Book picks similar to
All of Me by Anne Murray


biography
autobiography
memoir
music

Save Me from Myself: How I Found God, Quit Korn, Kicked Drugs, and Lived to Tell My Story


Brian Welch - 2007
    The event set off a media frenzy as observers from around the world sought to understand what led this rock star out of the darkness and into the light.Now, in this courageous memoir, Head talks for the first time about his shocking embrace of God and the tumultuous decade that led him into the arms of Jesus Christ. Offering a backstage pass to his time with Korn, Head tells the inside story of his years in the band and explains how his rock star lifestyle resulted in an all-consuming addiction to methamphetamines. Writing openly about the tour bus mayhem of Ozzfest and The Family Values tour, he provides a candid look at how the routine of recording, traveling, and partying placed him in a cycle of addiction that he could not break on his own.Speaking honestly about his addiction, Head details his struggles with the drug that ultimately led him to seek a higher power. Despite his numerous attempts to free himself from meth, nothing—not even the birth of his daughter—could spur him to kick it for good. Here Head addresses how, with the help of God, he emerged from his dangerous lifestyle and found a path that was not only right for his daughter, it was right for him.Discussing the chaotic end to his time in Korn and how his newfound faith has influenced his relationship with his daughter, his life, and his music, Head describes the challenging but rewarding events of the last two years, exposing the truth about how his moments of doubt and his hardships have only deepened his faith.Candid, compelling, and inspirational, Save Me from Myself is a rock 'n' roll journey unlike any other.

Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock


Sammy Hagar - 2011
    From his decade-long journey alongside Eddie Van Halen to his raucous solo career with Chickenfoot and everything in between—the drugs, groupies, and excesses of fame, the outrageous stadium tours, and the thrill of musical innovation—Hagar reveals all in this treasure trove of rock-and-roll war stories. Red is a life-changing look at one of music’s biggest talents—an essential read for music fans and anyone dreaming of becoming rock’s next number one star.

Rodeo In Joliet


Glenn Rockowitz - 2009
    The story takes us from Glenn's unexpected diagnosis of 'three months at best' just days before the birth of his only child, to his miraculous remission and the ironic death of his father. It is a journey that is by turns heartbreaking, painfully funny, misanthropic, loving and ultimately heroic. Rodeo In Joliet tramples the Hallmark cliches and platitudes of traditional cancer survival stories and presents in their place an experience that leaves the reader in awe and grateful for his or her every breath.

The Wild Truth: A Memoir


Carine McCandless - 2014
    Krakauer's book, Into the Wild, became an international bestseller, translated into thirty-one languages, and Sean Penn's inspirational film by the same name further skyrocketed Chris McCandless to global fame. But the real story of Chris's life and his journey has not yet been told—until now. The missing pieces are finally revealed in The Wild Truth, written by Carine McCandless, Chris's beloved and trusted sister. Featured in both the book and film, Carine has wrestled for more than twenty years with the legacy of her brother's journey to self-discovery, and now tells her own story while filling in the blanks of his. Carine was Chris's best friend, the person with whom he had the closest bond, and who witnessed firsthand the dysfunctional and violent family dynamic that made Chris willing to embrace the harsh wilderness of Alaska. Growing up in the same troubled household, Carine speaks candidly about the deeper reality of life in the McCandless family. In the many years since the tragedy of Chris's death, Carine has searched for some kind of redemption. In this touching and deeply personal memoir, she reveals how she has learned that real redemption can only come from speaking the truth.

