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    My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up
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    My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up
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    My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up
    Ebook410 pages6 hours

    My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up

    By Russell Brand

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “A child’s garden of vices, My Booky Wook is also a relentless ride with a comic mind clearly at the wheel.... The bloke can write. He rhapsodizes about heroin better than anyone since Jim Carroll. With the flick of his enviable pen, he can summarize childhood thus: ‘My very first utterance in life was not a single word, but a sentence. It was, ‘Don’t do that.’... Russell Brand has a compelling story." — New York Times Book Review

    The gleeful and candid New York Times bestselling autobiography of addiction, recovery, and rise to fame from Russell Brand, star of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and one of the biggest personalities in comedy today.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 6, 2009
    ISBN9780061971396
    Unavailable
    My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up
    Author

    Russell Brand

    Russell Brand is a comedian, journalist, TV presenter and actor. He has won numerous awards including Time Out's ‘Comedian of the Year’, ‘Best Live Stand-up’ at the British Comedy Awards, ‘Best TV Performer’ at the Broadcasting Press Guild Awards, ‘Most Stylish Man’ at GQ's Men of the Year Awards. The first instalment of his autobiography, My Booky Wook, was a No.1 Sunday Times bestseller. It also won the Tesco ‘Biography of the Year’ award at the Galaxy British Book Awards.

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    Reviews for My Booky Wook

    3.5/5

    479 ratings31 reviews

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    • 4/5
      "My Booky Wook" is a memoir about Russell Brand's early life and his crazy start in the entertainment industry. I am glad I got to know the mature and sober Russell through the Trews, his podcast and the book "Revolution" before I read this, because he really was despicable at his worst in many ways (He admits to being a cad!), but it was an interesting read nonetheless.
    • 5/5
      OK.Russell Brand is insane, intelligent,devilish,sex addicted,and a manic depressive drug addict.
      I cannot explain why I adore him.Perhaps it is because of the truthful, 'self shaming' way he delivers his story.It is truly entertaining and masterful.
    • 5/5
      Russell proves that he is insane, smart, and fun for audiences. If you like his voice in interviews and standup, you'll likely enjoy this book too. Read with a somber voice, this book would just be crazy and confusing. Read in Russell's voice, you get an insiders perspective of his mind, and way too much scary info about his exploits.

      Trigger warning: if you're inclined towards drugs or are in rehab, best to avoid this book. I don't use drugs, but his descriptions made it sound enticing -- probably because the only explicit descriptions were of good highs, not the yucky aftermath, withdrawal, and collateral damage.

