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foxwrapped's review against another edition
3.0
Mike to Freddie Mercury is like
me to Damon Albarn, except you know, with more sexual fantasies. A lot more.
me to Damon Albarn, except you know, with more sexual fantasies. A lot more.
mlindner's review against another edition
3.0
http://www.unshelved.com/bookclub/2013-1-25
This was alright but nothing special. It was a fairly fast read despite its thickness. While it does have a fair few pages the paper is fairly heavy. I read it in a brewpub on my birthday in under 2 hours.
This was alright but nothing special. It was a fairly fast read despite its thickness. While it does have a fair few pages the paper is fairly heavy. I read it in a brewpub on my birthday in under 2 hours.
sarahbowman101's review
4.0
Mike Dawson was born in England and as a boy falls in love with Queen. His family moves to the US and as a teenager in the grunge era of the 90s, he remains faithful to his favorite band.
Queen is the soundtrack to his life - his longing, fears, joys, successes, and failures. It is packed with both good memories and bad. His life isn't especially remarkable but allows for instant identification. I would think that most MTV generation readers would have absolute memories of certain bands or songs, to events that aren't especially newsworthy in the grand scale but personal and intimate.
The characters are well done, and the slice of like storyline is exactly what you'd expect. The tone is nostalgic, but not overly done and still strikes the right cord. On the down side, the pacing is this book's biggest fault. There are sections that are way too slow and could have been edited.
Queen is the soundtrack to his life - his longing, fears, joys, successes, and failures. It is packed with both good memories and bad. His life isn't especially remarkable but allows for instant identification. I would think that most MTV generation readers would have absolute memories of certain bands or songs, to events that aren't especially newsworthy in the grand scale but personal and intimate.
The characters are well done, and the slice of like storyline is exactly what you'd expect. The tone is nostalgic, but not overly done and still strikes the right cord. On the down side, the pacing is this book's biggest fault. There are sections that are way too slow and could have been edited.
mrisner's review
4.0
High Fidelity meets Wayne’s World in this utterly charming graphic memoir about a young man’s life-long obsession with the rock band Queen.
All of us have had that one band with which we identify, the band that was always there for us during good times and bad. For Mike Dawson it's always been Queen and Freddie Mercury. Not unlike “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Freddie & Me takes readers on a rock-opera-like journey—from Mike’s childhood in the UK, through high school in New Jersey, and into the nineties, when grunge ruled the day and Queen was terminally uncool. As Mike works to navigate the trials and tribulations that accompany the road to adulthood (with Queen behind him every step of the way), he must grapple with the fears we all find ourselves facing: committing to one person for the rest of our lives, pursuing our dream job, coming to terms with our familial responsibilities, and even facing our own mortality. With humor, sensitivity, and some wonderfully imagined appearances by Freddie Mercury, Brian May, George Michael, and Andrew Ridgeley (among others), Freddie & Me is a touching reminder of how our favorite music is the soundtrack for so many of our most important memories and moments. And how one note can bring them all flooding back.
It was a little hard to get used to reading this at first. But I enjoyed reading something a little different for a change.
The part that sticks with me the most is this.....from the end of the book...
He talks about now, when he hears a song, he has a picture in his mind of a memory....from something that happened in his life....thinking of people you care about too.
We all have the songs that are the soundtrack to our lives.
All of us have had that one band with which we identify, the band that was always there for us during good times and bad. For Mike Dawson it's always been Queen and Freddie Mercury. Not unlike “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Freddie & Me takes readers on a rock-opera-like journey—from Mike’s childhood in the UK, through high school in New Jersey, and into the nineties, when grunge ruled the day and Queen was terminally uncool. As Mike works to navigate the trials and tribulations that accompany the road to adulthood (with Queen behind him every step of the way), he must grapple with the fears we all find ourselves facing: committing to one person for the rest of our lives, pursuing our dream job, coming to terms with our familial responsibilities, and even facing our own mortality. With humor, sensitivity, and some wonderfully imagined appearances by Freddie Mercury, Brian May, George Michael, and Andrew Ridgeley (among others), Freddie & Me is a touching reminder of how our favorite music is the soundtrack for so many of our most important memories and moments. And how one note can bring them all flooding back.
It was a little hard to get used to reading this at first. But I enjoyed reading something a little different for a change.
The part that sticks with me the most is this.....from the end of the book...
He talks about now, when he hears a song, he has a picture in his mind of a memory....from something that happened in his life....thinking of people you care about too.
We all have the songs that are the soundtrack to our lives.
ryner's review against another edition
3.0
In his autobiographical graphic novel, Mike Dawson illustrates his boyhood years and his experiences as a transplant from England to New Jersey. More importantly, and nearly as big an influence in his life, he is also a passionate fan of the band Queen. Mike's recollections of events and interactions in his young life are very often tightly entwined with Queen's own history and songs.
