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Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself (Hardcover)

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3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

After actor Alda (Never Have Your Dog Stuffed) recovered from a nearly fatal intestinal obstruction, he decided to live as if he'd been given a second life. To make his new life as meaningful as possible, he wanted to remember those rare moments when a special stillness had come over him, the kind that hits you when you hear something that goes to the core of who you think you are. These were moments when he'd had some understanding about the meaning of his life, his reason for living—the central questions that Alda grapples with, as he looks back over his life. While poking good-natured fun at some of his earlier rhetoric (the ravings of a naïve Hollywood liberal) he shares highlights of the various commencement speeches and keynote addresses he's given to future doctors and physicists, or even to the odd group of Jefferson scholars. He phrases it differently for each audience, but the message is consistent: It's not what you do in life, but how you do it. Notice everything. Always be open to new ideas, new experiences. Alda is chatty, easygoing and humble, rather like a Mr. Rogers for grownups. His words of inspiration would be a perfect gift for a college grad or for anyone facing major life changes. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Product Description

On the heels of his acclaimed memoir, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, beloved actor and bestselling author Alan Alda has written Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, an insightful and funny look at some of the impossible questions he’s asked himself over the years: What do I value? What, exactly, is the good life? (And what does that even mean?)
Picking up where his bestselling memoir left off–having been saved by emergency surgery after nearly dying on a mountaintop in Chile–Alda finds himself not only glad to be alive but searching for a way to squeeze the most juice out of his new life. Looking for a sense of meaning that would make this extra time count, he listens in on things he’s heard himself saying in private and in public at critical points in his life–from the turbulence of the sixties, to his first Broadway show, to the birth of his children, to the ache of September 11, and beyond. Reflecting on the transitions in his life and in all our lives, he notices that “doorways are where the truth is told,” and wonders if there’s one thing–art, activism, family, money, fame–that could lead to a “life of meaning.”
In a book that is candid, wise, and as questioning as it is incisive, Alda amuses and moves us with his unique and hilarious meditations on questions great and small. Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself is another superb Alan Alda performance, as inspiring and entertaining as the man himself.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Random House (September 4, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1400066174
  • ISBN-13: 978-1400066179
  • Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #134,501 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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59 Reviews
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 (9)
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Average Customer Review
3.9 out of 5 stars (59 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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80 of 86 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The meaning of life and a smooth storytelling style, September 3, 2007
Nearly dying from an intestinal blockage in 2003 had a profound effect on Alan Alda. It brought him a second life and, with it, a first book, his bestselling memoir Never Have Your Dog Stuffed (see my review), published in 2005. Happily, Alda's appetite for introspection, intensified by his near-death experience, was not satisfied by the one foray into autobiography. He was moved to write Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself as a means of answering a question that had begun pricking at him. After leaving death behind in a Chilean hospital, along with three feet of intestine, Alda began to wonder whether he had lived a meaningful life and to ask himself, more generally, what constitutes a meaningful life.

The title of Alda's book alludes to the approach he adopted in trying to come up with an answer to that question. Alda dug up speeches he had delivered on various occasions over the years, talks which he'd attempted to infuse with some wisdom pertinent to the occasion. Many of these speeches were delivered at commencement ceremonies, but Alda also talked to historians at Monticello and to psychiatrists at Cornell. He spoke at a ceremony honoring Simon Wiesenthal. He delivered eulogies for Ozzie Davis and Peter Jennings and Anne Bancroft. He spoke over the grave of his grandchildren's dead rabbit.

Alda structures the book around excerpted passages from these speeches, but Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself is by no means wholly or even primarily a collection of excerpts. Rather, Alda uses the excerpts as writing prompts, wrapping stories from his life around them. In one chapter, for example, Alda excerpts passages from a talk he delivered at Emerson College in 1977 on the subject of living up to one's values. He seamlessly weaves a handful of stories around the quotes--the author being slapped as a four-year-old for off-color humor and upstaged by a quarterback a decade later; picket lines and cigarette ads and Bert Convy's heroics. As we saw in his first book, Alda has a smooth storytelling style that transports the reader. Once he begins on a reminiscence--traveling on the Orient Express, meeting his agent, biting his mother's watch--the pages turn themselves.

Insofar as they interrupt the flow of the narrative, Alda's excerpted speeches--if arguably the raison d'être of the book--are actually its weakest part. One feels less of a connection with the author when reading them, perhaps because we are not in fact their intended audience: he didn't write the speeches for us, after all, but for a specific audience on a specific occasion.

What, then, makes for a meaningful life? Alda has found his answer, and it's unlikely to surprise readers unless they're living the life of Lindsay Lohan. But arriving at the answer will surely not be the point for most of us. As in life, so with a good book: it's the going, not the getting there that's good.*

-- Debra Hamel

*Phrase borrowed from Harry Chapin's Greyhound.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Philosophy Book, October 8, 2007
"Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself" is a philosophy book. Yes, really. It is about meanings and values and thinking and learning from experience. True "meaning of life" stuff. Literally. But, be undaunted -- it is done with fun, humor, warmth and sensitivity. In plain English. It's full of fascinating stories drawn from the author's own life; a richly interesting life.

