Alan Alda

Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself

To be fair I don't like the idea of rating biographies/nonfiction. I will say this: Alan Alda has a very straight forward way of speaking. It is very easy to understand what he is trying to say even though it is very wrapped up in his stories and speeches.

Alex Landau

Sarah Sammis

Last month I read and enjoyed Never Have Your Dog Stuffed (2006), Alan Alda's first memoir. I eagerly dove into his second book, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself. Unfortunately it didn't hold my attention as much as the first.

Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself starts with Alda contemplating his life after nearly dying from a bowl obstruction. So it begins promisingly as a sequel to the first book. Rather than following on the path of how he has continued to live his life, the book becomes a collection of speeches he has given and the reasons behind them. I suppose that's where the "talking to myself" part of the title comes into play.

As his speech giving is part of his public life, he also tries to discuss his role as a public figure and how disconcerting public perceptions versus his own internalized self are.

Had the book been more focused on the stories behind the speeches and less on the speeches themselves, Things I Overheard... would have been just as enjoyable as Never Have Your Dog Stuffed. Instead, the speeches, break up the natural flow of the memoir. The speeches, are by their very nature, very formal and very crafted. They lack the warmth and spontaneity of the first memoir. They are also typeset in a heavy calligraphic script that is hard on the eyes in long blocks of text.

Jeannette Ordas

I kinda see Alan Alda as my ideal dad and in reading this book, ooh, I so wished he could have been my dad. Full of wisdom, justice and inspiring words he seems pretty much perfect...and with just the right amount of fuddy-duddyness to be believable.

Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself

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