There are quite a few new biographies and autobiographies in the library these days. The thing with autobiographies is you can't go to the last page of the book to see if the person is still alive. Because the person who's behind the autobiography is more than likely still walking the streets of New York City or Los Angeles or their farm in Kentucky. They wrote it. Another great thing about biographies and autobiographies are the personal photographs that are included in these works. It provides a glimpse of someone's life away from the spotlight that enabled the publishing of their lives.

Yes, I'm one of those people who try desperately not to look to the last page while I'm reading a novel but fail to do so. It proves to be interesting sometimes. I was horribly confused during a recent read as I looked at the title of the last chapter and it made no sense to the storyline. So the ending didn't jive with what I had in mind for the ending to be.

I have never watched Star Trek . The reruns are on all the time. But do I stop flipping through the channels? No. One of the new autobiographies on the shelves is William Shatner's Up Till Now: The Autobiography . Don't you love him in Boston Legal? Shatner has won two Emmys and a Golden Globe for the series. Shatner mentions in his autobiography that Denny Crane and Alan Shore 's characters have been "acclaimed as one of the most profound, honest, and deeply emotional bonds between men in TV or movie history." Personally, I love it when they both dress up in costume. Remember when they were flamingos? So pick up the book the next time you're here at the library. He's Canadian so he must be cool.or a Francophone. He is apparently having gone to school in Montreal . It's funny and heart warming.

Suze Rotolo's A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties . She's the girl on Bob Dylan's second album. Did you know that Jakob Dylan of The Wallflowers is Bob Dylan's son? Yes, do a collective gasp. No wonder they have the same last name. Jakob like his father is rather mysterious. Susan Rotolo was seventeen when she met the twenty year old Bob Dylan. For the next four years they trekked the streets of Greenwich Village as the folk music revival was occurring in the early 1960s. It's seems to be its own little niche in the great Big Apple. The story itself is quite engaging. I got into the book as Rotolo paralleled technologies that were developing and books that she was reading to different areas of her life. It gives the book a nice flow as does the fact that she writes a great true story. I'm going to be questioning all day whether or not she actually wrote a song or two. She and Dylan did eventually break up when she went off to school in Italy.

Another autobiography on the shelves is Sidney Poitier's Life Beyond Measure: Letters to my Great-Granddaughter . It's an interesting mix of Poitier's family history, film roles, thoughts, and of course great personal photographs. It's not so much the history that interested me in this one but rather his thoughts on different aspects of his life. It would be pretty cool to know what was going through someone's mind when they were making imperative decisions in their lives. It feels a little bit more real.

Other biographies and autobiographies on the shelves include The Sum of Our Days by Isabel Allende (this looks like a very interesting read), A Remarkable Mother by Jimmy Carter, A View of the Ocean by Jan de Hartog, The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Sets by Tom Farley, Jr. and Tanner Colby, and sTori Telling by Tori Spelling (Donna Martin is back on 90210!)

So stop by the library and check out what's new on the shelves this summer!