A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce


Alec Baldwin - 2008
    Using a very personal approach, he offers practical guidance to help others avoid the anguish he has endured.An Academy and Tony Award nominee and a 2007 recipient of Golden Globe, SAG, and Television Critics Association Awards for best actor in a comedy, Alec Baldwin is one of the best-known, most successful actors in the world. His relationship with Kim Basinger, the Academy Award–winning actress, lasted nearly a decade. They have a daughter named Ireland, and for a time, theirs seemed to be the model of a successful Hollywood marriage. But in 2000 they separated and in 2002 divorced. Their split---specifically the custody battle surrounding Ireland---would be the subject of media attention for years to come.In his own life and others’, Baldwin has seen the heavy toll that divorce can take---psychologically, emotionally, and financially. He has been extensively involved in divorce litigation, and he has witnessed the way that noncustodial parents, especially fathers, are often forced to abandon hopes of equitable rights when it comes to their children. He makes a powerful case for reexamining and changing the way divorce and child custody is decided in this country and levels a scathing attack at what he calls the “family law industry.”When it comes to his experiences with judges, court-appointed therapists, and lawyers, Baldwin pulls no punches. He casts a light on his own divorce and the way the current family law system affected him, his ex-wife, and his daughter, as well as many other families. This is an important, informative, and deeply felt book on a contentious subject that offers hope of finding a better way.

Unquiet: My Life with Beethoven


Jonathan Biss - 2020
    Biss doesn’t just love Beethoven more than other music, he loves it more than most things. It’s the lens through which he understands the world, and has been since he can remember. But in Unquiet Biss reveals the full extent to which Beethoven is also a ruthless lens through which he views himself.Biss provides listeners front and center access to his long overdue confrontation with a painful truth: Living with Beethoven has essentially amounted to severing all meaningful ties with himself. As we learn in rich detail, amidst the treasures Beethoven’s music has gifted Biss also lies searing self-doubt and heaps of crippling anxiety. Biss’s raw self-reflection is delivered through pitch-perfect prose, delving deep into the fascinating paradox that the greatest pleasure in his life is also responsible for imprisoning him. Beethoven’s defining personal characteristic, for example—his unwavering self-conviction and weapons-grade callousness—only served to mock Biss’s own perceived shortcomings and vulnerabilities. This captivating combination of wit and wisdom Biss readily shares is only interrupted by something even more extraordinary—his new interpretations of movements from seven of Beethoven's sonatas, including the Pathetique and Tempest, and his groundbreaking, awe-inducing final sonatas.Unquiet both begins and ends with Jonathan Biss staring down the daunting complexity and infinite majesty of Beethoven's last piano sonatas. But between these two points, the singular pianist has traversed a world of healing. An immeasurable weight has been lifted from him—by him. And we have witnessed its dramatic rise. While his journey is a fantastically unique one, if we listen close, we can hear ours too. An endless battle to confront and quiet our greatest pain so that we can embrace something even greater. Take a moment, and heed the sound.

Lady Blue Eyes: My Life with Frank


Barbara Sinatra - 2008
      In Lady Blue Eyes, Barbara Sinatra’s first public love letter to the husband she adored, she celebrates the sensational singer, possessive mate, sexy heartthrob, and devoted friend that she found in Frank.  For more than two decades, Barbara was always by his side, traveling the globe and hosting glittering events for their famous friends, including presidents, kings, queens, Hollywood royalty, and musical legends.  Among them were Sammy Davis, Jr., Princess Grace of Monaco, Bob Dylan, and Ronald Reagan.  Each night, as Frank publicly wooed his bride with love songs from a concert stage, she’d fall in love with him all over again.   From her own humble beginnings in a small town in Missouri to her time as a fashion model and her marriage to Zeppo Marx, Barbara Sinatra reveals a life lived with passion, conviction, and grace.  A founder of the Miss Universe pageant and a onetime Vegas showgirl, she raised her only son almost single-handedly in often dire circumstances until, after five years of tempestuous courtship, she and Frank committed to each other wholeheartedly.  In stories that leap off the page, she takes us behind the scenes of her iconic husband’s legendary career and paints an intimate portrait of a man who was variously generous, jealous, witty, and wicked.  Coupled with revealing insights about many of Frank’s celebrated songs, this is much more than the story of a showbiz marriage.    It is a story of passion and of a deep and lifelong love.From the Hardcover edition.

