My Dad & Me

February 27, 2006
From novelist Chinua Achebe to pop culture oddity Al Yankovic, CNN talk show host King collects 122 sentimental recollections of fathers and fatherhood. King's piece opens the collection; while his father died when King was just nine, King finds "I think about him almost all the time." The following short pieces (some fewer than 40 words) vary wildly. Producer, manager and consultant to the stars Bernie Brillstein recalls his father's belief, "When you meet someone new, if the first thing they see is dirty fingernails, their opinion of you won't be too hot." Saturday Night Live
alum Victoria Jackson sees her father in moral terms, describing a man who "never had a drink or a cigarette, never cheated on my mom or told a dirty joke." Other recollections are boilerplate: fathers wanting the best for their children, working hard and making sacrifices to make ends meet. In the end, a father's influence on his offspring is difficult to quantify. Public radio superstar Ira Glass sums it up: "This stuff just shows up inside us, like a virus that they never intended to transmit and we didn't intend to catch."

February 15, 2006
Talk-show host King's name is the calling card here; without it, this book would not attract a great deal of attention. On the other hand, if he weren't who he is, he wouldn't know all these people, from whom he has gathered pithy comments, ranging in length from a paragraph to a few pages, about the importance of fathers. "I have personally asked famous and successful people from all walks of life to share with us, in their own words, memories, lessons, and tidbits of advice from their fathers." The remembrances/tributes are arranged alphabetically, from Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe ("The relationship between my father and his old uncle was instructive to me. There was something deep and mystical about it") to comic Al Yankovic ("[My father] never measured success by material possessions or power"). That alphabetical range also indicates the range of occupations of the individuals from whom King has elicited responses. He means for this little book to be inspirational, and it is, for few readers would really want to argue against his introductory statement: "A father provides us with some of the most important life lessons of all."(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)