Freddie & Me especially resonated with me because I, too, am (or at least once was) a Queen "superfan." Mike and I appear to share a number of the same experiences (and frustrations), including being the same age and therefore both being sophomores in high school the morning when we learned of Freddie Mercury's untimely death. We regret never having the opportunity to see Queen live, but both saw Queen + Paul Rodgers in concert in 2005 as a sort of consolation. We appreciated "deep" tracks more than the singles that went on to be their greatest hits, and we both had mixed feelings about how the film Wayne's World brought Queen to the forefront of American teenage consciousness but regretted that no one seemed to appreciate the genius beyond that single song. Finally, on one of Mike's panels he's wearing a Tommy t-shirt, and I wonder whether he, like me, also went to see that musical in high school.
Having said all that, Freddie & Me may not hold a great deal of appeal to readers who are not fans of Queen or not already followers of the author's previous work. The more everyday aspects of the story were in themselves not particularly fascinating.
Freddie & Me especially resonated with me because I, too, am (or at least once was) a Queen "superfan." Mike and I appear to share a number of the same experiences (and frustrations), including being the same age and therefore both being sophomores in high school the morning when we learned of Freddie Mercury's untimely death. We regret never having the opportunity to see Queen live, but both saw Queen + Paul Rodgers in concert in 2005 as a sort of consolation. We appreciated "deep" tracks more than the singles that went on to be their greatest hits, and we both had mixed feelings about how the film Wayne's World brought Queen to the forefront of American teenage consciousness but regretted that no one seemed to appreciate the genius beyond that single song. Finally, on one of Mike's panels he's wearing a Tommy t-shirt, and I wonder whether he, like me, also went to see that musical in high school.
Having said all that, Freddie & Me may not hold a great deal of appeal to readers who are not fans of Queen or not already followers of the author's previous work. The more everyday aspects of the story were in themselves not particularly fascinating.
kellyp's review
4.0
I thought the art and the narration were fabulous, but also I love the idea of autobiography through music and can imagine writing my own through various phases of fandom.
xterminal's review
4.0
Mike Dawson, Freddie and Me: A Coming-of-Age (Bohemian) Rhapsody (Bloomsbury, 2008)
My general rule of thumb on memoirs is simple: I loathe them. I have encountered a few that have been worthwhile over the years (Ruth Reichl's food-porn series of memoirs, Wilson Smith's Just Dirt, a handful of others), but for the most part, they're uninteresting people going on about their uninteresting lives. Graphic novel memoirs alleviate this trend somewhat, as they tend to be short (at least), but there's still a divide between the really interesting memoirs (Alison Bechdel's much-praised Fun Home, for example) and the... others. (Blankets. For the love of god, Blankets.) I'm still not 100% sure on which side of the line Freddie and Me falls, but I'm leaning towards the “really interesting” side with the caveat that I'm about ten years older than Dawson, and grew up during Queen's true glory days; News of the World came out when I was eight (and “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” were unavoidable if you owned a radio). So seeing a band I was so fond of back in the day (and even now consider something of a guilty pleasure) through the eyes of someone who wasn't around until (ugh) Hot Space is quite amusing, in its way.
Freddie and Me is the story of Mike Dawson growing up. This probably won't surprise you given that it's a memoir. He gives us his early years through the lens of his obsession with Queen and his younger sister's parallel obsession with Wham!. (Anyone familiar with recent Queen history will know where this is going pretty fast.) While he keeps things firmly planted in the realm of Freddie Mercury and Co., we see Dawson's early life in England, his family's transplantation to America in the early nineties (where the kids didn't know anything but “We Are the Champions”, he tells us, until Wayne's World brought “Bohemian Rhapsody” back into vogue), his post-high school years, and some of his struggles to carve out a niche in the graphic novel world. Warts and all, of course, as most memoirs (especially graphic-novel memoirs) are.
Have you ever thought to yourself that it would be really cool to read a memoir with a few less warts? I think that's part of the reason I've become so fond of Reichl's books; she spends so much time telling us about the food that the nastiness gets not glossed-over, exactly, but dealt with on a lower key than one finds in most memoirs I've experienced. Dawson has the wart problem, in that he remembers some astonishingly traumatic events with far more clarity than any of the good stuff, but about halfway through the book, he has the sense to do something I've never seen in a memoir before: he steps back, looks at it all, and (using the example of an altercation with a neighbor's father when he was a child) ponders whether his memory is correct, or whether he's subconsciously doctored it over the years. That's tough ground for a memoir to cover, especially in the age when memoir after memoir is being exposed as more or less fiction, and Dawson is brave to do it, in my estimation.
