More Fool Me by Stephen Fry

oktober 24, 2015

More Fool Me by Stephen Fry

Following on from his hugely successful first book, The Fry Chronicles, comes the second chapter in Stephen Fry's life. This unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of More Fool Me is read by Stephen Fry himself.

To kick off a great big chunk of the book summarizes Fry's life so far - everything you would have read or heard in Moab is my Washpot and The Fry Chronicles is retold in short(ish) and while still interesting, it's particularly drawn out after having *just* heard the Fry Chronicles.

The final big chunk of the book is dedicated to a copy-paste of Fry's diary from September to December in the mid-nineties where's he sort of struggling to finish a book as well as snorting coke left and right.

In between these two, it picks up where the other book left off and well, let me just get this off my chest: I feel this book glamorizes cocaine abuse. The reader is dragged through all the many fancy and unlikely places where he's snorted the white powder for which he has so many pet names - with absolutely zero consequence. Fry is as eloquent and well spoken as always and while he's still funny and interesting, this third book definitely falls short of the second and it completely misses the mark with the name dropping. This time it really feels like he's just rubbing it in somehow what glamorous a life he's lived - except it wasn't really all that enjoyable for him either. The book only makes it way up to the early or mid-noughties, so there's still plenty of life still to be told about, and I'd definitely not rule out reading it if he writes yet another biography - particularly because I mainly know and adore Fry from his hosting role of the TV show QI which started in 2003.

I'd like to finish off, linking you to another review of this book, which far better than I summarizes many of this book's problems. I don't agree with every single thing, but on the great whole, she really has a point.