Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography Hardcover – Unabridged, October 14, 2014

The below is a review of the unabridged CD audiobook version of this work (not the printed version)

Any review of the CD audiobook version of this work would have to very strongly emphasize that the printed version of this book does not lend itself to an audioformat. In the book, you can end up with an infinite number of permutations of Neil Patrick Harris' biography by choosing different events in his life. For example, the reader has 3 choices of to what type of parents he can be born to (wealthy, poor or middle class). After that the reader can then choose what type, among many, of upbringings he can have, etc. In the book this is made easy because the reader is told what pages he/she can forward to for that specific choose. Unfortunately in the audiobook there is no chose given, going forward, as what sound tracks coorespond to what future choices. For example, if you choose born to midle class white parents, and you want to choose "lived in the circus as a teenager" what track would you pick on the CD? As a result of not having this information available, the reader ends up picking nonsensical permutations (for example, born to middle class parents, going to harvard and then living life as teenager in a circus). Just does not work, as a result, in the CD version. THis could easily have been prevented assuming that the listener is provided the apporpriate CD track to go forward to (analogous to the page number in the book that the reader is told to go to for such and such a selection).

One the bright side the audiobook is read by Neil Patrick Harris himself and is quite well read (not monotonous and humorous tone). Unfortuantely does not make up for the problems mentioned above.

When this originally came out, I really wanted to pick it up, but despite seeing a bunch of levitating pics on Twitter around the release date I never did end up getting one.

Then, my local library did this neat thing where after filling out a long questionnaire, one of the librarians would give me a list of book recommendations. This was one of the several books on that list so I decided to finally pick up a copy!

Neil Patrick Harris is an amazing man—I remember watching Doogie Howser, M.D. when I was a kid; I've seen all of How I Met Your Mother and all three Harold & Kumar films; I've seen each of Tony Awards that he's hosted; I follow him on Twitter so I know about David and Gideon and Harper; but I knew there had to be a lot behind NPH that this book would show me.

To read what I liked about this book, go to paragraph A.
To read what I didn't like, go to paragraph C.
To read about some frustrating parts, go to paragraph B.

A) The book is clever in its concept. Who hasn't read a bunch of those Choose Your Own Adventure stories in their childhood? When using this concept with an autobiography, you get to choose what part of the life you want to go to. I did my best to avoid the ending for a while (while at the same time sometimes going down dead ends to get some of the quick "bad" endings out of the way) but I used a pencil to mark off pages I read (I'm a bit OCD so I wanted to make sure I read everything). In classic CYOA mode, I often kept my finger in the book so I could flip back if I chose a bad path.

B) Because my OCD tendencies had me mark off each page as I read them, when I got near the end, I was able to go back and check which paths I didn't follow (to make sure I read everything). Unfortunately, I found five "chapters" that I couldn't get to. Two of these chapters were meant to be "hidden" (e.g. they mentioned how no other page led to this one). Two of them I think were impossible to get to because of typos. The final chapter was an option in one of the two typo chapters (I think the first option on page 23 should reference page 38, not page 39 and the third option on page 110 should reference page 191, not page 194). One other minor frustration was the Cryptic Crossword on page 150. There were several chapters that gave you a chance to flex your mind, but I've never been that good with Cryptic Crosswords. I'm surprised there weren't any instructions (since Cryptic Crosswords are more well known in the UK and aren't too popular in the US) but luckily I've seen them before. While reading the book, I was only able to get about three of the answers. After finishing the book, I had to spend about an hour really attacking the clues to complete the list. But then, when I tried placing the answers into the crossword grid, I found that there was one too few spaces! Technically two of the 4-letter answers could fit in the same part of the grid (neither having any impact on the final answer) but still—weird to create a puzzle without one unique solution.

C) There were some parts of the story I felt were rushed through just because none of the chapters could really be more than a half dozen or so pages. I would have liked more than a short chapter about the Magic Castle (maybe because I'm lucky enough to have gotten inside it, I would have loved to hear more about what he does as President). Also, I think it would have been better as a traditional chronological biography. As I read the book jumping back and forth it was hard to get too invested in his life. NPH is a decent writer (although several chapters were ghost- or obviously-written by friends) but the gimmick was sort of played out after a few chapters.

I'm glad I read it, and I won't hold it against my librarian (after all I did want to read it so it wasn't a bad suggestion, just a slightly disappointing one).

I initially purchased the audio book, intrigued as I love NPH (this audiobook now has me on a Doogie Howser M.D. kick), and I loved listening him narrate his life. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about a Choose Your Own Adventure book, especially in audiobook form, but it WORKS. And hilariously. I received special content - PDFs of drink recipes, and I got to listen to a childhood Neil's speech on optimism he gave. It was... wonderful, and something I'd have not gotten if I had started with the Kindle version.

While I have bought the Kindle version (though not read it yet), and plan to buy the hardcover, I'm glad my introduction was the audiobook. There's something about hearing the author's words in their voice that creates a connection. My boyfriend loves audiobooks and I normally can't get into them - the narrators normally sound nothing like what I will have envisioned the narrator to sound like (when he choose a book he knows I love, to be sweet), so diving into audiobook autobiographies is actually the perfect choice - because the narrator is exactly like how I envision - it's the person who wrote it.

Neil approaches the subject matter the way he approaches seemingly everything, with fun and lightheartedness, while still maintaining a sense of privacy and decorum that makes you respect him as a person - he's a celebrity who never seemed to want to be famous, he just accepted it as part of what he loved about what he did. He doesn't crave the spotlight in his personal life, just in his profession, and this is reflected here. When he details his grappling and exploration of his sexuality, there's no raunchy sex scenes - and there aren't necessary. They are handled in the delightfully accurate, yet... fun... way that NPH does everything. It's included because it matters, but it's not given any more attention or detail than it needs to. He is not a Kardashian, he is not his sexuality, and it's not who he is.

NPH is amazing, I adore him, and unlike most people's "list of celebrities I can have sex with and it's ok," I want a list of "Celebrities I can be best friends with, and it's totally realistic because they're who they seem to be and would like me as much as I like them." NPH is on the top of that list, in part (or mostly), because aside from his celebrity, he's a real person. He knows he's a real person, "an actor" is just what he does for a living. It's that level of self-awareness and "real" that makes me love NPH so much, and wish I could call him up and invite him over a glass of wine and a game of Exploding Kittens. Because you known NPH plays NPH, that's the kind of thing NPH would do.