russel, I love you! You're a mess, but damn can you write! So far this is the only book on my Kindle requiring me to look up the meaning of words. YAY! I thought I knew what avuncular meant, but I was wrong. He made my flight fly by and increased my vocabulary! I hardly even noticed the seat in front of me grazing my forehead and the guy next to me taking up half my seat. Be well, Russell. My love to your Mum.

Russell Brand's stage show is singularly his own, and so it would follow that his prose would be similarly unconventional. I just didn't expect that it would be as good as it is.

How many working comedians have the time to write a 400+ page memoir at the outset of their careers? For that matter, who has this much to talk about happening in their lives BEFORE stardom? Russell Brand, that's who.

The writing is pretty dense with English colloquialisms, so I'm not sure how those will translate for American readers. Regardless, it's hilarious as hell, proving that Brand is a worthy successor to the outlaw comic crown previously worn by Richard Pryor and Bill Hicks.

The book's US subtitle is "Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up". There's a fair amount of sex, but not as many drugs as you might expect (and very little stand-up, for that matter). The book starts and ends with Brand's stay in a sex addiction clinic, but judging from his recent troubles with the BBC, he hasn't quite banished all of his sexual demons. Can't wait for the sequel!

..is probably how Russell himself would describe this book, and he would be right. Its hard to read this book without having seen him, as they way the book is written, you have to imagine him talking it, much like Huckleberry Finn for example. You know, its written in the style in which the narrator talks? Well, without the references to slavery and the Mississippi. Anyway.

You will have seen him in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" in which he plays himself, no great stretch but as he is hilarious, so is the character.

Russell is a mentalist of the highest order, those 18th and 19th century mentalists like them geysers in the Hellfire Club, or them Frenchies, all smoking opium and getting off their tits on absinthe were mere auteurs compared to our Russ. He dresses like a regency dandy and pulls no punches, he says what he thinks, and his mind is a quick as a steel trap. He would make a brilliant barrister, I am sure. And a hilarious one.

Autobiographies tend generally to be of the "I am great" and "I remember when I rescued the puppies from the burning building" type. Russell Brand would probably rescue the puppies, he would also probably have set fire to the building in the first place, then attempted to have sex with the puppies after rescuing them.

Are you getting the picture? Nothing is sacred to him, he just sets down every little indiscression and some fairly large ones in amusing yet frank detail. He has recently been in the news (and sacked from his job on BBC Radio 2) for ringing actor Andrew Sachs (Manuel in Fawlty Towers) on air and boasting of his sexual adventures with his granddaughter. He was also sacked form his MTV job for going to work dressed as Osama Bin-Laden on September 12th 2001. That's the sort of character he is. And it is all there in amusing Technicolor for you to enjoy. Get it, but try and see him on DVD or the TV if you don't know his work yet, or else you wouldn't believe the book.

I highly recommend this book. Whether you know who Russell Brand is or not, you will after reading his autobiography. I've never read a book so honest. He is funny, caring, and genuine. However, this book goes deep into his past filled with drugs, booze, and yes, prostitues. This book made me laugh, want to cry, and scream out "WHAT?!" After reading this you will either love and applaud Brand or damn him. Either way, READ THIS BOOK!

This is the autobiography by Brit comedian Russell Brand. Russell tells us in his well written book about his youth and days of surviving his own life until he gets help with his various addictions from drugs, alcohol, and sex. He makes it interesting and funny yet honest and truthful. This book won several awards in England in 2007 and his writing style praised for his wit and compared to Oscar Wilde and Peter Cook. This book if nothing else reminds us that change is possible and anyone with the right motivation and help can change their lives for the better. He could be the poster child for recovery, finding a spiritual life.

A reading experience can be genuinely enhanced, when the reader is familiar enough with the timbre and cadence of an author's spoken delivery that the printed text takes on the personality of the author's actual voice. I recall having that exact experience while reading Paul Reiser's Babyhood and in sections of Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays.

I am an admirer of Russell Brand as a sharp, inventive comic and a charming actor possessing unique gifts. With the possible exception of Eddie Izzard (another androgynous, British funnyman/actor) I am aware of no other contemporary comedian who speaks with the deft intelligence of Brand. His unabashed memoir, My Booky Wook, serves to further reinforce his status as a master of the mother tongue as well as his reputation as a somewhat crazy, foolish, and certainly brilliant young fop. As in his stand-up act, he swings wildly, sentence to sentence, from hifalutin' Angloisms to a working-class bastardization of the English language. In My Booky Wook, behind his chaotic, library-to-the-street style, Brand reveals a coddled, mischievous purveyor of performance art, who has continuously and fearlessly (many times stupidly) disregarded friends, family members, lovers, business associates, and especially his own wellbeing to push his earthly days to the very edge of paganistic self-destruction. It's a miracle that Brand survived to tell the tale; a miracle this reader, for one, fully appreciates.

Ultimately, Brand's memoir unveils a man of humility, who admits to a litany of mistakes with a self-deprecating sense of humor, making for a read that is simultaneously packed full of wit and spiked with wisdom. He shares his recollections without filtration, colored only by a pursed-lipped shake of the head that can only imply: What in the hell was I thinking? As he states on the book jacket, "My life is a series of embarrassing incidents strung together by telling people about those embarrassing incidents." What a gig! To somehow concoct a lucrative career out of such an endeavor is indeed admirable. Richard Prior must be applauding from whatever Heaven houses tortured comic geniuses.

If you're a Brand fan, or just a free-thinking bookworm who appreciates an entertaining life journey translated via smart, refreshing writing, I highly recommend this book. However, My Booky Wook is not for prudes or the squeamish. There are some shocking and revolting anecdotes between the hot-pink and black covers of this clever, amusing, and instructive tome. And, before you delve into this delightful book, watch a Russell Brand stand-up concert On Demand or on DVD, to refresh his voice in your mind. It will enhance your reading experience immeasurably.

Rand Bishop, author of Makin' Stuff Up, Grand Pop, and The Absolute Essentials of Songwriting Success

I first saw Russel Brand on youtube, he was doing something with Noel Fielding (mighty boosh) and i was instantly intrigued by his vernacular and his amazingly good looks :)I watched a few clips and a few episodes of various t.v. shows he was in... and then amazon popped this little gem into my recommendations. Not only does his humor and charm transfer well over paper, he also has reasonably good writing skills.

When I first saw Brand--somewhere on British TV; Big Brother, I think?--I was kind of creeped out. But then I saw him as a contestant (with Noel Fielding, who is just plain charming and adorable!) on a quiz show, and my heart started to melt. Then I saw him in a more serious interview with Dawn French, and I was a smitten kitten.

Next, I ordered his autobiography, My Booky Wook, and I honestly couldn't put it down. He makes me laugh; he makes me cry...he grosses me out. He admits to doing some truly disgusting things, and still, I love him so!