The Fry Chronicles

It has been a while since I last updated this blog. There a several reasons for this. For one, I got stuck watching Masterchef Australia (current and previous seasons) and I got even more stuck reading Donna Tartt's latest The Goldfinch. Not that it is a bad book, it isn't. It is just so fucking big and heavy in hand that I grew physically tired of holding it in my hand and the pace of the story (not too fast) does not reel me in deeply enough for me to ignore that fact. And then, of course, there is the World Cup in Brazil to follow. So many ways to get sidetracked.

But, luckily, I do take the public transport to work and the only valid means of entertainment is reading. For this, however, the aforementioned Goldfinch is much too heavy. Therefore,  a smaller volume that fits my handbag has to do for my trips. 

And this has been it for the past few weeks....

by Stephen Fry

The Fry Chronicles are the second autobiography by Stephen Fry. The first, Moab Is My Washpot, covered his childhood and troubled teenage years. This now deals with his time at university and his first steps into the entertainment business.

Does one need to have read Moab before taking on the Chronicles? Not really. One should mostly have read Moab because it is entertaining and sweet and, yes, heartbreaking at times...

Fry is a rather hapless fellow and just plain likable. He forever apologizes for his success and stresses that his talent is inferior to many of the people that he came up with. His group of friends and contemporaries does include some of the biggest names in film and comedy - Emma Thompson, Rowan Atkinson, Douglas Adams, and his long-time partner in crime, Hugh Laurie, to name but a few. Fry does seem to stick out like a sore thumb and still doesn't appear to have grasped what people see in him and why he would deserve the success he has had for a few decades now.

I just like the guy.

7/10