Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself by Alan Alda Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself
Book Review: Half way through
Summary: 2 Stars
I got half way through the CD's, and I did not bother listening to the second half; that pretty much sums up my opinion. I still would want
him to perform my surgery.
Book Review: Hawkeye as Alan Alda
Summary: 3 Stars
Personally I am not a big fan of celebrity autobiography. However I am a big fan of Dr. Hawkeye Pierce a very human surgeon in a M*A*S*H unit in Korea during the Korean War. This was a popular television series that ran for eleven years. It is a comedy, like ER in a War Zone, and House, MD with his attitudes all rolled up in one.
I have not read his previous autobiography Never Have Your Dog Stuffed to which this book is a sequel. Alda ended his last book by relating his experience of almost dying on a mountaintop in Chile. He was saved by emergency surgery.
In this book, Alda records that he had been changed by his near death experience. He begins to ask himself, two questions:
(1) What do I value?
(2) What exactly is the good life? (And what does that even mean?)
Alan wrote about the various experiences he had, especially on occasions when he that to give a speech, and there were many, in which he tried to explain about his values and what he regarded as a good life. On a few occasions, he also shared about what he had shared with his children.
Basically the values he espoused are very humanistic values of doing good whenever possible. In this book, he did not touch on his religious beliefs. And the good life is living life to the fullest. In between stories of his acting experiences, his friends, and his questioning, we can catch a little glimmer of Alan Alda, the man behind the actor.
Book Review: Excellent
Summary: 5 Stars
I could not recommend any book more. I love Alan Alda's writing, but what makes it even better is his reading of his own book. That makes every point just perfect, because with the way he emphasizes the things that were truly important to him. Read it or listen to it like I did, just don't miss it.Book Review: A Philosophy Book
Summary: 5 Stars
"Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself" is a philosophy book. Yes, really. It is about meanings and values and thinking and learning from experience. True "meaning of life" stuff. Literally. But, be undaunted -- it is done with fun, humor, warmth and sensitivity. In plain English. It's full of fascinating stories drawn from the author's own life; a richly interesting life.
Alan Alda looks at his own writings from the past -- his speeches -- in which he has publicly declared his philosophies of life. He quotes from those speeches he has selected as representative of his quest for meaning in life. And he intersperses them with relevant vignettes from his experience. In that way, he examines his own values and the sources of those values.
He reveals himself as a lifelong learner, a man of insatiable curiosity engaged in an incessant search for knowledge and understanding -- especially self-knowledge -- and insight. He shows his penchant for rigorous research in his gathering facts and statistical support for his ideas and conclusions. It is easy to see how he might have wished to be a scientist at times, since he proceeds so much like one in preparing speeches. (And I'm sure his 11 years of interviewing scientists for Scientific American Frontiers contributed to his methodological and empirical approach.) He does what he has suggested scientists do. He takes complex information, ideas and analyses and converts them into stories, analogies and mental images that make them understandable and relevant to the average guy or gal.
So, he models for you how to approach the search for meaning and values in life and how to think about what you find in that search. All the while, he is entertaining you as well with his own search, his own findings and his own conclusions.
By the time I finished the book, I was sure that the people who are the author's friends are lucky folk. What a pleasure it must be to just have a chat with someone who takes such care with his thinking and such time to craft his thoughts into usable insights he shares without defense. Ah well, the rest of us have his book.
Book Review: Makes for a fitting graduation gift
Summary: 4 Stars
What is the meaning of life? What is the good life? Does your life have meaning? Countless people have posed this question and tried to answer it, and Alan Alda takes a crack at it in his latest book of essays, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself.
Armed with commencement speeches, eulogies, and decades of memories, Alda leads us on a tour of his own life's lessons. It's similar to sitting on the living room floor in front of the fireplace while Grandpa delivers cautionary tales. That is, if Grandpa were a famous actor. With Hollywood and Broadway as a backdrop, Grandpa's stories about his life add another dimension of celebrity to those tales.
Virtually every chapter is crafted to begin and end with a specific theme, accompanied by a speech or two that demonstrates that theme. One thought-provoking point includes the hypocrisy of ranking of our values while spending an inversely proportionate amount of time on things that do not support those values. Alda clearly ranks family, love, environmental responsibility, ethics, equal rights, and self-determination high on his list of values. Like many parents, his first conclusion to the meaning of life was the birth of his first child. Many years later, he delivers a speech to a graduating class whose audience includes her. He advises us to not force our children into some mold but to simply love them.
Alda conveys the insightful lesson that while you can't save the world, you can make a difference in another person's life. Or ten people. Or more. Stop complaining and start doing. You and the people you help are better off each time you do. Like interest over time, it all adds up to something significant and measurable. Be patient, Alda says.
Much of Alda's wisdom is accompanied by humility, a key factor in making his claims of such wisdom credible. Some writers spew forth their knowledge as if they were born with it, and it is therefore not to be questioned. Alda's stories are honest demonstrations of fallibility and full of passion. While the speeches themselves are at times platitudinous, that's what speeches are, and in this book they are framed as such. Still, it does take a little away from the enjoyment of Alda's storytelling and as a result is slightly less entertaining than his previous book, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed.
As each chapter comes full circle in theme, so too, does the book as a whole. His final chapter begins as a commencement speech to the reader but includes a poignant one he delivered at a college in 2003. It is in this same changing pattern that he tries to tell us what the meaning of life is. It comes across as: Life is this; well, actually maybe it's this; oh yeah, and this. He tries to boil it down to just a few words and ultimately one word. The reader may get the feeling that Alda still hasn't quite made up his mind and, given more time, he would resummarize it, and maybe that's the point. But while he may have a different decision in his next book, the answer still wouldn't change for us: that we define our own meaning. It is not intended as a cop-out but just the simple truth.
Come next June, when you're looking for a graduation gift, this book is packed with entertaining advice to send them out into the real world. It's surprising that the marketing wizards behind this book's publication didn't schedule its release with that in mind.
Reviewed by Margaret Andrews for Curled Up With A Good Book