      Love Russell, will go read his next book?
    • 5/5
      wow, never read story like this ☆☆☆☆☆
    • 5/5
      New books
    • 5/5
      You realize that you're a nerd when you get excited for a book with footnotes. The probably with this particular book was that the footnotes were actually endnotes which meant a lot of page flipping which I found tedious and annoying. I have to say though that this minor inconvenience was the only issue that I had with Blood Work. As you know already, I'm a huge fan of scientific nonfiction and this definitely fit the bill (with a side of history and murder to make it even better!). Learning about the history of something (blood transfusion) which I've never given much thought about was more engrossing than I had originally anticipated. Tucker made great use of resources to paint a vivid picture of Parisian life (specifically among scientists and academics) in the 17th century. The conditions of the time which included religious bias and political favor (or disfavor) effected any advances that were being attempted by the scientific community. In fact, because of the events which unfolded in this story there was no experimentation whatsoever regarding blood transfusion for over 150 years. It was essentially a dead end that no one dared to attempt (or even cared to attempt). For anyone who's interested in either history or science this book will be ideal for you (and it's a quick read!).
    • 5/5
      awesome
    • 3/5
      Well, it was better than I expected. It didn't change my opinion of him - I still like him. This is probably all I really need to know about Russell, so I won't be reading his follow-up book.
    • 4/5
      After seeing "Get Him To The Greek", I am totally intrigued with this guy. Crude? yes he is.... BUT it's his intelligence & inner strength that intrigues me... as well as the fact that he overcame drug & alcohol addiction .... will let you know what i think once i have finished... but it appears that this very strong intelligent individual will probably keep my interest for some time.
    • 4/5
      This 2008 autobiography predates the Katy Perry era (I don't know about the sequel, which I also own), but there is plenty of dirt. The book begins when Brand enters sex rehab in 2005 and then flashes back to his wild escapades all over the world. I hadn't heard of Brand until Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), where he played a hairy, sleazy rock star, and he doesn't seem far from his character. He had some wild times, yes sirree - drugs, sex, drinking, and using MTV's car service to shuttle around family, friends, and drug dealers - but is said to be in recovery over 10 years now. The book has a quirky, British bad-boy charm. It sounds like his authentic voice, but who can be sure? I was supposed to hear Brand speak at the Times Center in 2010 (through a ticket club), but they cancelled me when it got overbooked; he was just too popular. So I watched from a 4th floor NYT atrium window, where I could see his tall, gaunt figure from the back as I also followed the web stream. Even from that distance, he exuded star power.
    • 5/5
      Russell Brand is a bit like Marmite - people seem to either love him or hate him. Perhaps this autobiography will help to convert those who seek to dismiss Brand as a flamboyant, egotistic idiot (if, that is, they can see past the simplistic title which is, in fact, a reference to 'The Clockwork Orange').This autobiography charts Brand's childhood in Essex, in a loving but occasionally misguided family, and his troubled school life. He was a loner, an outsider, and always felt - indeed, sought - to be different from his peers, to set himself apart. Unfortunately, even when his 'Eureka!' moment arrived and he realised he wanted to be a showbiz star, this need to be different manifested itself in troublesome forms which ended in a string of expulsions from various academic and dramatic institutions. Falling in with some interesting characters at school, Brand turned for the first time to drugs and alcohol. As the years went by he added sex to his repertoire, and progressed to harder drugs and more trouble, being fired from job after job, being arrested and released over and over again, and making his way through a string of girlfriends and prostitutes. Ultimately, it came to a choice between drugs and rehab, life and death - and thankfully, with a bit of persuasion from those around him, he chose life. At last, clean and sober (and having spent some interesting time in sex addiction rehab to boot), he was finally diagnosed with manic depression (hardly surprising to anyone with any experience with the illness), his career took off and Russell Brand, Dickensian dandy and charismatic charmer, became a household name in television, radio, movies and the comedy circuit.It's certainly a gripping and ultimately uplifting story. Brand is incredibly honest about every experience life has thrown at him - for example, he knows that drugs nearly ruined his life, but at the same time acknowledges that they offered much calm and comfort at the time. He doesn't hide his shameful moments, the most cringeworthy experiences of his life, but instead shares them and freely offers his judgement that they were stupid, unforgivable things to do. Not only is this an honest book, it is also well written (albeit with a few slips into that trademark Essex grammar), full of sharp insight, funny musings, a few wonderfully Brand-esque flights of language and a wealth of artistic, literary and cultural references that any professor would be proud of. Even in paperback there are also photos, letters and extracts from his rehab diaries, amongst other things, scattered throughout its pages, which helps put faces to names and in many cases brings a poignant reminder that these hellish experiences were very real.All in all, I was surprised by this book, even as a Brand fan. Having eagerly read Peter Kay's 'The Sound of Laughter' a while back and been disappointed by how his comedic style translated so badly onto the page, I was delighted to find that 'My Booky Wook' is readable, compelling and has Russell Brand written all over it in a way that adds to its appeal rather than detracting from it. It is vibrant, honest, sexy, moving and despairing in turn, with an ultimate message of hope and redemption which left a smile on my face. I just hope it will open some people's eyes to the man behind the persona, the man inside it, the man entwined with it, who shimmers through in interviews and whose existence is so much more complex than many people realise.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Those of you who know me well, know how much I hate giving up on things once I've started. I have finished books I hated. I have sat through movies I thought were terrible. So you might think the fact that this book merited the creation of an "unfinished" shelf would indicate that this is maybe the worst book I'd ever read.

      It's not. I probably would finish it under other circumstances. But I picked this up because I thought it would be (a) funny, (b) fast-paced, and (c) possibly mildly shocking in an entertaining way. I've read a few tedious, too-serious books lately, and I wanted a change.

