There aren’t many weeks that go by without a new celebrity memoir hitting the shelves, but it’s a rare week indeed that gives us three books by boldface names: Sissy Spacek, Gregg Allman, and Dan Rather are telling all. Turns out, fame is great and all, but what the stars really want is a book deal.
In My Extraordinary Ordinary Life, Sissy Spacek’s “tender and unhurried” star-worthy memoir, the Oscar-winning actress reveals that what she really wanted was to be was the next Joni Mitchell—she actually broke the Billboard’s Top 100 with “John, You’ve Gone Too Far This Time.” But she was just about to give up on that dream and head home to East Texas when Terrence Malick cast her in his debut feature, Badlands, cementing her in film history and transforming her life.
Gregg Allman delivers a “fiercely honest memoir” in My Cross to Bear, which chronicles the triumphs and incredible setbacks of the Allman Brothers Band, as well as his struggle with the standard rock-star appetites for vice, dysfunctional romance, and fame.
Dan Rather, no stranger to the memoir form—this is his fourth—makes sure not to bury the lead in Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News, beginning with “a blistering opening chapter” about his final, tumultuous years as anchor of the CBS Evening News. Rather strikes hard at his former employers, calling them spineless for their handling of the story that cost him his job, the investigation into the president’s National Guard record.
If that isn’t enough for you, check out this week's paperback reprints: Diane Keaton’s Then Again, Jane Lynch’s Happy Accidents, and Christopher Plummer’s In Spite of Myself.
And this is just a beginning of a celeb stampede: still to come in May are the father-son memoir from Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez, the dishy debut from Bravo exec-turned-TV-personality Andy Cohen, Billy Bob Thornton’s tell-all, and the long-awaited autobiography of Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider. For updates, keep your eyes on PW—we’ll keep ours on the stars.
