My Life

"Let’s go on to the Bill Clinton memoir, My Life. I think he has a very good presentational style. I listened primarily to the short one, with President Clinton, who did a narration of six hours. I loved it. You’re really hearing him, his style and his accent, his voice, which I recognize. When I then switched and listened to Michael Beck, who is the narrator of the unabridged version, it really seemed to lack something for me. That’s because I know what Bill Clinton’s voice sounds like. 20 years from now, the people listening probably won’t recall his voice so specifically. When it comes out in a timely way, you appreciate the fact that you’re hearing a president tell the story of his life. It’s very effective that way. But if you are a serious reader of memoirs and history, you don’t want to miss anything that might have been cut out of the full memoir. My Life follows very much the form of mixing personal and political life, which, of course, is completely intertwined for all of them. But I think that intersection of the personal and political in the Clinton memoir was a particularly interesting aspect of it, as he tells it. I think so. Of course, it was carefully prepared, but he was good with his presentation. Whether he wrote it completely himself or not, I don’t really know. With the Obama memoir, they say he did pretty much write all of it himself, which I’m not sure is the case for some of the others. Right, and that’s because Obama has experience with two other audiobooks and he understands the storytelling nature of the audiobook format. You have to tell it like a story. You can’t just read the text well. And I think when you get to George W. Bush’s Decision Points , his style, it’s very clear that he’s reading what he has written. In this case, if I wanted to hear his version of his presidency, I probably would want to listen to Ron McLarty, who reads the unabridged version of Decision Points . Yes, it’s sometimes complicated by what you think about their politics, but also whether you like the sound of their voice. There’s also the archival nature of these memoirs. They are not only recordings of the presidents’ voices, but with their own story. That creates something that is very important history. Yes, but also that they’ve written it as their memoir."