      Well, Russell Brand clearly aimed for (a) and (c), but what he got was the opposite of (a), (b), and (c). I was somehow bored to tears by the second chapter, despite the fact that he was talking about sex addiction and rehab and other staples of trashy-but-fascinating celebrity memoirs. Eh. Not sure precisely what the problem was, but when there's literally zero redeeming literary value, I decided there was no reason to force myself to finish.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Very candid but lacking conscience

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      If I'd read this back when I thought Brand was a hottie, I'm sure I'd have liked it more. Reading it now, I have to judge it on its own merits. It's funny, but nothing that made me smile, let alone cackle out loud. Brand's jokes are best when he's rattling them out rapid fire with a saucy grin--on paper, there's not as much to them. It doesn't work particularly well as a memoir, either. Brand spends a huge amount of time on his unexceptionable childhood, then a few chapters each recapping his tv shows and talking about how helpful rehab was. Aside from his addiction to drugs and sex, the reader learns pretty much nothing about Brand as a person. And since he's only 34, there isn't yet much to talk about in terms of his career.

      It's a fine book, and undoubtedly less ghost-written than most other celebrity memoirs. But it's pretty hollow stuff.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Very interesting and surprisingly well written. I had to admire the honesty of this book as Russell really does come across as a self-destructive arse for most of it - until he dealt with his addictions - which he doesn't do until the end of this book - hence the need, I suppose, for My Booky Wook 2. Having seen the clean and sober Russell interviewed he now comes across as someone who I would like to know but the Russell in this book is terrifyingly out of control.
    • 1/5
      hmm, The book is written in a very edgy style, but I was a bit disgusted with his antics. Drugs are the excuse for all sorts of bad behavior. He seems to "see the light" at the end of the book. But really, who cares? Really not worth reading.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      oo
    • 3/5
      Much better written than I expected! But my god, what a terrible person.

      I was, however, charmed by the footnotes he apparently added for the US edition, explaining various UK cultural references. I <3 you footnotes!
    • 2/5
      I don't particularly care for the autobiographies of people who aren't dead, but since this reads as the autobiography of a person who could quite easily have been dead, it more or less fits my prerequisite for biography reading.

      I find Russell Brand very funny. He has a smart and irreverent sense of humour, which is present in this well-written and not surprisingly erudite book. Brand talks candidly about his drug problems and sex addiction as well as his his formative years and thirst for fame.

      You can't read this book without feeling a little sympathy for Brand as he just spirals further and further out of control, but you also can't escape really disliking this egotistical and self-destructive character who doesn't give a shit about the impact of his actions on others, or possibly doesn't care if he comes across as unapologetic.

      Overall, it was a funny read and I still have a lot of time for Brand's off-kilter humour and think it's awesome that he's clean and sober and speaks out for addiction as an illness. The book certainly didn't make me dislike him (beyond certain moments).

