Michael Palin is such an adorable little man

A terrific book. My original plan was to bring it on vacation sometime, as it's 600 pages of small print and I figured it would be something to read by a pool. That never happened (since the book is the size of a cinderblock) so I just picked it and started reading it at home. I'm glad I did. Python fans (and who else would read it?) will appreciate the descriptions of how the team worked together--but they will also find all of the other projects and people orbiting the Pythons just as interesting. There's great stuff about life in 1970s London (the IRA was always hovering in the background), the other TV shows Palin wrote, his trips to NYC to host Saturday Night Live and many entries about his father, whose health worsens with the decade. The best feature of the Diaries is their absolute lack of pretentiousness or sentimentality: we don't get long passages about how much he loves his wife or kids; we don't get political screeds; instead, we get what it was like to go to Tunisia to make The Life of Brian, Graham Chapman's hollow leg (and subsequent getting on the wagon), and the Pythons' record and film deals. Palin comes across as likable and decent. For the fan, highly recommended. I'll read the next volume in a few months. ( )

I love Monty Python, and looked forward to hearing some of the behind scenes of how their creative processes worked together. In that, this book did not disappoint. It is a diary, however. And as with any of us, much of Palin's life described therein is filed with the daily mundane that is less interesting. ( )

Listened to the audiobook in the car. Was OK for this but I don't think I'll borrow with the later diaries. ( )

My review is highly biased. I love Python so this insiders view was simply amazing...to me. ( )