Making It So: A Memoir

"I just couldn’t resist picking this book because I’m a big Patrick Stewart fan. Who isn’t? If you aren’t, I don’t know what your deal is. It’s pretty long, 17 hours or so. But just the thought of him reading—honestly when I saw that, I was like, ‘Yes! I want to listen to him tell me about his life for that long.’ And I wasn’t disappointed. He goes through his whole life and career in a relatively linear order. He talks about growing up in the north of England and his entry into stage work. He goes into Star Trek and all the things that he’s done in his career. There’s a lot of, ‘Here are the things that happened.’ But he’s very warm. He just has this really lovely way of talking about and reflecting on his life. It feels very inviting and inspiring. Also, as someone who loves Star Trek , it was really fun to hear some of the tidbits about that. But beyond that, he’s an interesting person, who is really generous with sharing where he came from and what has mattered to him throughout his life as an actor and an artist. Also, he’s such a good actor, he’s—obviously!—great at narrating. He’s just so charming. Yes, he talks about that—growing up pretty poor, working class, and some of the things that he experienced as a kid. He does talk about domestic abuse. There is some pretty tough stuff that he talks about—again, in a really thoughtful way. It’s not all jolly: there is a lot of meat to the memoir. It is very fun and interesting to listen to as someone who has enjoyed his career, but I think it has a bit more to it than some celebrity memoirs ."