      Though, three stars because I can't seem to want to give it more than that.
    • 4/5
      My primary take-away from My Booky Wook is to never invite Russell Brand to any party I'm throwing. All that other stuff about how heroin is a bad idea, as well as cocaine and indiscriminate sex, I'd pretty much already figured out. Still, if not instructional (not many people are in danger of wanting to do the things Brand gets up to on an ordinary afternoon), it is entertaining. Brand has a charming, self-effacing wit that extracts sympathy through some very extreme examples of poor impulse control. He knows he's being an enormous jerk, but still, it's all a bit funny, isn't it? And it generally is, not as it actually happened (I suspect), but in how Brand tells the story afterward. The result is a sort of odd mix of Sid Vicious and Michael Palin; debauchery written about by a guy who really loves his Mom and his cat.
    • 3/5
      Before the MTV Music Video awards in 2009, I had no idea who Russell Brand was. I only watched part of the MTV Music Video Awards that year because of my sister (Ah, the year that Kanye West was mean to little Taylor Swift). When this loud, rather obnoxious British man came out and began yelling, I was like WTF? Do people really find him funny?As it would turn out, Brand would make many more appearances on my TV. He would also go onto marry the goddess known as Katy Perry. Finally, tired of feeling like I was out of some Russell-Brand-Is-God loop, I decided to read his book. I am very glad that I did.Russell Brand is not god, though he does look disturbingly like every single painting of Jesus I have ever seen. What Brand is is a very funny, but troubled man. He’s also colossally charming. If a person can charm you from the pages of a book, they are pretty damned charming. What I ended up liking the best about Brand was his honesty. He is completely honest (it would seem. I wasn’t there, so he could be lying) about his struggle with drugs and sex addiction. Brand also discusses his very troubled childhood, unconventional upbringing, and his somewhat bizarre rise to fame.I enjoyed this autobiography (which he wrote all by himself. Kudos Mr. Brand!) tremendously. I feel like I finally “get” why people like him and I don’t think I would have “gotten” it if I hadn’t read his book. I have his second book waiting for me and I am equally thrilled to read it.I read quite a few autobiographies and memoirs and Brand’s is definitely one of the most enjoyable, entertaining, sad, and relate-able, that I have read. I definitely recommend this book!
    • 4/5
      This is the story of Russell Brand, from childhood to his shoot to stardom. It's not a very easy read, although once I got used to the vernacular (and the footnotes that explained some of them were excellent help) it went a lot smoother. He seemed to be very honest in this memoir, telling about a lot of his down and out times. It was a great book about his problem with drugs and the way he overcame them. Uplifting, inspiring, and sometimes even funny!
    • 3/5
      Now, why did I read this book? The best answer is that I enjoyed the way e played the character in the movie 'Bedtime Stories.' This story explores, in depth, his addiction to alcohol, drugs, and sex. Don't even pick it up if you think you might find it offensice because you will.Russell mentions toward the very end of the book that the addiction center which helped him with his sex addiction expects their clients to make amends rather than apologizing for them. Throughout the book Russell occasionally mentions how awful it was that he treated some women certain ways. However, I don't believe I ever read anything that seemed apologetic in his writings, or which mentioned apologizing to any of them or how he may have made amends. And so I wonder if he is sorry or not. There were a couple of places where he appeared to regret his actions but he neer fully formed such an idea to that extent.Do I have hope for him? Yeah, I guess so. The book was only written in 2007 and he isn't dead yet or back in an addiction center. I just found that he is engaged to Katy Perry. interesting. The writing of this book shows that he is in fact an intelligent person. He just doesn't make good judgments about what is acceptable risque behaviour and what is unacceptable risque behaviour. 
    • 2/5
      It was fun. Brand is reckless and funny. If you enjoy his stand up, as I do, you’ll enjoy this book. Essentially, it’s more of the same. I went through this book very quickly and looked forward to reading it every day. It was simply enjoyable. In many ways, Brand is like Tucker Max. He writes of these tales of drunken/drugged up shenanigans that are filled with hookers/strippers/strangers who he exploits for his own selfish reasons. Brand is an addict in many different ways and although reading his anecdotes was fun, it was also very sad. It’s interesting to hear about someone living his life as a horny cartoon character, but to realize that it isn’t fiction is heartbreaking.The book ends on a positive note, which made things a little better. He may have been a hedonistic, self-absorbed bastard in the beginning, but he’s all better now. Even when I was reading about how he spent his grandmother’s fixed income on heroin, I couldn’t help but like him. He’s charismatic and is capable of expressing his thoughts in well-worded and intelligent ways.
    • 4/5
      My Booky Wook is a confessional full of embarrassing and oftentimes disturbing events and choices in Brand's life eventually leading him to rehab for drugs (and later sex addiction). While Brand constantly desires to become famous, he continually commits one self-destructive act after another. Everything is presented for you, the reader, in Brand's clever and (somewhat) literary voice. Brand is perceptive, irreverent and too funny.
    • 5/5
