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Bio of an Ogre: The Autobiography of Piers Anthony to Age 50
Hardcover
,
297 pages
Published
May 1st 1988
by Ace Hardcover
(first published 1988)
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Community Reviews
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I agree with everyone else who says that this book made me loathe Piers Anthony on a fairly personal level. However, everyone seems to be missing the excellent novella included as an appendix.
The backstory is that Anthony was teaching a college class (!) and one of his female students took a disliking to him. (Easy to imagine.) She sent a badly written novella to his publisher with his name on it. The novella is a razor-sharp satire of everything that is terrible about Anthony's writing. Hilario ...more
The backstory is that Anthony was teaching a college class (!) and one of his female students took a disliking to him. (Easy to imagine.) She sent a badly written novella to his publisher with his name on it. The novella is a razor-sharp satire of everything that is terrible about Anthony's writing. Hilario ...more
Particularly interesting to read from the perspective of a would-be writer, as Anthony focuses on the travails of his life as a writer. He is a mostly balanced assessor of the folks he has dealt with, but his slightly ruffled pride in his more intellectual and less successful books, as well as an attempt at humorous tone (I would characterize it as "authorial chuckling while showing off one's intellect")emotionally distanced me from from wholly empathizing with his journey.
I was really dissapointed with this book, guess I wanted him to be like I imagined, not the arrogant writter that this book made him appear.
I read this when I was at my peak of Xanth fandom. Piers Anthony seems like quite the character.
I loved the
Xanth
books when I was younger. They were fantastic in every sense of the word, clever and chock full of humor! I was hoping that Anthony's memoir would be something along the lines of Roald Dahl's memoir Boy: Tales of Childhood - which I loved. Nope, Piers Anthony makes himself sound like the oftentimes unlikeable, arrogant, and crotchety ogre of the title. Not an entirely entertaining and enjoyable read as Anthony uses quite a bit of the book to settle old scores with publishers, f
...more
It's a bit of a mixed bag, this book. On the one hand, I found parts of it interesting and entertaining. On the other, I felt a bit disillusioned by seeing the "true face" of an author I've always loved. Half the book was him blowing his own trumpet and the other half was airing every grievance ever visited on him, with blame almost always being anywhere but with him. It seems a bit telling if someone asks you to write your life story and it ends up as one long series of complaints...
But either ...more
But either ...more
While I do enjoy Piers Anthony's work, I don't think I would really like him as a person. At least not based on his own description on himself. Sometimes being right doesn't mean you are correct. But since he is so obviously proud of his foibles, I don't he would ever change. I'm not actually sure he is still alive! Oh well, it was well written but not enjoyable.
I love Piers Anthony. I read every Xanth book, but after awhile, they became mundane and monotonous. I think one can only write so many books based on puns.
But the Immorality series is great.
Try some Xanth books and see if you like them.
But the Immorality series is great.
Try some Xanth books and see if you like them.
This was an interesting take on Piers Anthony as a person. It covers all the regular sort of biographical information and also sheds some light on just why he's called an Orge in the first place.
Great take on one authors struggles with Publishers ( a struggle he totally whomped!)
May 25, 2012
Shawn
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fantasy
,
piers-anthony
Young adult 10-15
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Though he spent the first four years of his life in England, Piers never returned to live in his country of birth after moving to Spain and immigrated to America at age six. After graduating with a B.A. from Goddard College, he married one of his fellow students and and spent fifteen years in an assortment of professions before he began writing fiction full-time.
Piers is a self-proclaimed environm ...more
More about Piers Anthony...
Piers is a self-proclaimed environm ...more