Not a bad little book at all, this. Probably of more intrinsic interest to Queen fans than the rest of the world, for obvious reasons, but worth your time if you are (or were) one. *** ½
My general rule of thumb on memoirs is simple: I loathe them. I have encountered a few that have been worthwhile over the years (Ruth Reichl's food-porn series of memoirs, Wilson Smith's Just Dirt, a handful of others), but for the most part, they're uninteresting people going on about their uninteresting lives. Graphic novel memoirs alleviate this trend somewhat, as they tend to be short (at least), but there's still a divide between the really interesting memoirs (Alison Bechdel's much-praised Fun Home, for example) and the... others. (Blankets. For the love of god, Blankets.) I'm still not 100% sure on which side of the line Freddie and Me falls, but I'm leaning towards the “really interesting” side with the caveat that I'm about ten years older than Dawson, and grew up during Queen's true glory days; News of the World came out when I was eight (and “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” were unavoidable if you owned a radio). So seeing a band I was so fond of back in the day (and even now consider something of a guilty pleasure) through the eyes of someone who wasn't around until (ugh) Hot Space is quite amusing, in its way.
Freddie and Me is the story of Mike Dawson growing up. This probably won't surprise you given that it's a memoir. He gives us his early years through the lens of his obsession with Queen and his younger sister's parallel obsession with Wham!. (Anyone familiar with recent Queen history will know where this is going pretty fast.) While he keeps things firmly planted in the realm of Freddie Mercury and Co., we see Dawson's early life in England, his family's transplantation to America in the early nineties (where the kids didn't know anything but “We Are the Champions”, he tells us, until Wayne's World brought “Bohemian Rhapsody” back into vogue), his post-high school years, and some of his struggles to carve out a niche in the graphic novel world. Warts and all, of course, as most memoirs (especially graphic-novel memoirs) are.
Have you ever thought to yourself that it would be really cool to read a memoir with a few less warts? I think that's part of the reason I've become so fond of Reichl's books; she spends so much time telling us about the food that the nastiness gets not glossed-over, exactly, but dealt with on a lower key than one finds in most memoirs I've experienced. Dawson has the wart problem, in that he remembers some astonishingly traumatic events with far more clarity than any of the good stuff, but about halfway through the book, he has the sense to do something I've never seen in a memoir before: he steps back, looks at it all, and (using the example of an altercation with a neighbor's father when he was a child) ponders whether his memory is correct, or whether he's subconsciously doctored it over the years. That's tough ground for a memoir to cover, especially in the age when memoir after memoir is being exposed as more or less fiction, and Dawson is brave to do it, in my estimation.
Not a bad little book at all, this. Probably of more intrinsic interest to Queen fans than the rest of the world, for obvious reasons, but worth your time if you are (or were) one. *** ½
djblock99's review
4.0
"Freddie" is Freddie Mercury of Queen, who the author is obsessed with from childhood on. I like that he constantly makes fun of himself, instead of taking his obsession seriously. The result is funny, and I felt a bit nostalgic, seeing as how he's one year older than me and came of age at the same time.
havelock's review against another edition
2.0
Freddie and Me is a graphic memoir about Mike Dawson’s lifelong love of the band Queen, and of Freddie Mercury in particular.
I was a huge Queen fan as a teenager. I still love listening their music, but I was near-obsessed with them from about thirteen to nineteen. So this would seem like a perfect book for me. And I could definitely relate to a lot of the author’s experiences regarding his love of the band, and how music can have a big impact on your life.
But overall, I found the book rather dull. Which feels like a cruel thing to say about a person’s memoir, but ultimately Dawson’s life here is pretty average; he loves Queen, his family moves to America when he’s a child, he still loves Queen, he has a few romances that don’t go anywhere, he talks about Queen some more, he’s an angsty teen who wants to run away, he gets elitist about music, he still loves Queen… you get the picture. It’s an ordinally life blandly told, and there’s really not enough in my opinion to warrant a memoir, and certainly not one that’s over 300 pages.
There are some interesting musings on memory I liked and that I wish were explored more, and Dawson is certainly a talented artist, but the best I can say about this is that it makes for a quick read.
I was a huge Queen fan as a teenager. I still love listening their music, but I was near-obsessed with them from about thirteen to nineteen. So this would seem like a perfect book for me. And I could definitely relate to a lot of the author’s experiences regarding his love of the band, and how music can have a big impact on your life.
But overall, I found the book rather dull. Which feels like a cruel thing to say about a person’s memoir, but ultimately Dawson’s life here is pretty average; he loves Queen, his family moves to America when he’s a child, he still loves Queen, he has a few romances that don’t go anywhere, he talks about Queen some more, he’s an angsty teen who wants to run away, he gets elitist about music, he still loves Queen… you get the picture. It’s an ordinally life blandly told, and there’s really not enough in my opinion to warrant a memoir, and certainly not one that’s over 300 pages.
There are some interesting musings on memory I liked and that I wish were explored more, and Dawson is certainly a talented artist, but the best I can say about this is that it makes for a quick read.
saoirseak's review
2.0
If you have a moment in your life where you think, "people reading this diary in the future will say, 'this is just the story of a very boring person'", maybe autobiography is not the medium for you.
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