Alan Alda looks at his own writings from the past -- his speeches -- in which he has publicly declared his philosophies of life. He quotes from those speeches he has selected as representative of his quest for meaning in life. And he intersperses them with relevant vignettes from his experience. In that way, he examines his own values and the sources of those values.

He reveals himself as a lifelong learner, a man of insatiable curiosity engaged in an incessant search for knowledge and understanding -- especially self-knowledge -- and insight. He shows his penchant for rigorous research in his gathering facts and statistical support for his ideas and conclusions. It is easy to see how he might have wished to be a scientist at times, since he proceeds so much like one in preparing speeches. (And I'm sure his 11 years of interviewing scientists for Scientific American Frontiers contributed to his methodological and empirical approach.) He does what he has suggested scientists do. He takes complex information, ideas and analyses and converts them into stories, analogies and mental images that make them understandable and relevant to the average guy or gal.

So, he models for you how to approach the search for meaning and values in life and how to think about what you find in that search. All the while, he is entertaining you as well with his own search, his own findings and his own conclusions.

By the time I finished the book, I was sure that the people who are the author's friends are lucky folk. What a pleasure it must be to just have a chat with someone who takes such care with his thinking and such time to craft his thoughts into usable insights he shares without defense. Ah well, the rest of us have his book.





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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Stellar, Entertaining & Enlightening! So much more than you expect!!!!!!!!!!, September 19, 2007
By Nicole R. Seidel (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
"Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself" is really an invitation to see how Alda's mind works; his philosophical outlook, what excites him, what he values, etc. His advice to his daughter, Eve, about the importance of making distinctions because "A peach is not its fuzz, a toad is not its warts, a person is not his or her crankiness" is advice from which we could all learn and grow. As to the one reviewer here who gave a negative review, from reading said review, it is obvious that this person got caught up in the minutia of the fuzz and failed to see this book for what it is: an exquisitely ripened peach.

In an excerpt from Alan Alda's commencement address at Eve's graduation, he talked about the need for people to question their "assumptions" because our assumptions are our windows through which we view the world...he also talked about the happiness found in existentialism because life is what you make of it. For those of you who have read the books of Barry Neil Kaufman, you will likely find a delightful synergy of outlook.

Most of one chapter is about Alda's fascination with Richard Feynman....the chapter is so intriguing that the next book I plan to read is about Richard Feynman. In the this book, you learn about Alan, but also about things that you didn't expect, like when Alan went in search of a greater understanding of Thomas Jefferson by talking to scientists in China. He reaches into the dark and pulls out something magnificent that nobody else would have found.

"Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself" starts you thinking about what you value and what excites you. As much as I loved "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed", I LOVE this new book even more! This book is clearly from Alan Alda's heart and it goes straight to the reader's heart...indeed, you may find your heart is much fuller; I did...I took the "random walk" and discovered an amazing peach! So, my advice to people considering reading this book is simply take a bite, embrace the richness of the flavor and delicious sensation as its juice spills in you and washes over you!

ENJOY!!!!!!!!!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars No one really listens to those speeches the first time...
Wow. That was nothing like "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed."

Whereas Alan Alda's prior book was mainly biographical, this one is simply his commentary and analysis of... Read more
Published 5 months ago by J. Green

3.0 out of 5 stars Speeches are Best Heard, not Read
Perhaps I would have enjoyed Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself if I had listened to it, rather than reading it cold. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Graceann Macleod

5.0 out of 5 stars Dear Alan... have I told you lately....
I so respect Alan Alda, that his book, (which happens to be great) could be the worst thing ever
published and I would probably still love it!!! Read more
Published 8 months ago by Anita R. Somers

2.0 out of 5 stars Not What I Expected...
I really wanted to like this book because I like what I have seen of Mr. Alda's career. I got to page 62 when the question "What is the point of finishing this" came to mind. Read more
Published 9 months ago by C. S. Anderson

4.0 out of 5 stars A pleasant cup of tea
This is a review of the audio book version. I always had respected him as a person though I was not a M.A.S.H. fan. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Angela

4.0 out of 5 stars A Triple in the Gap
I'll say it up front. I didn't like it as much as I liked his first book. But that's my only complaint. Read more
Published 10 months ago by John Galluzzo

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Read
There is a fond nostalgia for Alan Alda from his time at MASH...he writes with such eloquence and liberal perseverance and humility. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Willhemina Sinke

4.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile. Fun. Well written.
If you like thought provoking, yet light reading that's beautifully written, you'll enjoy this book. Read more
Published 11 months ago by C.Z.S.

5.0 out of 5 stars My opinion
The CD is GREAT. No one is better to listen to than Alan Alda. He's the guy next door or the friend you've known and talked to for years. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Don B. Leggat

2.0 out of 5 stars Alan Alda, please...
Love Alan Alda, but this book wasn't what I expected, sadly.
A little too much talk about his kids and word for word speeches he's given....
Published 12 months ago by Fed Up

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