Saturday, August 13, 2011

What is a great autobiography about a sports man?

"Being Gazza" by Paul Gascoigne (a soccer player in case you're American (but you're planning to read a book so I guess not)). It's a very harrowing account of his battles with all kinds of mental illnesses and substance abuse problems. It's partly written by him and partly by his therapist, and it chronicles his journey in and out of rehab over a couple of years with many references to his career and early life - most poignantly where he explains how a boy he was looking after when he was also a child got killed by a car and how throughout his early teens he was obsessed with the number 3. You even have pages of him describing his lapse back into alcoholism as it's happening and trying to justify it - so it's not a survivor's success story, it's a very raw and real live doentary of a very screwed up person.

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