      My Rating: AMy Review: At first this book was hard to get into. Russell Brand has a very scatterbrained type of comedy and his writing is pretty much the same. But after getting into the rhythm I was able to enjoy it. Many times I felt that he was hilarious and when he was serious it was very easy to take him seriously, which I sometimes find hard with comedians.The book didn't always seem to follow an even remotely linear time path, but it made of for this confusion by completely bringing you to the present anecdote he was talking about.The best thing about this book was that for someone who acted so selfishly for most of his life, you could tell that he loves so much the people who took care of him when he was at his worst. This is a great book for lovers of Brand and it will help you see why he his who he his and why things that he talks about are funny.
    • 4/5
      This book oozes with Russell Brand's intellect and sense of humor. It's written just as he speaks and his voice echoed in my head as I read it. Therefore, if you love Russell Brand, you'll probably love this book. If you don't find him amusing, you won't like the book either. One thing I have to say is that this is more the childhood memories of a man who went on to a life of "Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up". Chapter one opens with Russell in a sort of rehab clinic for sex addicts. The last chapter comes full-circle. But the majority of the book is about Russell's younger years and about him scrabbling around for fame. Once it gets to the point where he's truly addicted to drugs, the narrative loses a bit (likely because Russell's memories from that period are sketchy at best). I really enjoyed the memoir, but a memoir of addiction it is not. Regardless, we are blessed to have a clean and sober Russell Brand today as the man is a comic genius.
    • 4/5
      I've never been interested in Russell Brand. I don't find his stand up humour to be very funny and at time he can be quite irritating.Out of curiousity I read My Booky Wook and found it to be a very honest and shocking read. He describes his antics and previous drug addictions in a matter of fact way and uses them as an explanation for his outrageous behaviour. Having said that, it is a good read. It's worth reading once so that you can understand his wild nature and you do look at him with fresh eyes having known where he came from and what his history his. At times it can be quite funny and other times you're in shock reading about his escapades but it is in essence a good read.
    • 4/5
      Overall, a fairly entertaining memoir from Brand about his sketchy past. More than a few parts had me laughing out loud, but I think the book may have been a bit longer than it needed to be. That being said however, he actually did not go into as much detail as I had expected about his drug addiction; a fact that I found mildly disappointing. Pretty funny and enjoyable book.
    • 4/5
      Can I just start by saying that, as a rule, I go out of my way to avoid 'celebrity' biogs? What on earth makes these tedious people think I want to read their ghost-written tales of the childhood trauma of once having been called Piggy in the playground I simply can't imagine.Add to that the chances of me liking the kind of person who admits to having stolen from friends and family, treated almost every woman he has ever known abominably and thrown away the kind of talent most of us would sacrifice a limb for on hard drugs, alcohol and casually mindless sex, and you'll see that the signs were never good for my enjoyment of this book.And yet the autobiography of British comedy's prettiest star, Russell Brand, is just like the man himself - potentially deeply irritating yet oddly engaging. Although no ghost-writer is credited , that isn't what immediately convinces me that My Booky Wook is all Russell's own work. Not only does the voice of the author ring entirely of Brand's own voice - he is far too proud (arrogant, some might say) of his talent to allow anyone else to steal even a ghost-writer's share of his thunder.So he's arrogant, selfish, dangerous and out of control. The adjective 'Byronic' is too easy a cop-out. And yet, Brand is not like the rest of us: while most of us would only need one of those flaws to guarantee a life of unpopularity - in Brand, if anything, each adds to his charm. It's jolly unfair and yet, in reading this book, I began to understand why it is so. There's something so nakedly honest in Brand's evaluation of his own failings and so courageous in the way he relates the story of a what must have been a pretty tough childhood with humour, understanding and a complete lack of self-pity that makes him impossible to dislike.Blessed with looks, immense charm and a huge comic talent Brand spent most of his early showbiz years with his finger firmly on the self-destruct button. Every time someone spotted and tried to nurture that talent his natural reaction was to sabotage everything with one or other of the addictions he seems to have fallen on like a contestant on a Cilla Black show confronted with with their adopted child.It could have been a tragic waste of a life and yet Russell was lucky enough to have the kind of good friends who refused to let him go under and after a number of arrests and a similar number of sackings, he attended rehab for both drug and sex addiction, and finally got his life back on course again. I think one of the greatest charms of this thoroughly likeable man is his almost-casual tolerance of the rest of the world and the people in it. During the journey related in My Booky Wook, he meets and spends time with homeless people, other addicts, even paedophiles and somehow manages to find a good side in every one of them Perhaps this is what makes the reader so reluctant to judge Russell's own failings. Though many of his problems may have been self-inflicted, we keep wishing him the best and are genuinely happy when, by the end of the book (which, though I probably don't need to mention this in the light of his comedy career, is also hilarious) he really seems to be in a much calmer and happier place. I for one, really hope that continues for him.