Book 27: Me by Elton John

I read this as a companion to the movie Rocketman, which was a really compellingly told biopic of Elton John but which ends in the late eighties when he gets sober and doesn't touch on the most recent twenty years. And it's a perfectly satisfying autobiography written by someone who is willing to closely examine some aspects of his life but not all that interested in getting into others, and the pictures are great (especially when you compare the real life versions of various people to the actors who portrayed them in his movie). I also liked it as someone who had always had a very post-Lion King awareness of Elton John and his career - I knew he had been a major rock star in the '70s, but I didn't fully appreciate what that looked like, and the book was an entertaining overview of that time and who he was. He's also just done so much that there was never really a dull period in his life, for good or bad. I think it was certainly more of an autobiography than a memoir; he's rarely all that interested in digging into his experience beyond the narrative elements of it, but I enjoyed it for what it was.

Grade: B