And Furthermore

I listened to the sound recording of Furthermore and I am glad I chose this format.  The Introduction was read by Dame Judi herself who starts out by saying this is not an autobiography.  I found it funny not ha ha funny but rather amusing funny that she says this.  She clarifies this by saying that several other books about her life have been written giving greater detail about her life and that when she was approached to do this book she agreed because it was to be bits and bobs (my words not hers).  In other words this book was to serve as a fill in the gaps book, things that had not been covered in the previously published books.  Any way you look at it, the book is written by her and about her so technically and according to the dictionary this book is an account of her life written or otherwise.  Maybe we should just call it the abridged version of her life. You say potatoe I say Patatoe.



She skims over her childhood still mentioning memories and snippets about her parents and brothers and then goes right into talking about her memories of working in the theater.  As with any celebrity there is a bit of name dropping but I confess not being familiar with British theater having only been to a one performance of Cats in London, I knew very few of the names mentioned.  One name that I did recognize was Sir John Gielgud who I have sadly only seen in two movies Elizabeth (1998) where he plays Pope Pius V and Arthur (1981) where he plays Hobson the butler but is really a father figure to a spoiled, rich man child.  He was wonderful in both those movies and I can only imagine how great he must have been playing in Romeo and Juliet etc.



I found her narrative really captivating and I loved that I listened to it rather than read it since the person reading it was British, naturally. I especially loved when she spoke of working with the different actors and directors.  It is interesting to read aboutthe different personalties and how she worked with each of them.  I loved the stories about the theaters themselves since I believe every theater has a life of its own and when you perform in theaters that are very old you feel the spirits of those who were there before. She spoke of her work in television.



I recently saw her in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (LOVED) and Skyfall the most recent James Bond movie.  What a long way these movies are from Shakespeare but how well she performed in them.  The book is very interesting, not stuffy or long.  Worth it!