I Don't Care About Your Band: Lessons Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters, and Other Guys I've Dated


Julie Klausner - 2010
    I Don't Care About Your Band posits that lately the worst guys to date are the ones who seem sensitive. It's the jerks in nice guy clothing, not the players in Ed Hardy, who break the hearts of modern girls who grew up in the shadow of feminism, thinking they could have everything, but end up compromising constantly. The cowards, the kidults, the critics, and the contenders: these are the stars of Klausner's memoir about how hard it is to find a man--good or otherwise--when you're a cynical grown-up exiled in the dregs of Guyville. Off the popularity of her New York Times "Modern Love" piece about getting the brush-off from an indie rock musician, I Don't care About Your Band is marbled with the wry strains of Julie Klausner's precocious curmudgeonry and brimming with truths that anyone who's ever been on a date will relate to. Klausner is an expert at landing herself waist-deep in crazy, time and time again, in part because her experience as a comedy writer (Best Week Ever, TV Funhouse on SNL) and sketch comedian from NYC's Upright Citizens Brigade fuels her philosophy of how any scene should unfold, which is, "What? That sounds crazy? Okay, I'll do it." I Don't Care About Your Band charts a distinctly human journey of a strong-willed but vulnerable protagonist who loves men like it's her job, but who's done with guys who know more about love songs than love. Klausner's is a new outlook on dating in a time of pop culture obsession, and she spent her 20's doing personal field research to back up her philosophies. This is the girl's version of High Fidelity. By turns explicit, funny and moving, Klausner's debut shows the evolution of a young woman who endured myriad encounters with the wrong guys, to emerge with real- world wisdom on matters of the heart. I Don't Care About Your Band is Julie Klausner's manifesto, and every one of us can relate.

Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery


Scott Kelly - 2017
    "A stunning memoir from the astronaut who spent a record-breaking year aboard the International Space Station – a candid account of his remarkable voyage, the journeys that preceded it, and his colorful formative years." Inside book cover comments.

Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr


Emily Carr - 1946
    in a literary sense, ever written in Canada."Completed just before Emily Carr died in 1945, Growing Pains tells the story of Carr’s life, beginning with her girlhood in pioneer Victoria and going on to her training as an artist in San Francisco, England and France. Also here is the frustration she felt at the rejection of her art by Canadians, of the years of despair when she stopped painting. She had to earn a living, and did so by running a small apartment-house, and her painful years of landladying and more joyful times raising dogs for sale, claimed all her time and energy. Then, towards the end of her life, came unexpected vindication and triumph when the Group of Seven accepted her as one of them. Throughout, the book is informed with Carr’s passionatate love of and connection with nature.Carr is a natural storyteller whose writing is vivid and vital, informed by wit, nostalgic charm, an artist’s eye for description, a deep feeling for creatures and the foibles of humanity--all the things that made her previous books Klee Wyck and Book of Small so popular and critically acclaimed.

Rather His Own Man


Geoffrey Robertson - 2018
    There are dramatic accounts of fighting for lives on death rows, freeing dissidents and taking on tyrants, armed only with a unique mind and a passion for justice - on display whenever he boomeranged back to Australia to conduct Geoffrey Robertson's Hypotheticals.His is an amazing life story of David and Goliath battles - riveting, laugh-out-loud tales filled with romance and danger, featuring a cast of characters ranging from General Pinochet to Pee-Wee Herman; from Malcolm Turnbull to Mike Tyson; from Nigella Lawson to Kathy Lette and Julian Assange. Throughout his exploits - recounted here with irreverent humour and dashes of true wisdom - Geoffrey Robertson has remained determinedly independent and his own man. He has also, in respect of human rights, changed the way we think.

The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life's Work at 72


Molly Peacock - 2010
    At once a biography of an extraordinary 18th century gentlewoman and a meditation on late-life creativity, it is a beautifully written tour de force from an acclaimed poet. Mary Granville Pendarves Delany (1700-1788) was the witty, beautiful and talented daughter of a minor branch of a powerful family. Married off at 16 to a 61-year-old drunken squire to improve the family fortunes, she was widowed by 25, and henceforth had a small stipend and a horror of a marriage. She spurned many suitors over the next twenty years, including the powerful Lord Baltimore and the charismatic radical John Wesley. She cultivated a wide circle of friends, including Handel and Jonathan Swift. And she painted, she stitched, she observed, as she swirled in the outskirts of the Georgian court. In mid-life she found love, and married. Upon her husband's death 23 years later, she arose from her grief, picked up a pair of scissors and, at the age of 72, created a new art form, mixed-media collage. Over the next decade, Mrs Delany created an astonishing 985 botanically correct, breathtaking cut-paper flowers, now housed in the British Museum and referred to as the Botanica Delanica.Delicately, Peacock has woven parallels in her own life around the story of Mrs Delany's and, in doing so, has made this biography into a profound and beautiful examination of the nature of creativity and art.Gorgeously designed and featuring 35 full-colour illustrations, this is a sumptuous and lively book full of fashion and friendships, gossip and politics, letters and love. It's to be devoured as voraciously as one of the court dinners it describes.

Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story


Jewel - 2015
    In the tradition of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell (she has been compared to both), a singer-songwriter of her kind had not emerged in decades. Now, with over 30 million albums sold worldwide, Jewel tells the story of her life and the lessons learned from her experience and her music.Living on a homestead in Alaska, Jewel learned to yodel at age three and joined her parents' act, working in hotels, honky-tonks, and biker bars. Behind a strong-willed and independent family life, with an emphasis on music and artistic talent, was also instability, abuse, and trauma.At age 15 Jewel was accepted into the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, where she began writing her own songs as a means of expression. She was 18, homeless, and living out of her car in San Diego when a radio DJ aired a bootleg version of one of her songs. It was requested in the top-10 countdown, something unheard of for an unsigned artist. By age 21, her debut album went multiplatinum.There is so much more to Jewel's story, one complicated by family and financial woes, by crippling fear and insecurity, by parents who forced a child to grow up far too quickly, and by the extraordinary circumstances in which she became a world-famous singer and songwriter. Here Jewel reflects on how she survived and how writing songs, poetry, and prose have saved her life many times over. She writes beautifully about the natural wonders of Alaska, about pain and childhood trauma, and about discovering her own identity years after the entire world had discovered the beauty of her songs.

Everybody's Got Something


Robin Roberts - 2014
    Or you already have or you will. As momma always said, "Everybody's got something." So begins beloved Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts's new memoir in which she recounts the incredible journey that's been her life so far, and the lessons she's learned along the way. With grace, heart, and humor, she writes about overcoming breast cancer only to learn five years later that she will need a bone marrow transplant to combat a rare blood disorder, the grief and heartbreak she suffered when her mother passed away, her triumphant return to GMA after her medical leave, and the tremendous support and love of her family and friends that saw her through her difficult times. Following her mother's advice to "make your mess your message," Robin taught a nation of viewers that while it is true that we've all got something -- a medical crisis to face, aging parents to care for, heartbreak in all its many forms --- we've also all got something to give: hope, encouragement, a life-saving transplant or a spirit-saving embrace. As Robin has learned, and what readers of her remarkable story will come to believe as well, it's all about faith, family and friends. And finding out that you are stronger, much stronger, than you think.

More Myself: A Journey


Alicia Keys - 2020
    Yet away from the spotlight, Alicia has grappled with private heartache―over the challenging and complex relationship with her father, the people-pleasing nature that characterized her early career, the loss of privacy surrounding her romantic relationships, and the oppressive expectations of female perfection.Since her rise to fame, Alicia’s public persona has belied a deep personal truth: she has spent years not fully recognizing or honoring her own worth. After withholding parts of herself for so long, she is at last exploring the questions that live at the heart of her story: Who am I, really? And once I discover that truth, how can I become brave enough to embrace it?More Myself is part autobiography, part narrative documentary. Alicia’s journey is revealed not only through her own candid recounting, but also through vivid recollections from those who have walked alongside her. The result is a 360-degree perspective on Alicia’s path―from her girlhood in Hell’s Kitchen and Harlem, to the process of self-discovery she’s still navigating.In More Myself, Alicia shares her quest for truth―about herself, her past, and her shift from sacrificing her spirit to celebrating her worth. With the raw honesty that epitomizes Alicia’s artistry, More Myself is at once a riveting account and a clarion call to readers: to define themselves in a world that rarely encourages a true and unique identity.