Barbra

I had scanned the books in half a dozen library aisles when I was surprised to come across Barbra Streisand's autobiography, My Name is Barbra. I had read a couple reviews, so I decided to check out the book.

I remember when I first became aware of Barbra Streisand's appearance in the media in 1960s New York.  My girlfriend at the time - also born with the name Barbara and also from Brooklyn - dismissed Streisand as just another singer among many ambitious little Jewish girls from Brooklyn at the time.  That turned out to be quite an underestimation.

I was never a fan of the kind of Broadway-style songs that Streisand favored and being essentially amusical I found it easy to ignore her career for sixty years until I came across her book. After reading the book I now count myself a fan, more for her writing than her singing perhaps, though I have now taken the time to actually see and appreciate some of her performances online.

In the book's 970 pages Streisand tells a really captivating story of talent, crativity and tenacity, and she does so with a very east-to-read, conversational writing style. She spent ten years pulling together the story from her journals, detailing her early successes as a singer and the achievement of her dream of becoming an actor, and then moving on to being a writer, producer and director of films.  Along the way she meets and often works with every famous person you ever heard of.

Among the performances I found on Youtube, the one I liked best was from the live concert in Anaheim in July 1994. In that she sings many of the songs she talks about in her book.