The John Lennon Letters

It's a really well made book, complete and thorough, however John Lennon is not one to wax lyrical in letters. It's a bunch of stream-of-consciousness piece of papers, filled with inside jokes between him and himself, with doodles. He talks about the influence of The Goon Show on him and Britain, and it feels like he always speaks in that voice. There are only a couple of genuine letters, one to Paul, one to Cynthia, and some to his cousin Liela, but mainly it feels like he's throwing random words on postcards and sending them to people all over the world.

Anyway, this book can be read as a John Lennon biography (as it was written by the writer of The Beatles' official biography, and a friend of John) it goes through all the phases of his life, with letters as documentation, and gives a lot of insight into the Beatles disintegration, his family life (in all its forms), and his (very brief phase of) activism.

I used to be obsessed with John Lennon (before I've even heard a Beatles album), I remember downloading a compilation of his work online, just to check him out, and having that album on loop for the next 6 months, and my love for his music just kept getting bigger and bigger. But, I'm glad I read this book, after I got a bit over him as a person, cause he's really so flawed, however good his intentions may be. I guess the book just shows how normal he was, however eccentric he might've seemed.