In Neil Patrick Harris' _Choose Your Own Autobiography_,
you are the star.
YOU are Neil Patrick Harris, and you decide how your life
will go. Will you, NPH, host the Tonys four times? Will you spend your life
serving sandwiches at Schlotsky's? Will
you star in Cabaret, Company, and How I Met Your Mother? The choice is yours!
As a preface, Harris notes that he was always enamored of
Choose Your Own Adventure books, so he chose the format for his autobiography.
I cannot claim to share his love of the format; as a child, I tended to steer
clear of Choose Your Own Adventure because I worried I was missing something.
Being a fan of Neil Patrick Harris, though, I wanted to
read this despite the page-flipping. I played along with the CYOA format for
awhile, until I reached "The End" about three times, then went back
and read sequentially.
Nothing is lost in either approach. Readers who want to
just read it straight through should have no trouble; it's pretty easy to tell
when you're on a chapter that didn't really happen (spoiler alert: Neil Patrick
Harris has not actually died yet).
As I've mentioned before on our blog, I love celebrity
autobiographies, and this one was no exception. I enjoy watching Neil Patrick
Harris--I particularly love him as a Tonys host, and I was glad How I Met Your
Mother didn't overshadow his stage career in this book--but I didn't know much
about his life. This autobiography is candid but not graphic, and, in a
refreshing change from many celebrity memoirs, free of angst; instead, Harris
is plainly grateful for the many privileges and pleasures life has brought his
way. Whatever pages you flip once you get it open, reading this book is
definitely an adventure worth choosing.
--
Hannah Wilkes
Musselman-South Berkeley Community Library
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